I looked at the list I compiled yesterday of events that have transpired since the beginning of the year. I was trying to sort out why I felt so overwhelmed.

It revealed a lot.

Just think, a week and a half ago we were all checking out the skies for drones and orbs as we bid 2024 farewell. Then, the next day, we were hit with the news of a man driving an electric truck into the New Orleans crowd, killing 15, wounding more, and the news of the electric Tesla truck exploding in Las Vegas in front of the Trump Towers.

Seem like that was a long time ago now?

Well, as we tried to learn more about that, a mysterious fog veiled large swaths of the planet, giving off a chemical smell, making some people sick.

That was followed by the first human bird flu death and the reemergence of Drs Burke and Fauci, promoting testing of every chicken and pig and cow in the nation. Well, maybe just the chickens and cows, I forget.

China reported a massive outbreak of a viral disease, respiratory if I recall correctly; attacks children hard.

Former President Jimmy Carter passed away at age 100 and was given a State funeral, which all the living former Presidents attended.

President Elect Trump was sentenced to nothing but having to carry a conviction on his record.

And then the fires broke out.

And nothing else mattered. They eclipsed everything.

Well, unless you lived in the wide swath of southern states from Arkansas to Virginia that were hit with a major winter storm. 55+ million affected.

And all this, in a little over a week and a half!

Didn’t I tell you it looked like this year was going to be a humdinger? That pronouncement still stands.

Close to Home

Because so many people have migrated to southern California from all over the United States and all over the world in the last few decades, a lot of us have connections to someone who lives there. The impact of the fires will be felt across the globe.

Personally, I have an 87 year old friend who lives in Santa Monica. Her apartment building is only two blocks away from an Evacuation Warning zone. A warning means to get your things together and be ready to go. It’s the step before a Mandatory Evacuation order. I haven’t been able to find out if she’s okay. The winds are supposed to pick up again tonight.

I think about all the people trying to find out if loved ones are okay.

A friend of mine got a call from his brother who lives in southern California, a good distance from the fires. His daughter, her hubby and three small kids lived in the Palisades, and lost everything they couldn’t pack into their car. Burned to ashes. Gone.

I multiply what they’re facing by the thousands of destroyed homes.

And we’re just at the beginning.

If you know anyone who’s been affected by the fire – or by loss or tragedy of any kind – let them talk with you about what happened and how they’re experiencing it. Listening is more helpful that you might guess. It lets people sort out their thoughts and put an explosion of pieces into some kind of picture. It helps them process their forever-altered reality.

“What must it be like,” my friend asked me, “to be going through this as a kid! Imagine being seven or five and suddenly everything you ever knew of home disappears. You wouldn’t have any way to understand.”

I reminded him of the studies of children who had come through World War II’s bombings and disruptions. As long as they felt cared for and loved, they grew up pretty much unscathed by the horrors they had witnessed. Children are remarkably resilient. Their forming minds don’t yet make the judgments ours do.

You do the same with kids as you do with adults. Listen. Let them know you care enough to sit with them and share the moment together.

Life can be scary, and hard. But we can be courageous and open to the possibility that, in the end, everything will turn out fine. Life goes on. Even when we sometimes wish it wouldn’t. And it always comes with it a choice to decide what you’re going to make of it.

Make of it the best you can.

Remember to ask how easy you can let it be. Remember to breathe and to look around now and then. Be an encourager in the world. We all need that.

And hey, smile!

Warmly,
Susan

^{Screenshot KABC News}

Each week when I sit down to write these Sunday Letters to you, before I begin, I pause to think about you, the person on the other side of the screen reading this.

I silently ask that my words be exactly what someone out there needs to hear. Maybe you. Maybe someone who needs an understanding smile, a listening ear or a laugh, a pat on the shoulder, maybe a hug.

It’s a kind of meditation I do in honor of the privilege of serving in such a way. It inspires me to give you the best that I can offer.

I confess that sometimes my best falls short of what I’d hoped I could produce. But you keep on reading week after week anyway. And gosh, that touches my heart. Along the way, I hope you’ve found a gem or two to carry in your pocket.

If you’re new to these letters, know that I welcome you joyously. To you, as well as to those who have been with me across the years, I vow to continue to give you my best, and to keep working to make my best even better.

Striving to be our best, after all, is what it’s all about—what these letters are about, what our lives are about. Reaching toward our highest vision of ourselves is what gives our lives juice.

My goal is to inspire you to keep reaching, to keep refining your vision, and to encourage you, when your highest ideals seem impossibly far off, to keep on keeping on.

The Celebration

Here on the verge of the holidays and the birth of a new year, I find myself remembering one of my long-time favorite quotes:

“The purpose of life is the celebration of it.”

I don’t know who said that. But it rings true for me because of the depth of the word ‘celebration.’

On one hand, it means to mark an event with festivities, to express our joy. In this sense of the word, it means the purpose of life is to be glad for it, to look for and appreciate its mystery and wonder, to savor its fullness and pleasures and delights.

On the other hand, ‘celebrate’ means to solemnize, to take something seriously and to hold it in reverence. In other words, don’t take life for granted. Give the mystery and wonder of your life its due. You’re only you once, and not for long. Take the reaching seriously, and delight in the journey.

