Immerse Yourself In Winter

The weather has become cold, the days have become shorter, and everything familiar about winter in the Northeastern United States is here. The familiar grey skies overcast with few breaks in the perpetual ceiling of clouds keep us scurrying around as though hurrying will make the sun shine. Where the depths of winter loom with the joy of holiday song and light behind, we groan and moan, and can't wait for the first crocus to bloom in hole left by the melting snow.

 It is a new year and the first full month of Winter. It is a season where it is easy to hole up and grab our video games, read our books, and watch our movies in an effort to hibernate. For some of us needing warmer temperatures, we need to find any way we can to stay warm. So where do we live in the season where everything seems dreary and ghastly grey?

 In recent posts written about community, the barefoot wonder of community with other people can sometimes bring a mix of obnoxious cacophony and good humor. We cannot live completely alone, but we can take in this cold weather and feel it surround us while we take some time out for solitude to listen. The sounds of rain drops melting snow during a warm spell. The sound of a radiator hissing as it warms us as we watch the spaces around us from inside. To listen and connect to all that is happening even in the midst of silence.

Somehow the stillness takes more time to notice than the busy rush of daily life. It is in its vast presence that nature emerges taking our breath, our life, and forming all of winter with the breath of all living beings. The conifers revel in their chance to show off their needles as people everywhere notice their wintry white covering. Colors are seen as birds that stayed home take flight and fill their air with sounds of their chirping. Stop and feel the presence of the seasonal temperatures grip your skin, expand your soul, and comfort your sense of living. It is as invigorating as it is peaceful. Let the newness of feeling become familiar so that the familiarity can let you engage it with barefoot wonder.*

* Just don't wander into the snow barefoot without a way to warm up shortly afterwards. Hypothermia and frostbite are no way to enjoy the wintry climate. 

Where A Day Becomes Our Life

A day that's full of color grabs at us. There is so much to stimulate the senses and make it easy to feel fully alive. Sunrises begin our daylight hours and sunsets finish the hours where the sun is fading and starting a new day in other lands. It is a wonder how white light forms all the color that we can see, how six notes create all the music we know, and how each day connects us to every bit of time that has been lived and is being lived. People are out there living tomorrow in Australia from my vantage point in the Northeastern United States.

The roots of our lives that grow into what we see, what we hear, and what we do, create, feel, and know become much more when we bring them together. Like a meal filled with new and favorite foods, a dance with live music brightly playing the rhythms and harmonies, or even a sporting game where two teams compete for the goal of completing their task of winning against their opponents there are places we have in bringing our collective experiences into one place, where the kaleidoscope and panorama of memories form, and where a day becomes our life.

Anyone who has savored the sumptuous flavors of meal brought together from scratch in the company of loved ones may have felt how the variety of textures and voices provide a moment of joy in the midst of all of life's happenings. There are the tales of old, recipes, jokes, hopes, and memories, all forming an assortment of smiles and wonder. Gathered together on holidays and week days, our lives form from what we fill them with. In days where we are reminded of the shock of human suffering inflicted by hands and lives nearby, we need to be alive to one another by being present to our needs for friendship and love. So as we meet our neighbors and friends, try to understand our family, and hear what today has brought, we can see our wounds that have fragmented our neighbor's lives and embrace with the hope that cannot be made alone. We can be together in understanding after we listen, as others may have been there for us, so that we can continue to make a way out of our experiences. This way begins the vision of courage of creativity formed from imaginations and memories to hold the world.

It may be that days before us that make us who we are today, but the present can give us most of all a place to dream, feel, and live in ways that matter to us or ways and those that we want to give a try. I've recently been reminded of the warmth inside that can tingle when the cool air rushes by as I spend another wintry day in upstate New York. The sharing of these ruminations feels like a rambling engine as my experience spins out like yarn being knit or crocheted into something more; a fabric of memories filled with color and connection. In the reaches of any period of time shared, time can disappear, flowing through our hearts as it becomes stories; our way of preserving memory and our connection to the future.


                                        

Catching A Meteor Though It Falls

As the days pass, the years somehow do, as well. I began writing this blog in part to remember that the presence of each moment in our lives can have the potential to help life become something beautiful and real. This experience can happen anywhere with anything, and is often unplanned and surprising, but also lasting and memorable. Then time doesn't have to go so fast, it can go at the pace of the moment as we live and breathe and take it all in and be alive in its memory after these times have long ended and are returned to in photographs and reminiscences. 

