And The Earth Sleeps

When I was a child someone once told me that in Winter, the earth goes to sleep, just like the bears,  until Spring. In my mind's eye I saw all the flowers and the trees curl up and close their eyes, a smile on their faces, dreaming of sunshine and blue skies again. Much later, when I took up gardening and was captivated once more by the magic of nature, I often wondered if there wasn't some truth to that tale. Perhaps the earth does, in part, go to sleep so it can recharge its batteries and indulge in a little bit of extreme self-care of its own. I wonder what it dreams about? 

What would we all dream about if we could curl up under a warm blanket, with a fire roaring in the hearth, and sleep away the cold and darkness of winter? Would we dream of waking up to a world that was clean, fresh and new? Would the darkness of the season, as well as the darkness in the hearts of men, be gone as well? Would the world be filled once again with the hope of a fresh, new beginning, or with any hope at all?

Sometimes it's hard to imagine that kind of a world, and during the darkness of winter it is even harder. The love and joy of the holidays that just passed seem to disappear under a blanket of "business as usual," just like the earth outside our windows lies buried under a blanket of snow. So what can we do to wake up? We can turn on the light. We can turn up the light. Just like putting in a stronger light bulb in your lamp to make a room brighter, we can turn up the amps on our spirits. Let your hopes and dreams be seen. Don't bury them under a blanket of hopelessness and despair. Let your own light help light the way for others. Even on the darkest night, the moon still finds a way to shine so we can see our way on the path.

This winter, instead of hibernating and dreaming of Spring, let's wrap a warm coat of courage around us and tell Winter to "bring it on!" And don't forget those new boots and mittens you got for Christmas. The metaphorical snow could get deep, but you got this! 

And so it is. 

A Green New Year's Eve Party

I'm not one for New Year's Eve parties. I was married to a musician a long time ago and had to spend every New Year's Eve sitting at a table surrounded by very loud, very drunk people I didn't really know while my husband and the band were up front playing. When the kids came along I was more than happy to stay home and have a quiet night in. 

If I had to pick my very favorite New Year's Eve, it would be one night when I was living in the country. We were blessed by a crystal clear night and a sky filled with stars so bright they lit up the night. At the stroke of midnight I went outside and place one hand on the massive trunk of my favorite tree, and with the other hand, raised a glass to toast the earth and every living thing on it, and to make a wish that the New Year would be a kind and abundant one for everyone. I think I felt closer to God and Mother Earth that night than any night before or since.

If you've been following my blog for the last few years you know that I am not one who makes New Year's Resolutions. I make promises, both to myself and to others. One of the values I hold the highest is that when you give your word, you keep it, even if it's to yourself and even if, after you've given it, you wish you hadn't. It's not always easy and I'm not always on track every single minute of every single day. but I do my very best, know when I'm not doing my very best, and try again. 

So this year on New Year's Eve I will sit with my journal and write down all the promises I am making for 2019, set the intention to keep every one of them no matter how hard, and, weather permitting, I just might go outside and see if I can find a tree I can put my hand on (I hope the neighbors won't think I'm tipsy if they see me holding on to a tree but, seriously, how many folks are looking out of their windows at midnight?). And maybe, just maybe, God, and Mother Nature, and I, can usher in a wonderful, blessed new year!

And so it is. 

All I Want For Christmas

I woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow. The little stand of fir trees that line the driveway next door look all ready for Christmas, as if Mother Nature had tip-toed in during the night to decorate. All the roof tops have a coating of snow as well. From where I sit, I can see every chimney all the way down the block. They are calling for more snow showers tonight. I hope Santa has his best snow boots ready for the trip . Some of those rooftops look pretty slippery to me. 

I was going to look back over all the other Christmas blog posts I've written over the last 6 years since Flower Bear's Garden's beginning, just to get an idea of what I'd already said. It occurred to me as I was scrolling through the past that the message really never changes: peace, love, compassion, good-will towards everyone. It's not about what you place under the Christmas tree, it's about what you lay down at the foot of the manger: hate, greed, indifference, and hopelessness. It's about asking ourselves what gifts we shared with the world this year - not necessarily financially but the gifts of ourselves, like time, attention, caring, standing up for what is right and supporting others who do. It's about saving our world and everyone and everything in it. It's about living the spirit of Christmas 365 days a year. And if, when we find that we came up a little short with sharing our gifts this year, it's about making a new list ... and checking it twice ... to see where we can be even more "nice." It's also about remembering that if we don't put ourselves on the receiving end of that list, no one else gets what they deserve either. 