Whatever holiday you may be celebrating this week, may it be filled with beauty and joy.

I’ll see you next week and we can peer into the New Year together. Sure feels like it will be a humdinger, doesn’t it? Don’t they all?

Whatever it brings, we’ll travel it together, reaching for our best, becoming more and more the selves we always wanted to be.

Thank you for joining me on the journey.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Pexels from Pixabay}

Come pull a chair by the fire and let’s drink a toast to the holidays. I’ve set out a virtual plate of my fanciest cakes and cookies and some nuts and cheeses and fruit for you. Help yourself!

See the intricate hand made ornaments in this crystal bowl? They come with a story. I love their sparkle and glow. They mesmerize me and send me back in time to the days when my mother made them, stacking sequins and crystal beads on tiny pins that she pressed into Styrofoam forms, arranging the brocade and satin ribbons just so

It was tedious work, especially since she had limited control of her hands. But when her ALS-like disease forced her to retire, she vowed to do at least one creative act every day for as long as she was able. And that particular year, she made these precious ornaments for our Christmas tree.

They’re among my most cherished possessions, and every year they pull me into Christmases Past, where I open a treasure chest of special memories.

I was thinking last night about how much this annual ritual means to me, how it connects me to past generations and gives me a deepened sense of who I am, where I came from.

Holiday celebrations are much different now than they were when I was a small child. The world has become a different place. It moves at a different speed. It seems storm-tossed now, its people searching for something sure to which they can cling in the midst of life’s turbulent seas.

As I lifted the sequined bulbs from their tissue paper wrappings this year, I realized that this annual tradition secures me to my past, to my ancestors, my heritage.

Then I came across the strands of red and silver and gold glass beads that I’ll drape around the beautiful green glass jug that we bought on a family vacation one year as we traveled through rural New Hampshire. That was over half a century ago, and the beads have graced the jug every year since.

That’s the value of tradition. It provides a link to the past. It speaks to our connection to what has gone before, even if the meanings attached to it have transformed over the years.

We light the candles or put up the tree or sing the songs from ages past not because the act embodies the same beliefs, but because, in connecting us to our past, the act reminds us of the lives and cultures from which our traditions arose.

We recall the old stories. We think about the struggles and hardships that had to be lived to bring us to where we are right now. We think about the courage and determination it took to endure them. We think about the values and the love that made the struggles worthwhile.

And even if we don’t think about them, the performance of the traditions in and of itself quickens them in our hearts and has a meaning that our hearts understand.

I hope you have some little token of past holidays that speaks to you of days gone by. I hope you have something that you’ll pass on to your children, or a special memory to share with a close friend or two.

If not, find one, find a token that can hold the memory of this holiday for you, a bauble of some kind, a word that you write on a piece of paper. Hold it in your hand and make a heartfelt wish—perhaps for peace, perhaps for greater joy or faith, perhaps for comfort, for forgiveness and healing—whatever you want the holiday to mean for you. Then, when the holiday season is past, wrap your token in paper, write the date on it, and put it away to discover next year.

That’s how traditions begin. With hope and reverence. And that is what they carry forward.

Wishing you fond holiday memories and a heart full of hope and joy.

Warmly,
Susan

What was, isn’t. What is, won’t be.
But always, there’s the now. Right in front of our noses. Full of everything and always a different shape than it was before or soon will be.

And most of the time we don’t even notice, being all caught up in our stories and calculations and all. Anyway . . .

Hello! I send you smiles today!

This time of year, I spend a lot of time working in my studio, a cozy second story room, with a window that overlooks the wooded western hill.

I like the view and it’s comfortable.

Every time I look up from my laptop’s screen, the walls and furniture, the plants and lamps and paintings are exactly where they were before.

The only thing that seems to have changed is me. And it wasn’t, I can tell you, much of a change.

Maybe I wasn’t jiggling my toes before. My thoughts were different. The furnace’s fan has kicked on. Other than that, it’s the same old same old.

It could seem like a pretty boring place, I suppose.

But that’s only the case if you forget that all the walls have another side. One of them even has an outside, and that’s a doggone huge place. You can’t even get to the end of it, it goes so far.

And just down the road a piece, there’s mountains and deserts and forests and oceans, and all of them with their own inhabitants, every one of them as real as you and me and alive in this very same now. And some of them are humans.

And for all you know, a particular human you’re thinking about right now might be thinking of you, too. Maybe because they felt your thoughts in some subliminal electromagnetic way. Or you felt them.

And once you start thinking about another human being, you can drift off into all kinds of imaginary conversations and memories and dreams.

So what difference does it make if the walls don’t seem to change? A patch of relative sameness is a good thing. It can give you a sense of stability, something to hang on to when fierce winds blow.

Be grateful for the slow-to-change, for the ordinary and familiar. Someday you could be amazed that you ever took it for granted.

Rest in that. And from there, watch, and let life flow.

Remember that what was, isn’t. And what is, won’t be.
But there is always now, dancing, and it goes on and on and on.

As you go into the holidays, may the dance bring you moments that glow with peace and shimmer with joy.

Warmly,
Susan