Color of the Season: Tuesday's Reflection

With only a couple days before Christmas Eve, I have my roller skates on, finishing the last tasks on the list. Even though I should have more time at this stage of my life and even though there is less to do, the theory that we fill the space we have seems to be true. I am still huffing and puffing to get to the finish line, which this week is called Christmas. 

However, my lists have not ruled me entirely. I have stopped to enjoy the views of the season--gorgeous concerts and meaningful religious services, times with friends and family and even the occasional hour curled up in the snuggery with my book. I love this time of the year, even when there is a lot to do.  

Here's one of the views of the season: the annual poinsettia display at the St Paul Conservatory. Against the grey sky, (Where are our winter clear blue skies this year?) the mass of red poinsettias, arranged like a choir in bright robes, were ablaze in the color of the season. I am not a huge fan of poinsettias and don't feel a need to buy one for our house, but there is something quite glorious about seeing them in such volume. 

How good it was to pause and sit on one of the benches in the sunken garden area and be present to one more beauty of the season. 

An Invitation

Where have you found beauty this season? I would love to know. 

Note: The St Paul Conservatory is one of the great gifts in our community and it is free, as is the St Paul Zoo. On Tuesday mornings, my husband Bruce is a volunteer in the fern room. We call him the Fern Man, and he would love to introduce you to some of his favorite ferns. http://www.comozooconservatory.org

Memories: Thursday's Reflections

The other night I intended to make a second batch of cherry walnut

bread, but the butter wasn't soft enough yet. I wrapped a few presents, but then I turned in another direction: the past. 

My family -- father, siblings and their families, and our kids -- are gathering this weekend to celebrate Christmas, and knowing how much Dad likes to look at family photographs, I decided to find pictures of Christmases past. 

This is what I wish I could say, "I went to the shelf with all the photo albums, each one perfectly organized according to theme or chronology, and voila, how easy it was to find just what I was looking for." Instead, "organizing the family photos" remains on the retirement list and probably will for a LONG time. Instead, I opened a cupboard where there are small bins of loose photos arranged in no order, a true mishmash of time and place and people and events. 

And then I was sucked into a path called Memory Lane. Pictures from my growing up years, including the posed ones sent with Christmas cards. Pictures of our kids opening presents and visiting Santa. Sometimes I had to pause to make sure the picture was actually of our daughter Kate and not granddaughter Maren, for they look so much alike. Pictures taken Christmas Day at my parents' home--the annual grandchildren in front of the tree photo, chronicling their growth and change in hairstyles and clothes, too. 

The last family photograph taken before my Mother died. We knew it would be her last Christmas and marveled that she was still  with us, but there she was wearing her red blazer and Christmas shoes and holding her first great-grandchild. We were smiling, but we all knew what was coming. 

As I flipped through hundreds of photos, memories flooded my head and heart. Not all pleasant, I noted. Sometimes I recalled a conversation, a sadness, a regret, not apparent in the picture itself. The picture was a trigger, and how easy it would have been to sink into the past and remove me from the present moment. 

Carolyn G. Heilbrun in her book The Last Gift of Time, Life Beyond Sixty has this to say about the return of what she calls "inconsequential memories" or memories that have not been invited. "That temptation is to recall grudges, to dwell on ancient wrongs and miseries and betrayals, to allow these memories, if they are not properly controlled, to dominate thought and therefore life." 

As someone writing her spiritual memoir, I sit with memories often. I probe for the details, willing myself back into a certain time and place. Occasionally, I discover a rawness, an unresolved hurt, and I know before I can write about it in my book, I need to do some work. I need to let go of the hurt and find the growth, the wisdom, the deeper perspective. I am not suggesting we become Pollyannas about our lives. Rather, that memory, especially of what we might wish were different, make us more present in love and compassion toward ourselves and each other. 

Heilbrun says getting stuck in memories can cause us "to forget to look at what is in front of us, at the new ideas and pleasures we might, if firmly in the present, encounter and enjoy."

I gathered the stack of Christmas pictures, Christmas memories and placed them in a large crystal bowl on the living room coffee table. I imagine loved ones looking at them and I hope the visions of those previous times brings us closer together.  

Note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Gold_Heilbrun

Thursday's Reflection: The Habit of Christmas

Earlier this week I left my garret feeling a bit twisted and conflicted with thoughts of Christmas tasks struggling for dominance in my head. It was time to fix dinner, but, instead I was drawn by the soft lights in the living room. I have been reading a small book called Christmas on Jane Street http://www.harpercollins.com/9780061626425/christmas-on-jane-street by Billy Romp (Don't you love that name?) with Wanda Urbanska, a true story about a family in Vermont who go to New York City to sell Christmas trees every year for the month of December. It is one of those heart-warming stories reminding one of the importance of love and compassion and how keeping those values in view allows us to change and grow. 

