Beloved friends,
Above the door between my temple and the outside world there is a quote from Carl Sagan, "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." The window which serves as the heart of my altar looks out on a grove of trees in front of the house, and above that is a quote from Serj Tankian, "I have the same religion as that tree over there." These words are central to the vision of my temple: I am trying to reach, in the faith and life I am building, past the changeable surface of things and toward the longer, deeper patterns we hold in common – in common with one another, and with the rest of the life of the Earth and cosmos. This is what I aim to share with you.
I spent this weekend quietly celebrating my birthday with James. We went to the local spa to soak and sweat, split a big dish of risotto, and came home to spend the weekend spinning records and playing cards. We let our last turntable go a couple decades ago and it is wonderful to have one at home again: to touch the records and the needle with care, to flip the record; the process calls you to attend to the music. The sheer delight of finiteness in a record collection. We have 12 records: which to listen to? We texted with James' folks about their house rules for playing gin, which James taught me as another gift; happily I had a deck of cards tucked away as a gift for him which met the moment sweetly. Delicious discussions threaded the days: Which albums do we want to own? What kind of music is best suited to this way of listening? Which of James' folks' house rules for cards do we want to adopt? Are there other common rules we'd like to use? All of this was slow, analog, calling us to the moment. Delicious.
Returning on Monday to the final week before the end of the year melts into a gooey mess of chocolate, gifting, gathering, and rest, I came in happy and well and.. then I read the news of the world. Two mass shootings over the weekend, one of them targeting Jewish people gathering in honor of Hanukkah.
I sat down to contemplate how to be with you in this moment, in this newsletter today; what to share with you. How to hold the joy and the sorrow, both. I set myself to some handwork, making with the movement of my body a little scaffold for my thoughts and feelings to dance around. I had a few dried orange slices left from a birthday weekend project, so I needled golden thread into the orange slices I dried last weekend. I tied little knots. I hung them in the windows, where they hold the light like stained glass and contrast beautifully with the lush green of early winter.
The forest is particularly lush just now; atmospheric river after atmospheric river passing through our region (four in a row so far) have left everything a little warmer than usual for December and luminously green under the grey skies. I know Washington has been in the news; my heart and my prayers are with my regional neighbors facing flooding. We are safe; our home and community is protected in the Olympic rainshadow. We live near the Olympic Mountains, which are so big that the weather systems sort of buckle around them; the terrain on one side of the mountains ends up much drier than the rest of the region – that's us in the rainshadow – while the terrain on the other side ends up with even more precipitation than most, creating the Hoh Rain Forest.
There, again in the flooding, the thread of loss. It is always with us; life is change and change involves both gain and loss.
What might I offer you now, I wondered, in this season of.... Well, first I was thinking "grief and celebration", and then I realized that we're already there. What we do at this season is gather to make light together in the deepest darkness of the year. We honor the year that has passed and welcome the next with our best intentions. We carry traditions onward, set them down, cherish those we share them with, ache for those no longer with us who we shared them with long ago. As I mused I realized that truly, the deep work of this season is just right already; it is only when we decide that sorrow is unwelcome that it becomes a problem. If we accept grief and sorrow and offer them a place at the table we can receive the gifts they bring to us: sure knowledge that life is precious, that every moment is a miraculous gift, that safety and justice are the worthy of our devotion to bring about, that the deepest of meaning is in living and sharing. Our joy and our pleasure shine all the more brightly when we accept that they are impermanent, though eternal.
The words on my temple walls speak to the greatest comforts that I know, the foundations of spiritual practice: love and connection. Vastness and intimacy. The all the here the now. Here we are, doing our best with these human lives, in the times we have. There is joy and there is sorrow, and this is the nature of living. What holds it all together is the greater context of our belonging: to the life of the Earth with the trees, to the life of the cosmos with the Earth, to the relationships and communities we choose to nurture.
Happy solstice, beloved friends. Happy Hannukah and Merry Christmas if those are celebrations for you. May the turning of the light offer you connection, the darkness invite you to dream, and the turning of the light and of the year inspire your living. May this difficult season in the world lead you to hug longer, dance later, and cherish the people you love all the more. It is likely that this will be my final missive for the year, though I'll leave room for my writer's heart to choose otherwise. We shall see what comes!
My winter Workshop for Living: Cosmic Grounding, will carry these thoughts onward starting January 17. Our meditations will nurture a personal, intimate connection with the life of the universe. When we know in our hearts that we belong to all-that-is, we are infinitely dear, the life of the universe, dancing for a time in human form. Knowing that we belong to all-that-is sends our roots past the dry surface of this historic moment and toward the deep waters the nourish: lovingkindness, connection, compassion. We'll explore connection, boundaries, easefulness, and imperfection for 10 weeks at the new year. Details here. I'd love to share it with you.
Resources
Life is Change
And menopause is a huge change in living. I was over the moon to discover Laura Firefox Allen's book Genderqueer Menopause: Navigating Menopause for Trans, Gender-Nonconforming, Genderfluid, and Other Queer-Bodied Folx. This is a much-needed resource and a beautiful gift idea. Thanks to Keely Kolmes
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Our Best Medicine
Vaccination is an incredible gift, too, for people whose bodies can tolerate it. Yes, there are definitely people who cannot – and that makes it all the more important for those of us who can to participate in the creation of herd immunity to protect them, a gift yet again. A recent study on the MRNA covid vaccines showed that "vaccinated people have a 74 percent lower risk of death from severe COVID-19, but also that those individuals have a lower risk of death, period. Specifically, people who received the shots have a 25 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality" and "vaccinated adults were about 15 percent less likely to be diagnosed with cancer than those were unvaccinated". A study in Wales found that shingles vaccination was protective against dementia. "The study found that, among the vaccinated, those who remained cognitively healthy were less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, and those who did develop dementia were nearly 30% less likely to die from it over the course of nine years." I'm going to use the holiday break to get my pneumonia shot, which is now recommended for adults over 50 due to increased prevalence of pneumonia-causing bacteria.
On Giving Support
In this Modern Love story, a woman describes how, after hearing people say for years about the disease that will end her child's life, "I can't imagine your pain" – she began to respond, "I wish you would try." I am a steadfast advocate for clear and direct communication, but this still took my breath away. The bravery, the beauty, and the connection that result.
Resistance is Love in Action
This week I am simply going to say one thing: joy is a form of resistance.
Supporting Me in Supporting You
This is human work – I do it by hand, with my own mind and heart; I do not use AI in the creation of what I offer you. I invest at least half of a day every week in the creation of this newsletter. It's a labor of love – folks have been stepping up a bit lately as I've been clearer in my ask, and thank you – but I'm still earning less than I'd get paid by McDonald's for this time.
If you enjoy my work, you can give me a raise! You could make a one-time donation of thanks of any size. You could upgrade to a paid subscription for as little as $5/month.
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