The New Year will arrive tonight in the glow of a full moon. It like the year closing, has reached completion. Round and gravid with light, it pours out the gift of its labors for all to see, a luminous reminder of the purpose and beauty of our lives as the year slips away. This year is over, but the moon's work and ours, goes on. Ahead of us in the night stretches a vast sky of opportunity, waiting with the stars, for our light. Shine on.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Beautiful are the youth

whose rich emotions flash and burn,

whose lithe bodies filled with energy and grace

sway in their happy dance of life;

and beautiful likewise are the mature

who have learned compassion and patience,

charity and wisdom,

though they be rarer far than beautiful youth.

But most beautiful and most rare is a gracious old age

which has drawn from life the skill to take its varied strands:

the harsh advance of age, the pang of grief,

the passing of dear friends, the loss of strength,

and with fresh insight weave them

into a rich and gracious pattern all its own.

This is the greatest skill of all,

to take the bitter with the sweet and make it beautiful,

to take the whole of life in all its moods,

its strengths and weaknesses,

and of the whole make one great and celestial harmony.

Robert Terry Weston

"What are we here for?" Annie Dillard asks in The Writing Life. "Proper chorum, the monks say: for the sake of the choir."

What makes a good life? What is the value in trying to live one? Everywhere we look there are people struggling mightily to ensure only their version is the only one allowed. The beautiful balance of our natural world has been threatened because we have been thoughtless and selfish in how we have built our nests. The thrall of political power has distanced us from the vast numbers of people who sleep in the dust and have only despair for their lives. There is so much heartache. But could it be that these and countless others reasons like them are why a good life is so valuable? Could all this wrestling with each other be how we build one? Change in any form can only be built with the hearts and minds of everyday people. Generals and Kings, Amahs, Presidents, leaders, warlords and bosses are nothing without them. We are the only tool they have. Sweeping events in life may seem to arrive in one splendid moment, but with a closer look the brilliance of change good or bad, is composed of the lives of individuals. This year has been used up. Worn and frayed it is being gratefully ushered out by many of us. But before we close the door forever, perhaps we could pause just a moment to gather up from the tatters all the good stuff: the small kindnesses, the acts of compassion and unconditional love, the belly laughs, audacity, art and music and poetry and literature—all the boundless blessings of a good life our world so desperately needs. The New Year is arriving and we have important work to do.

"You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you are going to live. Now." Joan Baez

When we consider changes we might like to make in our lives in the coming year, not very many of us will be trying to include more risk. Most likely we will be doing the opposite by anticipating and making plans for as many different outcomes as we can. That makes good sense. Risk does have elements of exposure and vulnerability which are not always in our best interests. Sometimes though in trying to eliminate as much risk as we can, we forget that not all forms of exposure and vulnerability are bad. Vulnerability can dazzle us by widening our capacity for delight; exposure is the adventurer leading us to new opportunities. Both are invitations to relax our control and open up to liveliness. Next year when we are faced with a leap and are hovering on the edge trying to decide if we should risk it, we might want to remember that too little risk can create a lot of regret.

 

 

 

 

" The only way to tame your fears is to feel the rocky motion." Vonda Shepherd, 100 Tears Away

Fear is the master of deception. It has countless disguises that make it difficult to recognize its presence in our decision making. But the one it is best at using is the ability to make us believe it is a force greater than ourselves and beyond our control. We humans have a tendency to be far more willing to notice when that happens in everybody else before we take a look at ourselves. The courageous part is to look inward with tenderness and compassion at our own lives to see where we have done the same. The more curious and interested we are in why we fear the more we loosen its grip on us. And close on the heels of 'why' is 'what if'. As soon as we allow ourselves to imagine surviving what we fear the balance of power shifts back to us, we gain strength and courage—not from any force of will but through the power of love. A new year is always full of the unknown. It is easy to feel frightened and anxious about what may come to us. Perhaps that is the time it is most important to remember the power of a loving gaze.