May you all have the most blessed and beautiful Christmas ever, and may you receive all the love and goodness your hearts desire. 

And so it is ... Merry Christmas!

The Gift Of Hope

Sharing another post from Christmas past, this one from two years ago. It speaks to our world today even more than it did back then. Enjoy!

There is a picture hanging on the wall of my bedroom that has hung in every bedroom of every house or apartment I've lived in for the past 25 years. The picture is called In Disgrace, and it shows a little girl of about 3 standing in the naughty corner with her loyal puppy sadly at her feet waiting for her to be reprieved. It was given to me by my youngest daughter, now 43, who spent a good deal of her young life in that same position, only her puppies were imaginary friends. Her favorite line to her pretend puppies was," I hope she doesn't forget us here."

Hope is powerful. As long as we have hope, there is no one and nothing that can stop us from believing that there is another way. I have to admit that of all the gifts  I have written about this month, this one was the hardest to do. It is hard to hold on to hope when all of the news is so bad. Every day when we turn on the TV or log on to the computer we are greeted with another tragedy, another horror, another example of man's inhumanity to man. But somewhere in the back of my mind is a saying passed on to me during some crisis in my life that came to me as I sat down at my desk this morning: "As long as the sun comes up tomorrow, there is always hope ... and the sun always comes up tomorrow, so there is always hope." I would add to that a line from that wonderful movie, The Last Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: "It will all work out in the end, and if it hasn't worked out yet, then it's not the end."

The sun will come out tomorrow, and with that gift, we can do anything. Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday filled with love, joy, and the hope for a better world for everyone. It's time to start writing a new story.

And so it is.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

I finally got my little woodland Christmas tree up and decorated with the able assistance of my 5 year-old great-grandson who told me he liked it because it was little like him (a very astute observation from one so young). I especially like this one because although it is artificial, it has white flocking on it to imitate snow on its branches. It looks exactly like some little tree one might come across on a hike in the winter woods.

We started out with real trees when I was just about my great-grandson's age but switched to artificial trees a few years later when my mother, tired of cleaning up pine needles all over the floor and crawling under the tree to put water in the tree stand, decided that it was more cost-effective and less labor intensive to have a fake one. Little did she know that the fake ones required hours of trying to color coordinate the correct branches in the correct order. Lucky for her she had excited little helpers to delegate that job to! 

The tradition of putting up Christmas trees indoors originated in Europe around the 16th century. They were often decorated with berries, fruits and other natural ornaments. It probably followed on the heels of some pagan tradition prior to Christianity. It would certainly have been a symbol of how not everything dies in winter. The green needles would have been a colorful way of keeping spirits up during those cold winter nights. After Christmas, it would continue to give back by turning into firewood!

I do not have to bring a live tree into my home to receive the benefits of looking at a symbol of life continuing through the winter. I have only to look out of my window at a magnificent representative next door. It must stand at least 60 feet or more, which scares the life out of me when it waves back and forth in a really bad storm, but which fills me with hope on those days when it feels as if Spring will never return. I think this is one of Mother Nature's best creations yet!

Here's hoping your winter is filled with love, warmth, color and the promise of our inevitable return to Spring.

And so it is. 

Divine Inspiration

Okay, I have to come clean with you folks. I usually wake up on a Monday morning with at least a vague idea of what I'm going to write about this week. I even sometimes get an inspired thought during the week leading up to Monday and jot it down so I won't forget it. This morning, however, I woke up and knew the minute I realized what day it was that I didn't have even a tiny idea of what I was going to write about today. As the saying goes, "I got nothin'."  So I did what I usually do when this happens ... I seek out Divine Inspiration.

First I whipped out the slip of paper with a writer's prayer on it that I borrowed from writer, author, and psychologist Robert Holden:

Writer's Prayer

I am a pencil in God's hands.

I am here to write love letters from God to everyone in the world.

God is ready to write and, therefore, so am I.

I sit patiently before God and listen for the thoughts of God.

