Dec 19 2008
Entering the Holy Nights
It has snowed here on Whidbey Island where I live. Snow, and particularly the sustained cold temperatures that keeps the snow on the ground and in the trees, is a rare occurrence here at 70 feet above sea level in the Puget Sound area around Seattle, WA. Yesterday there were essential errands as the weather approached. Today we are not going anywhere we couldn’t walk. We work half-heartedly at the computers, then celebrate by taking the dogs down to the beach to chase gulls. We tend a straggling hummingbird at the feeder (which means bringing the sugar water in at night, and getting up pre-dawn to set it out again for that first desperate feed of the morning). It feels good to be “saving a life”–even one tiny hummingbird’s– in this northern cycle of shortest days/longest nights: but the life I’m really about to save in the heart of winter is my own.
It’s been an strenuous and rewarding year of PeerSpirit work and travel and interaction with so many wonderful people. There have been conference speeches, and small seminars, and uncountable interactions by face, phone, and internet. And now, all my social energy is spent. I need to be that hummingbird for awhile: to slow down my heart-rate and spend nights curled on a branch somewhere out of the wind, and wake up in the morning with nothing to do but get to that first cuppa tea.
And this is exactly the holiday/holy day gift my partner and I give each other: two weeks of retreat, rest, reading, wandering, letting go of the never-ending-list of things to do. We’ve been doing this for years, ever since her children got on the plane to visit their father at Christmas…and after they were grown, we discovered it’s the only time the business really lets us stop. So, we do.
The Holy Nights, from Winter Solstice to Epiphany, are a magical time to reflect at the hearth. I turn off the wi-fi in my laptop, write bounce-back messages for the email programs, dictate “we are closed… we are resting…” voicemail messages for the business and private phone lines. And then it’s up to me to have the discipline to truly turn aside from distraction and business and commitments and projects in progress and BE WITH… myself, my story, my life, my spirituality, my sense of mystery and ceremony. Inside, and outside–to follow intuition and instinct rather than obligation and task. Shhhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhh. The song of snow, the whisper of waves.
We spend long hours sitting by the fire, enjoying the Christmas tree, writing in my journal, reading novels. We walk in the woods and on the beach and don’t care when we get home. We develop little ceremonies within the days that rise spontaneously out of slowing down and noticing more. I try out new recipes and we linger at the table in long conversation.
Our declared retreat while others are plunging forward with holiday busyness has become a kind of local legend. People smile and hug us at the grocery store in support. They tell us about a party or event with a friendly, “…You’d be invited, of course, but we know you won’t come… because you are holding that other space for us, that quiet. Thank you.”
Every year is a mystery: what will show up, how we’ll respond, how successful we will each be at the art of stopping. This is my last blog entry for 2008–I’ll be back on January 6th, Epiphany, the day of the arrival of the Wise Men and I’ll share whatever learning has come from this time. Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, may you have a few moments of utter calm, peace of mind, quieted heart, and deep, deep knowing who you are and how to proceed with the life you have chosen, and been chosen by.
Peace.
Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.
Earlier this month, I did the same thing — put a halt on my online communication, including blogging. (This is easier said than done for writers who use the Internet for work as well as social connection.) But I found that I was spending so much time in cyberspace that I’d started neglecting the real people (and real things) in my life.
Within a week, I felt more centered, and I accomplished so much more. Even got some of my holiday tasks finished. I like the idea of extending the communication break to last longer through the holidays, as you are doing.
Adventure
You enter my life
like a northwest snowfall,
fickle and inconsistent, one
moment an incessant
rain of winter turns
thick and whitens
rooftops then thins
again into rain, more walls
of rain, a vexatious mix
of opposites you are
here now you are gone.
