lo how a rose e'er blooming

Christmas has come and gone.

In the end, it was a lovely holiday.  Contemplative, actually, in a high church/advent-y sort of way.

The days leading up to the solstice were dark, interminable, foreboding.  But once that longest night of the year passed, I felt within myself the coming of new light.  I got into the spirit of things.  I enjoyed shopping, bustling around finding creative gifts for my family and friends.

This year's holiday was very different for me.  My life has profoundly changed on so many levels.  I have had extraordinary, phenomenal adventures over the past few months.  It humbles me to consider them, actually.

Christmas proved to be a continuing unfolding of that blood red rose of soul.  I like a famous other, found myself on the occasion of this particular holiday 'treasuring up all these things and pondering them in my heart'.

I spent a fair amount of time alone but not lonely, and a wonderful amount of time enjoying the company of family and friends.  My holidays were not marred with anxiety, or hangovers, or resentment.  I felt grateful to be present.

As the year shuffles to a close, I sense a wondrous poetry about things.  Joy and serenity keep me quiet, bright company.  I am (incredibly) not afraid...

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

surrender

For me there is only one way out.

My most convoluted tangles, the fires in my mind, my endless ploys for control and irrascible runs at perfection--all of them, I have to surrender.

Surrender does not negate ownership.  All my craziness, all my twisted thinking, all my unsolvable conundrums, they are all still mine, uniquely mine, soulfully mine... But, I renounce authority over them, give up management, relinquish my shares.

Ultimately surrender (unlike defeat) can never be forced.  It is--no matter how reluctant--a voluntary act.

In the realm of the poetic, on the battlefield of mystery, the ultimate surrender is to Life itself.  To cease, finally, waging a war against existence.  To raise a white flag to those impenetratable ranks of "things I cannot change."

Surrender becomes relief.  A chance to give up the soldier's life and return home.  To beat sword into ploughshare and enjoy a quiet life free from futile rage and bloodshed.

And if, by some flicker of grandeur, I question the honorability of my decision to lay down my arms, I only need to remember that in this war I have only ever been an upstart insurrectionist.  While I have always been freely offered citizenship in the kingdom, it was never mine to rule.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...

dark days of december

Opressive, this darkness. 

The sky has been concrete gray for days.  Rain constantly.

The holiday season seems distorted, surreal. 

Plans changed.  Traditions upended.  Things are sorting out slightly less than festive, I'm afraid. 

I'm emerging from a sinus sickness that started two weeks ago. 

I haven't purchased a single present.  I haven't hung a single ornament.

The last light is fading.  The longest night of the year is almost at hand.

And this is why we celebrate--beyond tinsel and trees, more primal than mangers and madonnas. 

We light lights, burn candles, set our hearths blazing to call back the sun.  To lengthen the days.  To lift our spirits to the growing light.  To remember that after the night comes the dawn.  Faithfully.

In a December as dark as this, it's more important than ever to keep a light burning.

Shine on.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at time...

on limitless possibilities

Today I had an epiphany of the obvious.

It occured to me, despite all the dire warnings and sober caution that was thrown in my path growing up, I am actually making a comfortable living from my creativity.

I am paid (pretty well) to write, to concept, to conceive, to seduce, and to go into the ring on the side of daring, experimentation, and risk.

As I make peace with the noisy tattle-tale of fear, I understand just how free I am.  I have everything I need to do and be what it is I need to do and be.

That sounds a little silly, perhaps, or obtuse, but I've lived my life for so long reacting to external pushes and shoves (real and imagined).  Enslaved by compulsion, I never really understood what it meant to make a choice to follow your passion.  Distorted fear of risk and anxiety about security were willing watchdogs.  No wonder my inner life was a bloody battleground.

Now I feel there's nothing that I can't do, but nothing I have to do either.

I can truly 'follow my bliss', let the hours and days unfold, and experience the thrill, terror, rush, and rapture of life as it is.

Pretty damn cool.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...