"The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little." Thomas Merton

We've all had to settle at some point in our lives for countless reasons, which even if we now regret, at the time seemed worthy. Living exacts a toll on everyone and settling is one of them. Sometimes it's just plain easier, or the situation didn't seem to merit the effort, to give up what we wanted. It's a bit like weeding—there are always a few we overlook. But if we give up weeding altogether before long our yards are no longer recognizable. It's not a personal crisis to have a few weeds in our lives—in fact it's inevitable. The lesson for us as we move thoughtfully into a new year is to not be tempted into letting them take over because we have convinced ourself is not worth the effort.Allowing time to figure out what we truly desire helps us create a life that doesn't feel overwhelming and out of control but nourishing and supporting. We each have hopes and dreams that we should never settle on. Because if we do it means we have convinced ourselves that what our heart wants no longer matters and the weeds can have our life.That is a crisis.

 

 

"We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us." Thomas Merton

The last days of the year have a wonderful ease to them. For many of us, this is a natural time for reflection about the closing year and what we hope for the one to come. The gifts of this ritual are a lot like cleaning out the garage. All year long we've stacked up the things we didn't have the time to properly put away, telling ourselves 'we'll get to it' later. By now, there is hardly room for the car. And while we dread the cleaning out, when the Saturday arrives and we finally tackle the heaps, it turns out to be an energizing experience. We discover events we thought would be so important, really weren't in the end and how ones that seemed insignificant, became profound. By gently and purposefully remembering, we honor the hurtful times so we can integrate them in a way that helps them heal and allow the tender and joyous memories to restore us. Sorting through the past year increases our discernment and wisdom and creates an opportunity to see where we have or haven't grown and changed. We gain perspective about life and our place in it. But perhaps one of the greatest gifts is afterwards when we experience the same sense of completion and accomplishment about our lives that we have when we survey our clean swept garage. We are ready for a fresh start.

"Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon?"

Rumi

 

God is always with us-

when the waters recede, when we wait and when they return.
"What we live for, hope for, pray for, comes as a gift."
Christmas Blessings

 

"What does it matter what men call the light?" T.H.White, The Once and Future King

This is Christmas Eve and Christians all over the world are pausing to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
The story of his life is a beautiful one of peace and tolerance and compassion for each other. His was a message that proclaimed how alike we are, not different. So much in all faiths gets lost in translation. The fear in us hungers to control what it does not understand about the world of the soul. We are still learning that the power of faith is not to be confused with the power of men. Perhaps when we feel despair over all the strife and heartache this has caused, it would be comforting to remember this simple truth: despite the differences of beliefs across our world, they all call us to be our highest, truest, best selves. And that, my dear ones, is the shining hope we all can cling to.

"If the only prayer you ever said was 'thank you', that would suffice." Meister Eckhart

We could be thankful for so many things. We often aren't. It is easier to roll along on automatic, saying thank you in an attempt to smooth the bumpy places in the day. It oils the machinery of living. It's when we begin to use our thank you as the voice in the outer world of a genuine gratefulness we feel in our hearts, that we begin living our lives as a gift. The view from that ridge of the heart sees our experiences in the world as part of larger sacred journey. We become adults when we realize that everyday living is not ever going to be a Hallmark Card. There will be moments of that here and there, but big chunks of it are simply about getting on with our lives. What's to be done with all that? To have thankfulness then is an act of surrender. It says we trust that life and our place in it have value and purpose despite our limited sight. Genuine thankfulness is when the machinery of our daily lives breaks down and sitting there stranded in the muck, we still believe it's all good.

 

"How can you deal with this ceaselessly pulsing aorta of life with anything but spirituality?" Heather King,The Closest to Love We Ever Get

Some days thinking about ourselves and the world it is hard to be hopeful. The complexity of the issues we face can suck the energy out of us before we even try to sort them out. Life is messy, sticky, complicated and downright ornery. Working on solutions only seems to make it more so because we must deal with each other to achieve them. But most of us still get up each morning and walk out into the world hopeful. Maybe that is because we know exactly what a ceaselessly pulsing aorta of life feels like—it is us; we are part of it and we know it needs to be connected to our hearts.