I finished reading the book, sighing with pleasure at the end, and instead of weariness overtaking me, which is what sometimes happens if I relax right before fixing dinner, I felt lighter, calmer. Then, instead of listening to the news on the radio, my more normal routine while fixing dinner, I listened to Christmas music on one of my Pandora stations. Dinner was ordinary--scrambled eggs with ham and cheese, English muffins, and clementines--but each step felt more meditative. I was in the midst of a walking meditation. I breathed in and out, finding my own rhythm, releasing the unfinished list, opening my heart to Spirit's guidance. 

As I filled our plates--Christmas dishes which always remind me of my mother, for she started us on this collection--I thought about how the habits of Christmas can haunt us; how the way we have always done something can stay with us long after its usefulness. That can be true, also, with the pace we whip ourselves into during this holiday or other busy times of our lives. When we were raising our families and working full-time and being active in communities whether it was our faith communities, schools, or neighborhoods, adding in all the must-do's of Christmas was exhausting. The pace was frenetic. 

 There were years when it all seemed overwhelming, and days were not long enough to do all the Christmas-related tasks I wanted to do or felt compelled to do. Rush, rush, rush. Too much to do in too little time. 

That was then and this is now. 

Yes, there is still lots to do, but now I am in a different stage of life; one in which the taffy-pull of life isn't as intense, but unless I intentionally move in a walking meditation, I still find myself reverting to those former years when Advent was more a time of deadlines and expectations than sacred waiting and anticipation.  I sometimes get caught in the rush-hour habits of those earlier years. 

What I try to do now, want to do now is focus on those aspects of Christmas preparations I love the most.

* I love the decorating, surrounding myself with the context for the other tasks. Re-imagining the house for these days of magic and expectation. 

* I love picking out Christmas cards and writing our annual Christmas letter, as well as more personal notes. When I write our letter I think about the highlights of our year that would be shared over a glass of wine, if we were to meet in person. Is there news that is cause for rejoicing or news that is hard to share, but those who have known us over the years would want to know? I try to express a new learning or understanding, a piece of spiritual growth and deepening that I hope will resonate our ongoing connection. 

* I love the music of the season, the Advent hymns, the carols. Most of the time I write with silence as my background, but this year I can't get enough of the sounds. The music reminds me to listen with the ears of my heart. 

Of course, I love the family times and gathering of friends and family in our home. I even enjoy the shopping and finding gifts that will be enjoyed, although wrapping is not my favorite Christmas activity. And while I love to cook, baking cookies is not my thing. I will make our traditional cherry walnut bread, and I better get started doing that next week, but leave the plates of a dozen different varieties of cookies to someone else. That decision is one way I have chosen to decrease that crazy, swirling out of control feeling of earlier years. 

This year I am trying to be present to each day and not think about the new year yet. Thoughts about what I want to do come January--the organizing typical of the new year, my writing goals, my reading plans--hover near the surface, but I won't have this day ever again, and this is the day, this Advent day, that needs to be lived to the best of my ability with love and joy and openness. 

Thanks be to God. 

An Invitation
What Christmas expectations can you set aside? Do you know what you most love to do during this season? Is that what you are doing? I would love to know.  

Tuesday's Reflection: Christmas Decorating

Even though we have celebrated Christmas heartily and merrily the last two years, something has been missing--the look of Christmas in our homes. One year we were in the midst of trying to sell our house in Madison and yes, people do house hunt in December. We kept decorations to a minimum. Not even a tree. The next year we moved into our St Paul house over Thanksgiving weekend, but our Madison house was still on the market and our bins of decorations were packed away, way in the back of the storage unit we were renting. Plus, we were tired, for it had been a busy and stressful fall. Decorating was not at the top of list. 

That was then and this is now! We spent almost the entire weekend  redressing the house, discovering what this house is meant to be during the holiday season. First, we unloaded bin after bin after bin--I didn't count how many bins, for I don't want to embarrass myself. No one would believe we have downsized or have been trying to simplify our stuff if they had seen our stacks of bins with Christmas decorations. Yet, I know over the last few years we have  eliminated other bins of Christmas decorations, but I can't quite recall exactly what went to Goodwill and the hospice resale shop, especially when I see what we still have.

