So what are we going to do?
Thank you for the holiday indulgence and patience. It was a wonderful holiday. It was one filled with a lot of love and appreciation and the stuff that leaves a cellular imprint of what we who love Christmas, love about Christmas.
Not everyone loves or celebrates Christmas, but hopefully, like Proust’s le madeleine —may we each have something that draws us backwards into the mists of childhood and the magic of believing in something and being surrounded by love.
I love a Christmas tree. A real tree filling the room with its presence, holding antique ornaments that are passed down from generations and slipshod felted ones made by little hands and ornaments of vacations and years and inside jokes: branches holding the family story. I can sit and stare at a Christma tree in the quiet of the night for hours. And in fact, one of my favorite moments of Christmas is that. When I was younger we slept at my grandparents for a chunk of our Christmas (I loved it). I would wake when I was even in my teens, and sit on my grandparents split steps, with all the bedrooms of the house filled with my sleeping family, I would sit on the steps in the quiet anticipation of the day. All the piles of lovingly wrapped presents, waiting, and I would sit in the peace of anticipation and revel in it. Once I had my fill, I’d go back to bed. It wasn't about the presents. It was about love.
This holiday was different for some people for so many reasons, but what I came away with was this: It’s still about love.
Perhaps it was because watching my little one I saw the holidays at a three foot level, where the burdens of life are not understood (although they can be felt) but the magic is what guides.
So what are we going to do with that?
We are in the liminal space of the new and I am wondering how this year is going to unfold for you and what are you intending?
I do most of Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year (some years I have more time than others) but I find taking a moment to digest a year and intend another is a really helpful process. I also pick a word and I put it somewhere prominent, in my calendar.
For me, these past years have cleared away so much that I find myself a little hesitant to declare and and more comfortable with intending. I don’t want to bang the same drums of the past few years. There has been much sloughed off for me at every level and definition of life that I’d rather not put on the same clothes. I’d rather intend the feeling that I want to grow more of and let me see what comes back.
But not passively. This year I decided to pick three categories in my life and intend into them, and let loose a little on the how. I remember standing in the ocean once with a woman who leads to trips to Egypt, her name is Jane Bell. She told me: “Whenever you hear yourself asking how, remember that is God’s realm. Don’t worry about the How. That’s not your job.”
I’ve liked that idea for a decade, and now I am going to make that my practice for 2022. To double down on resonance and trusting the inspiration of action that arises from within. I’ve decided to do that I will have to get more disciplined with body movement and meditation so I can trust what is coming up is of the highest alignment. Those are daily actions I can take.
How about you?
What are you going to make of this year?
I decided I let a little too much of the outside in last year. I’m not doing that this year.
Life is passing. It’s what it does and although there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, I want to find more moments like those on my grandparents steps. I can feel the plush blue carpet under my feet. I can feel my grandparents sleeping in their room, my parents sleeping in the guest room, and my siblings passed out in the attic room. I can still feel the cadence of their breathing and the envelopment of family in that quiet moment with the tree to my left and stockings to my right. I don’t know what I was doing last Monday, but I can close my eyes and recount every inch of 1am Christmas Eve twenty five years ago.
I’m not looking to redo childhood, I’m making space for Elder. I am wanting to expand the confines so that I can slow down for the magic we think we are too busy, too old, or too broken hearted for.
Yes, I’d like to work this year at fortifying my life, and my trust in myself to live it.
Another intriguing note, this upcoming year 2022, the two’s have me thinking this a mighty year of the feminine. I’ll be writing more of that soon.