"You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. That worrier." Mary Oliver

The soul is our wisest self. There is no chance we will be able to bluff our way past what it knows to be true. Still, most of us do try, wandering off for a while or even a lifetime, from a meaningful relationship with ourselves. Eventually though, a day comes for everyone, often when we are at the bottom of some heap we have created, when we give up searching for ourselves in others or things. We turn our hungry search inward. In that moment our worried little soul stops worrying, not because our lives are going to be perfect every after but because we have finally found what we have been looking for.

"You can have the other words--chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it." Mary Oliver

Nope, you can't pin down grace. All we know for sure is that it is able to fill in the cracks of life when nothing else can. Maybe that is possible because we can't explain how it happens or that even bigger question: how we deserve it. We can only receive grace or be an instrument for it—usually without our knowledge. In the daily slog of living grace filled encounters redirect our attention back to the powerful and beautiful and profound intangibles of living we lose touch with. Perhaps that's part of the gift. Grace is intended to be an embrace from God; an assurance we can trust the mystery of what we don't know as much as what we do.

"It's very important to keep promises, especially to yourself." Barbara Stanwyck in Christmas in Connecticut

A promise made to ourselves is a commitment witnessed only by our hearts. There are no legal documents, no promissory notes. It reflects our awareness of a personal need we feel is important enough to our well being, to warrant a pact with ourselves to provide it. Some promises are small, about little things; others are profound and impact the course of our life. Making either kind requires time to sort through our inner promptings and yearnings to find those truly worthy of our allegiance. The reward of such holy work is great, for when we make promises we create authentic personal power. Not only do they require our loyalty in the face of opposition, they are a declaration that we can be counted on to go out into the world and fulfill them.

 

"Accident rules every corner of the universe, except perhaps, the chambers of the human heart." from Snow Falling on Cedars

Life is one choice after another. What comes to us, no matter how hard to bear, still trails the wisps of the decisions we made that brought us to that moment. It is very hard to accept that much responsibility for our own existence. It is much easier to blame our circumstances on something beyond our control--like accidents, which can drop like meteorites into our lives and propel us off into a way of being we would never have willingly chosen for ourselves. We may not have wanted our life to change, but it does and we find we have been given an opportunity to create another way of being in the world beyond our imaginings. In that moment,in the smouldering wreckage of the strike, there exists a fierce grace: once again, we get to choose.

"What is spiritual about the manifest is not the part that leaves tracks in the snow." Mary Oliver

All day long we are bombarded with images and information and feelings. There is so much trivia attached to the essential parts of life isn't there? If we could just get at life without all the hindrances and entanglements, it would be so much easier, so less complicated. Once in a while though, the sticky parts fall away. A moment arrives out of the trillions in our day and it is different. We are arrested out of the mundane and into something more. Suddenly, what we see or feel intensifies our awareness of being alive. Right there, that wondering pause? that place between our bodies and the world? That's why we are here.

"Yield." Regina Brett, age 94, 45 Lessons on Life

It's a pretty sure thing you can't live very long without encountering an opportunity to yield. But contrary to what many believe, yielding is not about giving in or compromising or settling. Those are actions based on logic. Yielding is far more elegant and mysterious. When we yield we stretch our hearts capacity to feel compassion;for others and surprisingly,for ourselves. To yield in a given situation, indicates our awareness and connection to the part of us that glimpses beyond both sides of the struggle at hand and senses there is a force larger than ourselves at work. Even though we may not know the outcome we are willing to be part of the tranformation-whatever that may be--and so we open up and bend. It is one of the most potent and misunderstood forms of power, probably because it is not about the power of our will, but our capacity for love.

"And you wanderer, how will you shape your clay?" Lloyd Alexander, Taran Wanderer

Clay is truly a lot like people. It can be dense and slick. It sticks to itself and others. It comes in all colors and on occasion, smells a bit off. But in the hands of the right person, someone who has a bit of vision, and a knowledge of fire, it can be transformed into something useable and beautiful. When a glazed pot is put in the kiln even the potter doesn't know for sure it won't break in the heat or what it will look like when it comes out. There is only the understanding that the fire in the kiln has the potential to create something beautiful and servicable with the potter's handiwork. Making a life is not much different. Sometimes when considering how we will shape our own clay, it is good to remember that expectations are often just a nervous little group of worriers who are afraid of the kiln.