Have you ever waited for something for only minutes or seconds? The time seemed to go slower than when you were living every moment as we looked forward to the rush of life continuing and building with fun and excitement. What about the seconds that you feel something wonderful come over your senses? The moment that we feel that contentment or that understanding that even the imperfection of life somehow settles with the laughter and peace is the time when our life comes together and eases our heart.

Holidays do this for many of us. They serve as reminders while the traditions we carry out on these special days give significance to our lives and memory. The rhythms of daily living can be monotonous and routine without much wonder and excitement. As mundane as things can be, stunning surprises can occur if we are paying attention in the present. A meteor falling only lasts an instant, a beginning of something happens only once, and even as life moments seem to occur in patterns, every day can have a flash of memory and wonder.

At a recital I attended recently, a violin and cello duo reached and soared into the colorful art in the windows and walls illustrating a portrait of the past to present listeners that were able to feel the movement of emotion and life expressed in music. The different sounds harmonized like textures of a landscape bringing me to distant lands and triggered feelings I had never felt. Such an experience would be temporary even though it would always be with me in memory. It also becomes lasting as the quilt of moments grows and colors the soul.    

Hope When It Is Dark

"Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution?"  - Jonathan Larson

As I write this post winds and rain chase the landscape into a tumultuous flurry of hurricane and storm along the eastern coast of the United States. The potential and expected damage created is a source of uneasiness and uncertainty that strike at different moments in our lives. There can be wonder and curiosity in the midst of great suffering and loss. Devastating emotions or events can remind us about what we hold dear to our hearts, or challenge us to think about what is most important. They can shred our stability and hope into worry and fear, panic and anxiety that make us wonder how we'll ever get through.

How can this suffering be beautiful? Tears fall across our faces and our hearts continue beating with emotion that is fully raw and fully alive. How can this be beautiful if we are left alone? Where is the goodness in life when we are shackled with grief and the seeming never ending presence of calamity? Even as the storm comes and with it, expectation of and then the physical reality of damage we can find hope from the disaster. Some storms come with less warning and then change the course of the lives affected. Still how can any of this create hope, instill love, become strength, or be something positive?

We often light candles after the power goes out and it gets dark. The shining beams come through places of destruction and despair to offer hope and a way through the darkness. The candlelight we illuminate inside provides more than a symbol of promise; it creates a way to see what storms have done, and what can be done together when we share our own lights, our own stories of reality. The light we have may sometimes flicker, but if we trust it with those close to us we will not be alone. We will begin to trust again and stand together as we prepare what has been lost to grow new beginnings and new memories as we all are strengthened by togetherness.

Painful realities are hard to bear especially as suffering seems to grow and affect multitudes where communities fall apart and homes are ravaged. We often question whether or not we should stand strong and work to overcome when afflictions may appear to come more and more often. The candle we lit may go out, we may lose our voice, our heart may become overwhelmed and life may change with tragedy and wrongdoing.

Disaster may strike, but if we light the hope and the way or find someone that has already done so, we can stand together in friendship as our candles can warm the lives of those around us, as our candles light our hearts so we may feel ourselves giving and receiving in the unity that comes out of brokenness. It is then we can remember the continued strength that is found when we trust ourselves enough to rebuild and grow stronger from the scars and the pain that we faced in understanding that pain will always affect humanity. This is how the night ends while hope and love become the new light of dawn. With a song that comes from one heart that reaches our souls and becomes a chorus of light and hope from the soul as we empower one another in times of human need.

E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many, One

Sometimes I look at the lives around me in the depths of reality today, the depths that come from the places I walk, I hear something quieter than the breeze. I hear a heartbeat that beats on a day that takes its place in a string of years and seasons that have created me to help shape the experience of today. I see the inspiration that struck wonder as it filled my eyes as a child and feel the shiver of joy that life is greater than my own experience. It sometimes shapes the spirit of the experience of a team, a country, a family, a friendship, that together we are one, and together we can be alive and make the future out of this. A future that can be harmonious if we dream and act together, if we hear the heartbeat of our neighbors and trust them to hear our own.

The trust and vulnerability in connection from community to friendship is fragile, yet precious as we feel or begin to sense the togetherness that helps us feel our embrace. It is difficult to know this depth even imagine when we have often known fear, despair, loneliness that has been bred from disappointment, discouragement, and exclusion. We know that exposure may take us further down the road of pain that we've known. So how can my life and your touch a life where we may see the hint of a smile? How can we build community and friendships when we have only been disappointed?