Oh come oh come
oh glorious oh wisdom
oh love
oh one, stay,
please stay and lift me
from my darkness
ordain my shadows to flight
I beg in the cleft
of my being, waiting
for awe, for you
magnificent you
stay, stick to the still
green grass dotted
with golden birch leaves,
stay and light
on my tongue
like the first snowflake,
then melt into nothing
into me so I can believe
you are gone forever
and I can believe
you will come again.
Sending you both quiet joys, just as you have sent us the bliss of your peaceful heart.
I’m overtaxed as I read your wonderful article about taking time off
during the holy days. I’m running into a full week of social celebrations
and obligations. I admire your courage and dedication to letting go
of the things that don’t feed and nourish your spirit. Your article has
given me reason to rethink my choices for the this time of year. You
inspire me!
This is such a beautiful act for the holidays - holy days. Our modern world is so focused on exterior, on input, on cyber connections. We have lost human connection to technology.
Perhaps we all should take a break from being connected via technology but spend time really connecting with ourselves, those we love and our Mother, the Earth.
December 19, 2008 10:30pm
Hello from a very snowy and very very cold Minneapolis, MN-
This year is a significant point in my spiritual journey. A year ago I was taking care of my father (a retired professor of medicine, specialist in gastroenterology) as he went through the last few weeks of his journey with Parkinsons Disease. I had been able to see the change and prepare myself for the end of his journey since October 2008, which I will always be especially grateful for. I am also grateful for the other special spirits who were with Dad and me during November and December as we all struggled to let him go with the grace and dignity he wanted. It was a very difficult holiday season, ending with the end of his physical life on January 8, 2008.
Now it is almost a year later and I have been blessed to have been able to stay home and reflect on many changes that have happened after that day. I was able to get up in front of perhaps 100 people and say a few words about my father. Up to that day, I never spoke in front of people unless I was forced to do so. (speech class in high school for one example).
Another significant change was that after 21 years of living in the same space, I was given the opportunity to move out of my apartment to another one just above it. It was a challenge to go through 21 years of stuff, move, and then find new places for the items I chose to move with me.
And then, at Thanksgiving, my daughter and son-in-law announced that they are expecting a baby (their first) in June.
As I think about all of this and will continue to think about this in the next 3 weeks, I am already impressed with my awareness of the circle of life and how connected to each other we all are. While I am disappointed that Dad was not with us physically to hear the news of a great-grandchild I am sure he knows. As one of my closest friends said “perhaps your father and the new baby are spending some time getting to know each other now”. I feel sure that they are.
I will be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family and otherwise I am planning more walks in the snow, more time going deep inside myself to discover what I feel called to do as I plan to go back to work. I am very conscious of now being one of the “elders” even though I resist being labeled that on a casual basis. I will be listening to lots of music, reading some special books and enjoying my cats as well.
Thank you for this chance to express myself.
Blessings,
Martha
Dear Christina,
Halleluia for this sweet and powerful reminder to stop and take a good pause at this time. As fellow entrepreneurs, it is hard to just stop. There’s always one more tweak on next year’s strategy, one more conference call with the team, one more dear “client” who needs help. And then, you add the season when family and friends love to get together for this tea and that party.
Even reflection time is a call to gather in my community this year. Maybe it is the unseasonably colder weather all around or the tenderness of a changing time or the rise of no-longer-unspoken anxiety over financial losses and related insecurities, that snuggle and cuddle time with dear ones is taking on an extra special and heightened meaning.
On our blogtalkradio show last Thursday, the topic was the Sound of Silence — the power of this blessed practice in our midst. (www.blogtalkradio.com/The-Light-Show) Yet another great call to balance out the frenzy of activity, sweet and important as they may be, with that deep reach into our own true source of Life through silence.
So, we received a text last night to join dear friends for a Hannukah dinner tonight. We noticed the instant move to say “yes! it’ll be sweet!” Then we noticed how busy the next few days are going to be and how we’d so love to not do anything, stay in our pj’s till we no longer wanted to, catch up on reading…or on reflection. So, we’re sending back a rare “no, with regrets” but also with joy and anticipation that our mini-silent retreat brings rest and peace within our hearts, throughout our community, and into our world.