Opening each bin was like unwrapping a present. Oh, I forgot about that large chalkware Santa going through his list of who has been naughty and who has been nice. Oooh, look at this box of vintage ornaments. I knew right away I would fill a large glass container with those--all that color jumbled together. Every bin was a delight, not only filled with treasures and memories of how they have been used in the past, but they became a vision for creating and living our Christmas lives in this house. 















As we converted corners into vignettes of Christmas cheer and hung garland and lights and filled a cupboard with our collection of Santas carved by our talented friend Al, and stationed in the entry area our Charlie Brown tree, which has survived several moves, and somehow found room in the kitchen for Christmas dishes, our house seemed to relax into a new stage of its long life. I wondered if the house thought perhaps it had forgotten how to "do" and "be Christmas. No way. 

Transformation is possible at any time. 

Joan Chittister in her book The Gift of Years, Growing Older Gracefully, quotes Meridel LeSeur, who lived to be 96, "I am luminous with age."(p. 39) Glowing, gleaming, glittering, glimmering, shimmering. Our house in its Christmas lights reminds me to enjoy this time of my life as a time of transformation--a transformation from the roles I have worn to the potential luminosity of my own inner being. Chittister says the "blessing of these years is the transformation of the self to be, at long last, the self I have been becoming all my life… (p. 43) and this is the "softening season when everything in us is meant to achieve its sweetest, richest, most unique self." (p. 49)


I know there will come a time when we won't want to do the full-scale extravagant decorating we have just completed, but for this year we are relishing the transformative presence of Christmas in our home and welcoming the chance to be luminous in our own lives. 

An Invitation
What transformations are you currently experiencing? What does this season, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, call you to transform in your lives? I would love to know.  

Christmas Came Early This Year!

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. 

After a year and a half, we have finally sold our house in Madison. When a friend heard our news, she sent an email illustrated with fireworks, an accurate description of how we are feeling. True, we needed to lower the price again and this time quite significantly, but our realtor said we would know when we had hit the "sweet spot." Finally, we were there evidenced by a bunch of quickly scheduled showings and two offers, one full-price. 

The Big Picture
It has been a long journey, but despite discouragement and disappointments, and discontent along the way, we always kept the Big Picture in mind. We chipped away at what needed to happen to fulfill our vision, and now this major piece of the plan is finally becoming a reality.

I know at some point I will reflect more deeply about the lessons learned along the way, the opportunities for growth, the angels I have encountered, and the resources used to stay the course, but sometimes what is most required and even appropriate is to send off fireworks and shout hooray!

Gratitude
I do need to offer thanks, however, to family and friends who have supported us when we have been down and who have listened without fail to tales of buyers who wanted more yard, a different view, and a garage connected to the kitchen when that doesn't reflect the reality of our New Urbanism neighborhood. Someday maybe I will write a book about the craziness of selling a house in the age of HGTV, but for now I just wish to celebrate--before the next phase of packing begins. 

And someday soon I will write a love letter to Madison and our life there--the experiences we have had and the friends we have made and whom we hope to bring into this next stage of our life, but for right now I am enjoying this feeling of being lighter. 

And first there is Christmas, even though in our home and hearts it has already arrived. 

An Invitation
Think about times in your life when sticking to the course, keeping the Big Picture in mind, has resulted in fireworks moments. Think about times when you thought something would never end or never happen, and finally, you were able to celebrate. I would love to hear from you. 

O, Light Everlasting, a post by Nancy L. Agneberg

O, light everlasting
O, love never failing
Illumine our darkness and draw us to thee.
    Olaf C. Christiansen