I ask God to remove any imagined blocks to writing now.

I find it easier than expected to write because God does the work.

All I do is listen,

and take notes,

and enjoy the process.

So I did. I sat patiently. And I listened. And this is what I heard: "Open the curtains and look outside." I had drawn the curtains because it was a cold, blustery day outside and I was adding another layer of warmth to the room by keeping the curtains closed. Now I opened them wide and looked ... I mean, really looked. This is what I saw:

• The same grey, dreary, socked-in cloudy sky that has plagued us for days parted for just a moment, like the Red Sea, and a sliver of blue sky peeked out, releasing a pearly pinkish-white ray of sunshine that spotlighted the roofs of the houses across the street. It was the kind of light that made you think of angels.
• I saw the little grey squirrel on the roof across the way who is valiantly trying to reclaim his home from the angry birds who drove him off last Spring. Now that they have raised their kids and moved on, my squirrel (I have named him Pip after a children's story I've been working on), has started to move back in, tossing out the used straw and carrying nuts and bits of this and that to store up for the winter. I'm glad to have him back. I've missed his antics.
• Several crows are screeching around and around overhead. I have no idea what they are so excited about. Did you know that even though, to us, all crows sound alike, the truth is that they can pick out the call of their mate from all the others? And that they always remember a face? Maybe today is the day I'll look up that blog about crow language that I always wanted to check out.
• The geese are at it again. There is a small flock that doesn't leave for the winter like the rest. They must live nearby at a farm where they will have good shelter and food all winter. Every morning they head out for the river a few blocks from here and hang out, only to return when the sun begins to set. I guess to them it's true that "there's no place like home." 
• Two blue jays are playing tag, darting in and out of the branches of that huge pine tree outside. How they make those tiny maneuvers through the branches without getting hurt is a miracle.

It never fails. Mother Nature teams up with God and puts on a show for me every day. I watch in amazement at the courage, agility, and beauty of creation and end up asking myself: How can I show up today as the best version of myself for the world? And usually, with a little luck and patience, the answer comes. 

So this is my love letter to the world today. May your clouds part to let in the angelic light of hope. May you find and embrace your place of belonging. May you hear the words of a loved one in your ear today, and may you find time to play with joy and childlike trust. 

And so it is. 

A Measure Of Time

Yesterday I was part of an interesting conversation in my Adult Sunday School Class about how people used to measure time before the invention of modern methods like clocks and calendars. Most of us agreed that the concept of time and how to measure it most always involved something in nature as the measuring stick, be it the moon, the tides, or the signals in nature that announced a change of season. Depending on where in the world people lived, folks living in desert countries might measure time quite differently than folks living in the mountains or at the North Pole! 

Native American and other indigenous people measured time by the cycles of the moon, a change in the air, the way plants and trees went through their own process from season to season, how the animals behaved, and a host of other ways that Mother Nature provided to guide living things from one year to the next. They took the time to stand still and follow the stars.

It seems like only yesterday that we were carving pumpkins and soaking in the beautiful Autumn colors. Suddenly it is all gone, at least in my part of the world, where the trees are now stripped bare and the leaves are laying under what's left of our first real snow of the season. The parades are over and people everywhere are ending November with the same question: "What am I going to do with all these leftovers?"  And then, of course, there's Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Christmas season comes rushing at us full force whether we like it or not.

This year I decided to go back to the way my ancestors did things. I am not running around trying to fit into someone else's schedule of what I should do, and when. I am slowing down and letting nature guide me. I am watching the skies for the geese, keeping an eye on the behavior of my squirrel neighbors, taking note of the recently frenzied behavior of the crows that live nearby (what do they know about the coming winter that we don't?), and feel the seasons. I am not fighting crazy mobs of shoppers. I am visiting the small, local shops in my area for my gifts this year. I am not rushing to decorate for Christmas. My inner knowing will tell me when it is the perfect time to hang the holly and bring out my little woodland tree to decorate. I am returning to natural time, nature's time, God's time. 

So while I wait, I think I will pull out my yarn and needles, and let my fingers guide me as I listen to the cacophony of honking that is flying across the sky, and the cries of the crows trying to tell me what I need to know. After all, they don't need a calendar to tell them which way to go.

And so it is.