Sweet hugs across the silence…
Teresa
This past week I had a bad fall in a busy department store where I was running around trying to get a gift for my brother so I could mail it the next day. There’s nothing like a flat-on-your-face fall in public to wake you up to the importance of slowing down and appreciating the present. So while I’m nursing my bruised knees and sore hip, I’m taking time to appreciate this day, this season, these blessings that I have in my life. Yesterday I took a slow - and careful - walk through the new crunching snow and the cold, cold temperatures. The day was spectacularly sunny and beautiful so beautiful I said to a man on the street, “Isn’t this a gorgeous day.” He looked at me strangely (Torontonians do not speak on the street!) and nodded and said “But it sure is cold.”
Today is the Solstice and I’ve made a big pot of minestrone soup and invited a Mexican friend to come with me to the welcoming of the light that my neighborhood celebrates each year with noise makers, and wonderful, huge paper mache heads of birds and other exotic animals and fire eaters and carolers and Mummer’s play and a big big bonfire at the end. Then we will come back here to eat that soup and light our own candles to invite the light back into each of our lives and into the lives of those we love and those we don’t even know!
Ann
I enjoyed your thoughts on unpluging and slowing down to appreciate the season.
Here in Ohio, the Solstice arrived with high winds, sub zero temps,and icey roads.
All this forces one to slow down and take a deep breath and question if that one last
gift is really worth another trip out. I long to be able to take a walk along a wintery beach one day, but for now it is best to stay indoors. This year my life will take a
new direction as I enter into my 70th year. Still working full time, at a job I enjoy, but it is time to make a list of things I still want to experience and enjoy. It is time to
re-evaluate the choices I make and how I spend time. I am blessed with family and friends but sometimes it is easy to loose ones self in the crowd. Moments of quiet contempllation are few and far between, and therefor must be appreciated. Quiet moments and Christmas Blessings to you and yours, and welcome a new year. Janey Davis
Ah my dear sisters,
So good to be reminded of your beautiful practice. Pele and I will enter our own dreaming ceremony on the 27th and emerge sometime after the 4th.
We attune to you and send you Good Medicine.
And always
Love
FireHawk & Pele Rouge
I went home to Newfoundland (farthest Eastern Province in Canada) from December 22-29 to celebrate Christmas with my aging Aunt, who is really a second Mother to me. The day I arrived, her longest and closest friends (closer than many spouses) was sent overnight to Palliative Care with cancer of the lungs and brain. She died four days later, on Boxing Day. So we had no celebration - just the shock of how close and sudden and no respecter of holidays is the big reality of life and death.
I arrived back home two days ago exhausted and suffering from stomach flu. This morning I am getting back to my own life and entering with my partner Joan into a reflective release of 2008 and a peaceful welcoming of 2009. We have gracefully refused all invitations and are staying home for the next few days wrapped by the warmth of wood fire and dog Kai and cat MaChree. Silence is our Christmas decoration and best light.
For my own practice - I am taking these days to make Soul Cards (a contained collage in a card 4″x8″) of the year passing and one of my focused intention for the year ahead. It is a calming and interior practice that is bringing me back to deep inner life after a whirlwind of long, brutal weather, precarious travel and a close encounter with death and life in the space of a few days.
Christina –
I hope that your “emergence” will find you well rested and ready to take on the outside world again! Thank you for sharing yourself and your thoughts last June in Denver and again, just a few weeks ago, here on your blog. I’m getting old and there is less and less (other than children and nature) that produces a sense of awe in me, but I am in awe of your ability to put into words what is felt in your soul.
Happy New Year!