"Everyone writes their version of the past." Michael Ondaaje

…and everyone uses 'witeout'. No matter how we may run and hide, what we are today is a result of what happened to us yesterday whether we acknowledge it or not. Accepting aging is to understand that the time left to us to create more of it is quickly receding. Some nights thinking about that can make your heart beat faster. But, if we are lucky, all that stirring in our blood might just give us a new lease on life. How we embrace the experiences of our life is the last frontier of living. Some of the juiciest, sweetest, most soulful living can arrive at the ends of our lives if we find the courage to be full of forgiveness instead of blame--not just for ourselves but for others. That's when we get to use an eraser.

"Beauty is like aspirin. Good for everything."

When the human spirit is the smallest, the need for the beautiful is the greatest and most essential. It alone has the power to awaken and heal us when love and truth can not. A beautiful strain of music, a tender poem, fallen petals on a tabletop, the jumpy hair of children tumbling out of their beds in the morning—all these are an exquisite, ancient language understood only by the heart. The world is not beautiful just to please us. It is beautiful so we will learn how to be also.

"Let time do its tender work."

For most of us, time is the choke chain that binds everyday living to a schedule. We have forgotten it has another side that in our hungriness for control, we no longer seek. Beyond the frenetic schedules we create, time exists in its truest form as an instrument of growth and healing. To receive these gifts, we must learn when to abandon our lists and accept the invitation to be in the moment and we must also learn to trust the passage of time through our lives. When we give the power of attention to ourselves, to the people we love, to our struggles and longings, we relinquish our fear of always wanting to know what comes next. We learn to wait and see. When we open ourselves to the mystery that some parts of living must have the slow, gradual passage of time to manifest and to change and heal, we transform living from the daily grind to a grace filled, purposeful, intended experience full of possibility.

"Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has not need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer." Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

A fighter and a screamer? Of course! Hope doesn't give it up. Hope goes down to the mat; hangs on by the fingernails, clutches the last knot in the rope. Hope says yes when reason says no, leaves the porch light on and the covers turned down. Hope believes without proof and remains in the aftermath of it. Hope and faith are the daughters of love. Faith makes good grades, keeps her curfew and always minds. Hope on the other hand, gets' tattoos, talks back and gets into all sorts of scrapes. When we are caught in the jaws of life, it is hope that gives us the heart to bear it.

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." Erica Jong

Erica has a point there. Maybe too, we often ask someone for advice because we aren't excited about what we know the answer will involve us doing: forgiving, risking, changing, loving, accepting, going, coming, saying yes, saying no--all faces of change. Having our own wisdom affirmed by someone we trust can encourage us to trust ourselves. Perhaps life is one opportunity after another arriving on the doorsteps of our hearts. Each time we hear the knocking we will have to decide if we will open the door. Advice is your Mom yelling from the kitchen "For heaven's sake, will you get the door!?"

"Nothing's perfect", sighed the fox.
The Litte Prince, St. Exupery

And yes sigh, the fox is right. What is perfect anyway? Nothing in nature is perfect. The trees, the flowers, the grass, even the snow. Their beauty arrives from the great sweep of all the little pieces together. The field of sunflowers is stunning, but closer looking reveals torn petals, drooping heads, raggedy leaves. Just like us. Our lives taken in full glance are also beautiful, even with all our torn places: the heartaches, struggles and challenges. Looking for perfection will only bring disappointment and keep us from seeing what matters the most: the whole landscape of our lives; hills, valleys, deserts, rolling fields. Looking for perfect means searching for a way to be in the world and not reflect the experiences of it. To be real is accept life will be sticky, messy and constantly growing and changing. To be real is to allow ourselves to experience tears, and sadness and belly laughs and silliness. To be real is to know life intimately, soulfully and purposefully. In short, to be perfectly alive.

