new year's eve into new year's day...

Having read many of my favorite authors' end of the year summaries - some of which were insightful and moving - I've been pondering my own. We crafted something similar in the Christmas/Year's End letter we sent out in mid-December. I have no need to repeat myself except to say 2021 was a mixed bag: our entire family was vaccinated and boostered; we had the chance to visit Montréal, Ottawa, and the Eastern Townships of Canada; we feasted and grooved to great jazz at Dièse Onze (thanks Gary Tremblay); celebrated the high holy days with family; worked our gardens vigorously; loved one another tenderly; and listened more carefully to the rhythms of the sacred within Mother Earth. There were losses, of course, grief, anger and sorrow as well. I found value in the way Diana Butler Bass put it in her most recent newsletter:

I’m moved by the words of the blessing (below) from John O’Donohue: “We bless this year for all we learned, for all we loved and lost.” 2021 was anything but carefree. Many people will be glad to see it go. But I love the notion of blessing a year as it departs and looking back with gratitude to the last twelve months for the gifts — of grace and of grief — that came to our lives. Instead of just kicking the old year to the curb of history, we might listen to its world-worn wisdom even as we are wooed by the hope of a new-born year. It may be that we need reflective appreciation for what has been more than resolutions about what will be. Take a few minutes in the remaining hours of 2021 — What have you learned in the last year? What have you loved? What have you lost? (https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/blessing-the-old-year?t)

Yesterday was spent living into those questions. Incarnating them, if you will. I gave a few hours to sorting out the clutter and dirt from the basement: the tools are now back on the work-bench, the gardening materials are ordered in their own places, CDs and books to pass-on to others are set aside, and the car's berth has been swept and readied for winter (which is likely to arrive early next week in these parts.) 

+ Di and I watched a French mystery from the TOPIC portal which became creepy and unsettling causing us both to agree we don't need to take in any more violence as entertainment (and canceled out that show.) We watched the new Jane Campion film, The Power of the Dog, too. In all candor, it was uneven, at best, and too heavy-handed in places as well. I was simultaneously intrigued and disappointed with how a creative story-line was mismanaged. From the get-go, setting a Western in New Zealand looked visually wrong: more like Fellowship of the Rings than Yellowstone. Watching it did evoke a deep conversation both about the plot and what we need in a visual story. So, we ate some cauliflower pizza, had a beer, and sang "Auld Lange Syne" at midnight before tossing back a toast of single malt to ring in the New Year.

+ I spent the morning editing my Sunday "Small is Holy" reflection on the Magi as some of God's blessed "weird people" who bring us wisdom and new perspectives. Di slept. And slept some more. She made crepes for brunch before we schlepped in the wetlands for a bit with Lucie. We lit the Christ candle, listened to old Celtic carols and took a wee nap. I'll prepare Greek Lemon chicken with basmati rice for supper and we'll check out something new on from France on TOPIC.

What I discern about last year's lessons and losses that inform the year to come might be best said in this poem by Lynn Ungar that is my prayer for 2022:

You are not obliged to be beautiful
You don't have to shine.
Blooming will happen when it happens.
If you can be still for a moment
you might notice that
the roots that feed you
are still reaching silently through the dark.

My commitment to L'Arche Ottawa will intensify - even long-distance - as I have a chance to serve using my gifts in a creative and life-affirming way. It is well past time to tune out ALL ugly media - so-called entertainment as well as 24/7 news - especially those vicious mind-sucks that start out as mysteries only to become an excuse for vicarious violence. My soul is too tender now to view these experiences any more (they give me nightmares) and life is too short, yes? There's much more time behind than ahead of me in 2022 - and I hope to savor it. Especially making music, writing, baking bread, being fully present to Di, loving my children and grandchildren more vigorously and.. oh yes, walking meditatively more in the woods. I cherish this prayer poem from Padraig O'Tuama.

So let us pick up
the stones over which we stumble,
friends, and build altars…

Let us name the harsh light and
soft darkness that surround us.

Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug.

Let’s lick the earth from our fingers.

Let us look up and out and around.
The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked,
and
our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.