I think hope and heart can be grown from vision and feeling. Feeling that life isn't always the sunshine of smiles and laughter, but sometimes the numbness of past trauma haunting our present. Sometimes it is the continuous rainfall that floods our feelings and overwhelms us with discouragement and washes out the work we have done together. When a tragedy caused by human hands shatters our community, does it fracture everyone irreparably, or does it give birth to healing?
Healing that creates a scar to help us remember what we have gained, what we have grown, and taught by one life who's ripples still touch our lives as the memory of a life is carried always. We can sing and hold those close to us, and even those we have just met, to continue to build on memory and what we have.

These are the roots that can hold the soil where we grow together. Roots are the friendship and connection where we grow. Tears of remembrances and sunshine of continued hope and an embrace grow and help enrich the community that has blossomed from shared memory. Fear is real, but hope is true, where we hear the voices we have together. Voices from the soul that we feel growing from scars and wounds, and also from new beginnings, from forgiveness and from our lives shared with friends. There, barefoot, we can feel and hear the melody with the rhythm of our heartbeat join in community. The spirit of unity begins with one heart, one friendship that is shared over a lifetime, and one collective experience of unique perspectives and beginnings that are always the continuation of our growth.

Autumnal Colors

My eyes have begun to lift higher as the Summer's vibrant hues begin to fade into wind tossed changes in Autumnal breezes. The skies are filled with the textures and colors of the earth's arbors, the gardens of melody that are played by the symphony of songbirds as their flight choreographs in the days and nights. Daylight shortens in bittersweet fashion as we gather collectively to watch the skies and change with the leaves as we reflect, remember, and return to new times. These seasons in the Northern Hemisphere are opposite of that in the South as the North provides the canvas for those in the South to see. To me the end of September is that ambiguous time where Summer and Autumn in transition from one to the next continue as nature's gentle way of saying come with me and change.

Recently I watched the skies open up as rain and wind poured out over the fields and the roads.  The changing of the seasons ever dramatic as the season of growth becomes the season of harvest, the season of gathering and being together in preparation for Winter. With the rain bringing in the cooler weather, I continued to look to the skies for the heavens become our connection to the universe. They create a drama that spreads out across the continents and over the oceans that extends to reach us as we live amongst the flora and fauna that helps color the atmosphere of our planetary home. 

The sky is filled with movement now. Migratory birds form their flocks and head towards warmer regions flying, dancing, with the wind in the shifting change of daily reality. The soul of a planet, in rain, in snow, in hurricanes, in fair blue hues, and rainbows as they fill the skies with momentous displays. With the wind bringing in aromas of apples ripening in orchards and water vapor cooling breezes while hot air balloons take flight, while candles flicker in remembrance, while we point to our loved ones the lights of stars and clouds that form the wondrous shapes of memory, of our home.

It can be the sky in Autumn that takes us from the restless days of Summer as it gathers us with a blanket and guides us to feel at home in the changes life has brought. Or it can helps us  feel at home in the new beginnings of every evening as night showers us with stars and birds sing to us as they come and go in a seasonal lullaby. It is not goodbye, only the cluster of our hearts and souls walking and waking, slumbering, and inspiring as we feel something anew in the colors of the skies. 

Feeling the Heartbeat of our Lives

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." Helen Keller

There is a rhythm that exists in each of us, beating like a drum, ringing like a bell, circulating and moving together with every living thing. What is felt with one heart can convey the human experience. The idea of the human experience may be cliche, but the experiences are real and felt in powerful ways. It was recently on a walk with a friend that I saw again how the actions of others ripple past the immediate interaction that took place in any given moment. The walk itself embodied this, and the understanding of human pain and joy that together in paradoxical ways form our lives. It is hard to understand how sorrow is part of the darkness that fuses angst, disbelief, and sadness to the moments that we wish we could hurry and leave behind. These adversities can be pivotal in helping us feel the warmth when cherished and held with a tapestry of connection.

In the heartbeat of life, we can think about the place we are living in. It isn't always happy or sad, angry or fearful. It usually is a mosaic of the feelings we have about our lives. Minutes become days and moments become memories. Life is a combination of such things. Walking freely with the wind with those who have chosen to encountered life's beauty with me alongside. I've found that in walking, conversation becomes more fluid as it incorporates the passage and change of time and life everywhere.

Laughter from the heart comes from the places we realize and know. As we understand our shared, collective experience as people, we live. Gathered together we can hold hands, for none of us has experienced what another has, but each of us may be listened to and cared for and in turn be a light of hope that beats together if we take the risk to step beyond our grudges and listen. Barefoot we feel what is shaping us, changing us. Barefoot we arise and walk over to the beginning of the next moment. May it be the wonder that makes us cry with hope that together we can build something for the future of our lives and those we love. So it may be these feelings that hold us to the moment to create, shape, learn, live.