     I walked the neighborhood this morning at 6:30, and although still dark, I had no trouble finding my way. I followed the lights, house to house, inside and out. In many homes I noticed Christmas trees already aglow, a welcome sight for sleepy children as they stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast before school or a comforting and quiet presence while reading the paper or checking email. I walked quietly and hoped nobody noticed me taking in these cozy domestic scenes. I offered a blessing to each household and prayed that this day would bring them more light than darkness. 
     The other morning, as I drove to Curves to exercise, I noticed the barest sliver of a moon. It couldn't have been much skinnier and still be identified as the moon. A child's drawing of the moon. And yet, so much light in the not yet morning sky. How little light we seem to need in order to see, in order not to feel blocked in darkness. On the way home, when the morning was much closer to being born, I drove past a home with a large menorah in its front yard, all but three candles illuminated. Seeing that light brought to mind miracles, including the first of God's creative acts. According to the first chapter of Genesis,  "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness." This is the light that existed before the sun, moon, and stars, which were created on the fourth day. 
     Often I sign letters and sometimes emails "Light Blessings." I am not wishing a lightweight blessing. On the contrary, I pray that the recipient will know the light, find the light, and if the darkness seems overwhelming, that the light that shines deep in the recesses of our souls may be found. It seems to me that we let our light shine when we are open and responsive to all of life, even the darkness. With light comes clarity, direction, understanding. 
     Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond shadow and illusion to something beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside.
                    Help, Thanks, Wow 
                    The Three Essential Prayers
                    Anne Lamott, p. 7
    It is a paradox, however, that in order to know the light, we must also know the darkness and even as we learn to accept the darkness in our life, we continue to yearn for the light. Winter may be the season of darkness, but according to the Christmas story, a story that takes place, by the way, at night, darkness gives birth to light.
    In a couple hours I will light the candle on our kitchen counter, and I will turn on the lanterns lining our front steps. These tangible signs of light remind me to nurture my own light within, even when darkness descends.  Light Blessings. 

In what way do you or have you experienced light in your life? What light-filled people have you known? In what way does your inner light make a difference? What do you do to create light in the world even in the midst of darkness? 

Peter's Prayer, a post by Nancy L. Agneberg

Meet Peter, our 4 1/2 year old grandson. Everyone should have access to a 4 year old for at least a few minutes a week. Sometimes our daughter would appreciate a little less access, but I digress. Peter and his family were with us for the Thanksgiving weekend, and he was actually a good help Thanksgiving morning, helping me set the table. He decided who would get which turkey plate, and he selected napkin rings for each place setting. Finally, he arranged the vintage turkey and pilgrim candles on the table and did a mighty fine job, I must say. 
      Peter's Gift
      His real gift, however, was given the day after Thanksgiving. He was sitting at the counter having his breakfast, and I was emptying the dishwasher and fussing in the kitchen. Without any prompting whatsoever he said, "I loved yesterday."
     Three simple words. "I loved yesterday." 
      "Oh, Peter, I did, too. We all did."
      And life went on, but his words of wisdom have stayed with me, even when "yesterday" was a day that I lost my internet connection for hours and was a day when prospective buyers came to see the house and didn't take a brochure--a litmus test of interest. I admit I don't love all yesterdays, even though I know there are so many things to be grateful for each day, including the fact that I have lived from yesterday to today. 
      I have just started reading Anne Lamott's new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, The Three Essential Prayers. Now I must admit the writer in me thought, "Why didn't I think of that?" but that's quite another issue. When Peter said, "I loved yesterday," he was praying. He was saying "Thanks," to God, even though he didn't know it. But I knew it, and I know that God did, too. How lucky I was to be an eavesdropper. How lucky I am to have a 4 year old teacher. 
     Here's what Anne Lamott says,
     The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening. Gratitude is peace. Maybe you won't always get from being a brat to noticing that it is an e. e. cumming morning out the window. But some days you will. You will go from being Doug or Wendy Whiner, with your psychic diverticulitis, able to eat only macaroni and cheese, to remembering 'i thank you God for most this amazing/ day.' 
     Reminders
     When Peter said, "I loved yesterday," he reminded me not only to be grateful for the wonders of yesterday without being stuck there, but to love today, right now, as well. No matter what is swirling around us in this moment. 
     Bruce and I are driving to St Paul today for the weekend. Tonight we will attend opening night of a play our 10 year old granddaughter Maren is in--The Best Christmas Pageant Ever--and tomorrow we will go to the magical St Olaf Christmas Festival at our alma mater, and Sunday we will bring my father home with us for a couple days. Already, I am anticipating loving those days. I'm going to be praying a lot, I think. 
     Here's the bonus, I think. Loving yesterday, loving today, loving tomorrow are all the same. 
     I love you Peter. Love, GrandNan

An extra gratitude: A few days ago I made the decision not to decorate the house for Christmas, except for some welcoming greens and lanterns on the front porch. This was not an easy decision for me because I LOVE decorating for Christmas. Once the house is fully in the holiday spirit, I am, too, and move through the shopping and sending cards and wrapping etc with less stress and strain. Because we continue to have showings, including one this morning, I decided not decorating was the prudent choice. Therefore, I was so grateful when I discovered I have a clear view of our neighbor's large Christmas tree holding court in their family room. Thick with white lights it sparkles and glows enough to fill my heart with contentment and peace. Thank you.