Karyl Howard
I sit on my brightly coloured beach towel looking out to sea, waiting in anticipation to catch a glimpse of a dolphin. The north easterly breeze blows off the water and brings goose bumps to my skin. My skin feels tight from the sun and saltwater and is starting to turn a pinkish red. I rub my arms to warm them and notice their rough texture it’s a blend of saltwater and sand. This gritty feel confirms my earlier musings. I disagree with Forrest Gump’s proclamation that life is like a box of chocolates. Life is definitely more like a day at the beach.
I ponder how this very day had been a kaleidoscope view of the joys and irritations of life all jumbled together but ultimately creating a memory of beauty. Life is certainly a mix of irritation and pleasure. We try to fool ourselves into thinking that we can create or buy a life full of gratification but the universe just doesn’t work like that. We must accept the light and dark. This is surely the case at the beach.
Just a few hours earlier I had been the queen of the sea floating like a mermaid in all her beauty at the back of the breakers. There in the gentle rise and fall of the blue green water I float and gaze up at the sky. Every so often I roll over and frolic with the waves, diving into them and feeling their energy. The water surges over my body right down to the last pull of the wave over my toes. My muscles soften and release from the daily woes of life and I become one with mother nature. I am no longer preoccupied with work or the lengthy to do list stuck on the fridge.
I playfully curl into a ball and mimic the seals somersaulting backwards and forwards. Hair swaying around me like seaweed. I keep my eyes open and the salty water causes them to sting and the world to become a little blurry. I realise it’s not so important to always be focussed and know where you are going in life. Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts and feel your way through the dim times. I
move from the seal to the dolphin, diving down to the depths rising only when my lungs signal I must. In these moments lightness fills my heart and radiates through my whole being. If only I could stay in this cool haven, buoyant and free. But evolution has long disposed of our gills and Mother Nature demands I must return to the shore. As I make my way back through the breakers my buoyancy falls flat and I am dumped into the white wash. It was here the irritation begins. In life there is a myriad of little things that get under your skin and irritate your mood. The list can be endless traffic, supermarket lines, tying children’s shoe laces but at the beach there is one primary irritant. The sand.
I try to appear elegant as I grapple towards the shallow but generally look like a whale flailing amongst the surging waves. During this process the sand makes its advance and is relentless until it works its way into crevices hidden from the general public. I try not to get to bogged down by life’s little irritations so I try a discreet sand dance. This is a rather unsightly mixture of shaking the hips and rear whilst flicking swimmers as you try to loosen the wet sticky sand free from its new nylon home. The dance is partly successful but some sand always remains firmly embedded until shower time. I sit on the towel fidgeting slightly but choose to not let this irritation interrupt my afternoon of relaxation. I wish I was so resilient when it came to the morning ritual of tying shoe laces. A relatively patient person I can be taunted into a ranting, bellowing witch when it comes to getting out the door on time each school morning. The juggle of bags, brief cases, hats, keys and the clock ticking away are more than I can bear.
In comparison to be able to sit on the beach with a sandy bottom and look out to sea is pleasure . It is these rare moments of quiet and stillness that are pure bliss. I am learning how important it is to savour each moment because when you have children time never stands still. Movement on the edge of the water catches my eye.
It is not dolphins but the advance of my 2 children and husband fresh from their afternoon rest. I sigh and smile all at once as they run towards me smiling widely and dragging their collection of surf boards, buckets, spades, towels and balls behind them. There goes the moment of quiet bliss. I am now caught in a whirlpool of disappointment and anticipation. I love to jump waves, explore rock pools and swim with my children but feel a tinge of resentment as I pine for the days when the beach was mine alone to soak in and laze upon. This momentary self pity is quickly interrupted by the fast chatter and pulling at my arm persistently requesting help to ride their boards. I quickly apply another layer of sunscreen over my scratchy skin and jump to attention. No time for idle reveries now, it is all hands on deck. I skip off toward the ocean sand flicking around my legs. Smiling I remind myself to enjoy this moment because tomorrow it’s back to shoe laces.