It’s one thing to remember it as a fact: “Winter can be wondrous.”
But immediately my crabby inner voice counters with “Yeah, yeah, and bitter cold, too, and a nuisance. Not my favorite. ” And just like that, I think away “wondrous,” burying it beneath winter’s more tangible features as shivers run down my arms.
Then one day snowflakes the size of dimes begin to fall and they keep on falling until the ground and every twig on every tree is covered with them. And the kid in me makes me put on my boots and jacket and climb the hill to get a look at the scene from within it.
And I realize that “wondrous” is breathing all around me.
I gaze out the door at the trees, bare now, atop the southern hill. I remember all over again how much I love these winter trees, how they never fail to speak to something inside me that relates to them somehow, at least as neighbor. I listen to them this windless day as they gather, it seems, in council, perhaps to share their dreams. I wonder if I am in their dreams (that woman down there who sings to the morning birds) the way that they’re in mine.
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.
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.
