The gray of the overcast twilight sky is subtly tinted pink and the snow on the hillside reflects it. The scene touches me somehow and reminds me that this is a holy time. I feel the energy of it: Love. Nostalgia. Hope. Suspense.
Ribbons of light stream past on the highway below as people drive home from work, anticipating the evening ahead.
The kid in me gets excited at the sight of the red and yellow lights that line the roof of a semi’s big trailer as it climbs the western hill and disappears around the curve that heads down into town.
This childlike delight is a part of the season, too.
Think of the face of a three-year-old gazing at the Christmas lights, at lacy flakes of falling snow. Such wonder!
I’m hibernating. In spurts. None of them as long as I’d like.
It’s winter, the time for turning inward, living on the stored, nutritious fat I gathered over the summer. Examining it, this thick, luxuriant heap of experiences, seeing what contributions each made to my being.
I am declaring myself an Elder now and claiming all the rights and privileges of that status.
I give myself permission to do whatever I want.
I’m finding this current segment of my journey to be the most intriguing one so far, despite the fact I’m well experienced in multi-faceted endeavors. – Once I designed a business card that described me as an “Adept Generalist.” I have sometimes gone by the handle “Susan Manyhats.” – But this time “multi-faceted” doesn’t touch it. Everything’s layers deep now and convoluted and whizzing past at breakneck speed.
Nevertheless, it is winter. Whether the calendar says so or not. And I am curled in a warm room, gazing out my window, letting my mind wander, making up stories about what I hear and see. I decided I’ll share snippets of my dreams and musings. And this is that project’s start.
I don’t know what it will become. It may disappear with the dawn.
But here it is, for now, a record of the dreams I entertain as I gaze from my tree house window.
* * *
An Excerpt from my Journal
12/05/24 10:55 am
Don’t give up hope, I tell myself. The 250th birthday of the USA happens in ’26. Celebrations are being planned in detail even now. Players are moving into place.
It could turn out to be a reclaiming of the true virtues of humanity – a new Renaissance! How splendid would that be!
It’s possible, I suppose, despite the odds. And a girl’s allowed to dream.
All that we need is a great sweeping away of the falsehoods and delusions.
That’s all.
Everything depends on how that unfolds. Literally. Everything.
It’s all or nothing. And there’s no predicting which way it will go.
What an astonishing time to be here as a witness!
Interlude
When I turned on the plant light for the grandmother spider plant in the eastern corner of the living room, an impulse to play Christmas carols on the keyboard arose, and I obeyed it, and it was wonderful. I hadn’t played so much as a single tune in months. I decide that I’m going to have to do it more often.
The carols carried me back across decades, acting as the soundtrack of a movie of Christmases past, each one precious and touching. It’s a truly powerful time. And inescapable. Whole new dimensions of reality emerge; previously unnoticed veils float away. The imagined becomes real, and things you never even dreamed manifest as well.
“The Thing Itself”
11:30 am Bannon’s on. I’ll catch this last half hour. He’s going to discuss where he thinks we are and what we need to do between now and Jan 21.
“This is the main event,” he says. “This is the thing itself.”
On this day of the first December ice, I quietly whisper my final farewell to autumn, and admit that winter’s begun to sneak in. As we put the year to bed, we ought, I think, send it off to dream wondrous dreams by telling it a fine story. Perhaps a story about a little pine tree and his adventures preparing for the great Festival of Light. Yes. A fine year-end story indeed.
Now is the season of letting go, of releasing unto time’s stream all that is lifeless and brittle, all that no longer serves.
Loose the stained leaves from your story, the pages of blaming and grudges, the images of sorrow and regret. They are but dreams, you know.
Let them go. It’s as easy as waking. Let them ride the winds like phantoms into yesterday and fade into her depths. Fresh tomorrows wait to fill their spaces. The globe will soon tilt toward the light, and possibilities will shimmer around us like snowflakes on a winter morning.
It could just drop right out of the blue, a revelation you never expected, one thin, bright shaft of truth that makes everything clear once and for all. You never know. Pay attention.
Those of us in the States kicked off the big slide to year’s end this past Thursday with our annual Thanksgiving celebration. It unofficially marks the beginning of the winter holiday celebrations.
