Once upon a New Year’s Eve

Once upon a black-haired baby

Once upon a time there were three little bears living in our Little House in the Big Woods in Aura, Michigan.  Mama Bear, Daddy Bear and Baby Bear.  One day Mama Bear told Daddy Bear that there was another bear who wanted to come live with them.

Daddy Bear didn’t believe it at first, but it was true.  Mama Bear started getting bigger and bigger, even though she didn’t eat any more porridge each morning.

It became obvious that Baby Bear would soon have a new brother or sister.  Mama Bear was sure it would be another boy because she had visions of two boys running helter-skelter in the ravine behind the house.  (She also really secretly wanted a girl-baby, but didn’t want to be disappointed, you know how it is.)

As the darkest days of December approached in 1985 (see, it wasn’t THAT long ago) Mama Bear suddenly switched allegiances   It now felt like a girl nesting inside, preparing to join the family.   (She still didn’t want to be disappointed, so she reminded herself of the vision.)

Once upon a New Year’s Eve those long, long years ago a baby girl came squalling into the world, a bright brand new spanking baby girl, a delight, a joy, a new addition to the Bear family, a black-haired red-faced angel we named Kiah Michelle.

An Elf, a Pig, and Reindeer Tracks in the Snow

Twinkling

Christmas lights twinkle all around.

I am sending you all holiday love.  Can you feel it?

Did you have a wonderful time during these holy-days?

Can you feel the Sun returning to the earth, lightening our days with hope and joy?

(If you can’t, that’s OK.  I can’t either.  But the calendar does say that the light returneth to the Northern Hemisphere.  Often in January I measure the return.  It equals ten minutes of light each week.  If you don’t believe me, check it out yourself.)

We’ve been celebrating Christmas a day late.

December 26th = December 25th in our books.

Saturday night at the local bar after meditating for 48 hours

On Thursday at 12 noon, sharp, I began meditating for 48 long hours.  OK, it wasn’t continuous meditating.  But it did involve turning off the Internet, email, Facebook, WordPress, the News, books, movies, magazines and other fine amusements.

Off went connection to the Larger World.  On went connection to the Inner World.  I sat for hour after hour after hour after hour after hour after long hour (did I mention how long the hours can seem when you’re simply sitting?) connecting with what is larger than our everyday affairs.

In honor of the Solstice, The End of the Mayan Calendar, and the Beginning of a New Time.  It wasn’t easy, my friends.  If you’ve ever retreated in this manner, you know.  It isn’t Easy.  Your inner self rebels.  It wants to reach for distraction after distraction.  It doesn’t care which distraction.  It just wants to fill the emptiness it perceives as annihilating.

It can be agonizing to sit, sit, sit, being present with only what arises.

Noon on Saturday found your blogger finishing her 48-hour commitment and finally checking in to this computerized world and shopping for Christmas goodies at the local store.

At 6 p.m. on Saturday evening she found herself utterly restless and begged her husband, “Can we go to da Finn’s?”

Thank you for four wonderful years of blogging here.

The very first photo I published. Our house creatively shining in the woods.

Yep, my friends, it’s been four years of blogging on WordPress come Winter Solstice.

Will you forgive me a post down Memory’s Lane?

My first WordPress blog started after lighting a grand solstice fire on a snowy night out in the woods on December 21, 2008.  A daily blog called Opening the door, walking outside followed for an entire year.  After less than a ten-day break, Lake Superior Spirit opened its blogging doors on January 1, 2010.

Tomfoolery of our Santas and Snowmen

Dear readers, it’s just about time to go a’diggin’ down in the basement closet and find our multi-colored Christmas lights and Grandma’s ceramic tree and the reindeer ornament that hangs on the wall by the door.  Don’t forget some garland, and the box for Christmas cards, and that red-and-white Santa pillow, and who knows what else?

Oh, yes, some of you know what else, don’t you sly long-time readers?  Yes, the Santas and Snowmen must come upstairs and find a special place to sit on their tic-tac-toe board.

I really want to introduce you newcomers to the Santas and Snowmen.  (Some of you spotted them in a recent post and admired the way they marched around outside in the snow.) However, I really didn’t want to type the story again.  So I am copying and pasting a blog post which originally ran in Lake Superior Spirit on December 25th, 2010.

(I wrote it just four days after my gall bladder surgery, so it proves that the doctor didn’t remove any sense of humor along with that organ.)

Tomfoolery of our Santas and Snowmen

Great Caesar’s Ghost! (And other Weather Channel Predictions)

We’re expecting a snowstorm this afternoon, kids.

I peer at the radar loop and see a swirling blue mass approaching.

I shared the approaching snow storm with our daughter in New York City.

“Yes,” she said.  ”It’s Caesar.”

Caesar?  What the heck you talkin’ about, kid?

It’s all the Weather Channel’s fault–or credit.

They’ve recently decided to name the winter storms, just like those feisty tropical storms.

Brutus? Athena?

After the Vita-Mix roars and before the next impossible question

In our local coffee shop the Vita-Mix machine roars.  I thought it was a coffee grinder, but it’s a Vita-Mix machine, whatever that might be.  I got up from the high-perched computer table and asked what was the noise?

I am drinking black tea.  Outside bagpipe Christmas music blares out of the loudspeakers.  In a half or so, give or take, I’ll head up the hill to the library for a used book sale sponsored by “The Friends of the Library”.

A long-lost friend, OK, not that long-lost, just asked my spiritual advice about a complicated question.  It was one of the most complicated questions on the planet, the kind it’s impossible to answer.  We humans want simple answers.  I rattled off a complicated answer that involved six perspectives and felt sorry that she might try to figure it out.

Ask Abe.

The holiness of Santa, Merlot and angel pink spoonbill wings

Holy river of ice from sky

I don’t know a lot.

Years ago–exactly at age eleven, sprawled out on the scratchy orange and black upholstered chair in our family room–I remember thinking very assuredly, “I know everything there is to know.”

That little preteen really thought she knew everything.  This 55-year-old mama, however, sitting on this velvet green upholstered computer chair, is more and more convinced that she knows very little.

She is convinced she knows one thing.  Well, she’s fairly convinced she knows one thing.  She’s almost certain that it’s true from what she’s glimpsed in deep meditation and when yellow and blue symphony skies  steal breath from the heart.

All of life is holy, my friend.  All of life is holy.  All of life is whole.

Blue plums, almond stove, needle in eyelid, Charley Brown tree

Tomfoolery of our Santas and Snowmen

Pale weak limpid sun rises lower and lower in December’s horizon.  It rarely shines through gray clouds, although today stratus clouds allow its orb to deck the skies with sunny cheer.

We’re buying a new almond stove, our first stove in thirty years.  They’re discontinuing the color “almond”.  It’s a gas stove, it has to be, due to our regular power outages when trees blow down over electrical wires.  We bought locally this time.

I wonder what makes some of us want to share our lives, while others prefer anonymity, silence.  What makes some of us want to share words about pale suns and almond ovens, while others don’t?

The double life I’ve been living lately

I suppose you’ve heard the rumors.

That I’ve been living a double life.

On the one hand Kathy sits here in the woods practicing Presence and meditating and watching the snow melt during our latest warm spell.

On the other hand Kathy is–are you ready for this?–in Nova Scotia.

I kid you not.  (Read on.  You can determine for yourself how much of this is “real” and how much is blogging tomfoolery.)

On November 13th, just as your blogger prepared to take a blogging break, one of her blogging friends sent an email.  Sybil and Amy-Lynn and Lynne were preparing for a hike, exploring the woods of Nova Scotia.

Note the Great Lakes. Note Nova Scotia.

Would I like to join them?