"We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves." Thomas Merton

In the woods and fields, the animals and insects know exactly what it is they want. Their small and beautiful lives revolve around getting what they know they need. Our human focus is not nearly as uncorrupted. Our awareness of our place in the world is far more fragile. Unlike our companions in the natural world, we are vulnerable to relinquishing our hopes and dreams when they take us down paths different from what most have traveled. In our search to be ourselves, it is easy to be convinced that unless we are like those around us, we have no place. Yet on reflection, the people we admire the most, are those who listened first to what their heart desired. A satisfying life evolves from delight and allegiance to who we are, instead of in tribute to what others expect or choose for us.

"Attraversiamo--Let's cross over"

We have all been on the shore of decision--that windswept place where the ferry is waiting to carry us across to the other side. Sometimes the weather is glorious. We know just where we are going and we welcome the journey with open arms. There are other times though, when the weather is overcast and foggy, even stormy. The ferry looks rickety and the pilot suspect. We arrive at the dock of decision wondering, wondering, wondering: should we cross? Those are the times to remember "attraversare" means 'to carry through to fulfill'.

"The tighter you squeeze, the less you have." Thomas Merton

While Nature is recognized as being a source of abundance, what is often overlooked in that assessment is her extraordinary thriftiness. Everything is eventually used for something else. Thriftiness isn't really about holding on. It is about the creative use of what we have. What a wonderful way to think about our own lives. It isn't the holding on that is so essential. It's what we create with what we have.

"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift." Einstein

One of the greatest things about life is it will always surprise us. We may get stuck in the same old rut of day to day living, but out there, especially in those places and times when we least expect, delight awaits. It is the little moments that carry us and life overflows with them.

"Although facing the truth is not attractive at first, the longer one follows it the sweeter it becomes." Rumi

Some parts of our lives, despite all our love and effort, will not change. Some outcomes are inevitable despite all our attempts to hope and believe otherwise. To be able to accept this is to acknowledge the presence of truth. Does it mean our time and feelings were wasted? Does it mean that there was no beauty or joy in the experience? No, it simply means we are willing to gather the sweet from the bitter, the good from the hurtful and mix them like leavening, into all that we are as we close the door and walk on—our hearts wiser, deeper and grateful.

 

 

"It is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world"
Mary Oliver from Invitation

Yes, it is a broken world. There are days when it appears there are far more broken places in it than whole. But then there are other days, when our hearts are lifted by the fall of light across the grass on the way to the car, or an unexpected tenderness or the comforting feel of jeans and a sweatshirt after a long day at work. In those moments we come across the places where life is whole and good without any extraneous adornment. In this holiday season when often expectations are aligned with excess, perhaps what we are really seeking is one of the small whole places where what is, is completely enough.

"In times of adversity, make energetic progress in the good. This is still the real work at hand: for each of us to meet the bad in the world with the good in our hearts." Elizabeth Lesser

The last couple of years have taught us much about adversity. On reflection, every generation is confronted with a share of hardship and our times are not unique. In the stories of older friends as well as contemporaries, it can often be seen how the most tender and beautiful moments are also sewn with the threads of poignancy. The greatest soulfulness, the deepest appreciation of the purpose in being alive, arrives dressed in the cloth of bittersweet. When life is the most overwhelming, there still exists an equal capacity for all things good and whole. In those dark moments our ability to experience life deeply and profoundly quickens and rises, available for the asking, to carry us on. Out of the remains of hurt and disappointment and fear, we are able to create love, truth and beauty. Something to remember when wrestling like Jacob did, with what may turn out to be an angel unaware.

"Everything is on its way to somewhere, everything."

December ushers in the end of the year. While it is a time lightened by the festivities of the holidays, it also shepherds in another opportunity. We are given time to consider where we have been and what we are feeling as we shed another year of living. For many of us, the closing year may have had more than its share of challenges. For all of us, there will be the chance to decide what we will do with what has happened to us—good or bad. In those moments of reflection it is good to remember that we are a work in progress. Our lives are changing and expanding with every experience that comes our way. All of it, every kind and joyous moment as well as every painful, difficult choice carries us along in the flow of all life. Nothing stays the same, including us. If we can remember this we may be able to let go of our preconceived ideas of why things may have gone wrong or right and open up to wondering instead about what we have learned and can carry with us as we journey on. What gifts are we going to be able to absorb into ourselves from all the living we have done? What places in our hearts are different now?