It’s a glorious, maddening time of year, with all its expectations and demands. It’s a roller coaster ride through a land of fantasy and faith, memory and anticipation. But since it’s seemingly unavoidable, regardless of where on the globe you live or what your traditions or culture, I think it’s wise to make up your mind ahead of time just how you’re going to play it.
Personally, I’ve decided I’m going to be grateful to be alive to see it yet again, with all its music and show and color, and to love every minute of it as hard as I possibly can.
I’m going to remember my mantra: How easy can I let this be?
And the power chant I learned a while back from the incomparable Joe Vitale: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”
But listen, since the spirit of Thanksgiving week still lingers, will you indulge me and let me ask you to think with me for a few minutes about gratitude?
I know a bit about it. For several years now, I’ve kept a Gratitude Journal. Every night, I write down three sentences that begin with the words, “I’m grateful . . .” and name something that brought me satisfaction or pleasure during the day.
I confess that sometimes I have to think for a while before I can name three things.
That’s not because my day lacked something for which I could feel appreciation. It’s because sometimes it’s hard to get to the place inside yourself where genuine gratitude lives. And, I’ve observed, it’s because, like everybody else—maybe even you—I take so very many things so much for granted.
That’s what keeps me keeping the journal. It invites me, once a day, to pause and consider all the things and people and experiences in my life that make it what it is, and to feel a reverence for them. I get to hold up all the shining moments of the day and choose three to note.
Really getting in touch with your sense of gratitude is a genuine celebration of your life, of the wonder of it, however humdrum it may sometimes seem.
When you let yourself sink into the warmth of gratitude, your heart opens. It lets go of the trapped hurts and disappointments and lets them fade away. When you see how the goodness outshines them, hurts seem to lose their sting.
Sometimes, I’ve noticed, when I allow myself to be awash in gratitude, I can even appreciate the times and the people who brought me disappointment, or irritation, or pain, and to see the gifts of insight and learning they carried with them.
But the main thing I wanted to say about gratitude is that it’s worth it to take the time to tune in to it. It’s worth the effort to calm yourself enough to feel its power and graciousness warming you from within the very center of your being.
We don’t do that enough. We’re too busy. Too stressed. Too distracted. Too tired. And I gotta tell you, that’s a damned shame.
Because you know what? Gratitude is so jam-packed with sheer, transformative, replenishing, healing, lifting, soothing power! You just owe it to yourself to let yourself sink into its arms.
That’s where I’m going to spend my holidays. Enveloped in the stuff, and loving life as hard as I can. I joyfully invite you to join me
Happy holidays, my friends, every day of the week.
Fallen branches rise from the creek bed like the sloughed off antlers of a deer, the ancestor, perhaps, of one bedded down now, deep in the woods, hiding from the hunters. I wish him good cover and safety for the season. The color of the fallen leaves that blanket the woods matches his pelt I see. Nature provides. I imagine him standing by these waters at dawn, drinking his fill, then disappearing. Let the hunters go home empty-handed. It is a great gift just to roam these banks. Let the creek’s peace be your prize for the day.
Between the last notes of the overture and the first movement of the next scene, a quiet descends. The earth sighs in contentment as she settles in to rest. The ten thousand leaves have fallen. Beneath the waters fish seek the depths. The woodland’s creatures snuggle in their burrows. Soon snow will come. You can catch its scent. Everything waits. What comes next is grandeur.
For all the wondrous variety that brings us such delight, for the orange of things and the green, for the moist and dry, the passing seasons, for earth and air and sea and sky and all the things to which they give life, let us give thanks.
And let us give thanks for thankfulness itself, and for hearts that can know its fullness.
Let us be open to joy and revelry, to the touch of a kind word, a caring glance. Let us sing the connections that bind us, one to the next, to the next.
Let us celebrate the morning and the bright dancing air. Let us applaud the firing neurons and the shooting stars. Let us make merry for the day’s music and the ears that collect its sound.
Oh, let us be glad and grateful for the endlessly streaming wonders, for the grand mystery of it all, and for our being in the very midst of it.
I wait for these, these sycamore leaves and oaks, the last to fall, some of the sycamores larger than my face, all of them larger than my palm, and so rich in color. This is the quilt’s top layer, the topmost shield against the snow, coming soon now, soon. But not today. Today is still mild, and the burnished umber of the fallen sycamores and oaks spreads itself beneath the tall trunks of the mighty ones who bore them. I breathe their fragrance, their songs rustling around my ankles as I walk.
