Happy New Day

Do not look forward to the ineffable New Year.
Devote yourself to the mundane, fresh New Day.
There may be no countdown or confetti
but, always, when you pay attention, there is a sunrise
that is a spectacle, even through the clouds.
There is stepping lightly over the wood floor
and breathing, aware of each movement.
There is a heavy globe of grapefruit to slice,
every jewel segment savored for its
bittersweet tang, its red juice running.
There is looking into your love's familiar, green eyes
and seeing the human who steadfastly wakes next to you,
behind any tiredness or distance, a vow
of disciplined love, untapped wells of joy.
There are soft pitter-patters of small feet
and sticky hands that come to lead you
to your next adventure-lesson or struggle-insight
that will make you humble and in awe.
There is something growing inside you, kicking.
There is the daily work: a sink of dishes,
maintenance, trying a new idea, and
tending whoever you meet with reverence.
There is turning to others, inward, and seeking
the path leading to the better world hidden in this one.
There is injustice and devastation to heal, first within.
There is learning to keep searching when
your heart's burdens are ice-cold and heavy.
There are sudden, seismic leaps for Good from
the cosmic consciousness that leave you bewildered.
There are miracles that come after aeons of effort.
There is grieving, celebrating, tearing down, building up.
There is always more work, perhaps not for you.
There are relentless deaths and births.
There are countless occasions to uncork champagne,
reminisce on what the past has brought,
toast to what the future may bring,
and sip life's fizz with good, faithful friends.
There are burning stars and infinite, unanswered questions
to guide and ground your imagination.
There is never a day, or year, or life, that does not end 
with your eyes closing on a planet continuing beyond you.
Evermore, there is night leading to New Day,
darkness rising into light.

Solstice Hymn

Winter comes on darkest day
Amid such times that blacken night.
Seeking hope, we make our way
As pilgrims off to gain new sight.

Violence, famine, war, and greed
Are bitter winds through suff'ring lands;
Frozen ground yields no fresh seed
To fill expectant, weary hands.

Peace's growth in human souls
Seems stifled by perpetual gloom
As embers die in long-burned coals
That cannot warm the icy room.

Distant echoes break the fright
With ancient song and starlight chimes:
"Always, darkness yields to light -
Eternity breathes in these hard times!"

Branches quake, at last reveal
The faithful roots at work below;
Kindled hearts come close to feel
The promise settling soft like snow.

Candles burn as pilgrims hold
Love's vigilant epiphany;
Companions sing the tales of old
That herald justice's symphony.

And as Winter starts its season's stay,
Earth creatures cling to one another.
Dear pilgrims, let your spirits say,
"Turn toward the Light in every other!"

Desert Sands

We found a spot next to a serpent sculpture that appeared to dive its artful body in and out of the expanse of sand and across the plain road that led us away from the small village's lights. Mountains of rock in the distance bordered our peripheral sight; the sun set and the moon appeared in the desert. In twilight, we set up our simple camp to watch the stars come out and the meteors shower. Soon, we could barely see our serpent neighbor's face or details of the terrain. The rustle of blowing sand punctuated the soft quiet.

Husband, brother-in-law, and I leaned back in our chairs and across the car hood to watch day turn into night, to witness regal hills of stone and stark stretches of desert, humbling in their magnitude, dissolve under darkness that fell like a blanket in greater and greater silence. Soon, even the desert seemed unimaginably small, and we even smaller, under the twinkling stars, the great arc of a faint Milky Way, the blazing bursts and fleeting tails of meteors that struck our planet's atmosphere.

The absence of light around us brought these distant bodies closer. The universe deepened with each further adjustment of our eyes as stars and galaxies came into focus through our minute, organic lenses. We marveled together at the wonder of such a view - laughing and creating new constellations, I imagined the generations of humans that have gazed at this same scene. I felt my baby kick enthusiastically. As the first meteor flared like a sparkler across the sky and we all cried out at its intensity, I made a wish that my descendants would find such intimacy with the cosmos.

Soon, even the moon sank below the horizon. Under the ancient story told to our vision this night - a tale of stars now long gone but still appearing to us, a song of nebulae and novas that have yet to reach us with their light - I felt connected beyond labels of our relationships to the two humans next to me. I felt only our common delight, collective curiosity, and intrinsic courage to seek space where we felt our smallness and entered a different plane of awareness of our place on a galactic scale. This, too, is an old story, as primitive and essential to humans as those told of the temptation of serpents, the ventures into the desert to find enlightenment, the dreaming of intelligible messages and images written in the stars.

The next day, my boy picked up a nondescript clam shell I found in the bay near our home away from home. In expectation, he put it carefully to his ear. I first felt inclined to correct him - "You can't 'hear the ocean' in that kind of shell" - but caught myself. That shell, made from desert sands, elements long ago forged in the bellies of stars, brings close the expanse of natural wonders he instinctively longs to know. Although it may not resonate with his pulse to give the illusion of hearing the sea, it resonates with something more.

Putting a shell to an ear; turning one's face to the night sky; touching the beauty beyond one's finite life by letting the spirit-mind wander cosmic sands: this is what the mystics and scientists and prophets and common people, adults and children, can know at the core in any moment of transcendent connection. Nevertheless, we lift constructed sand to our ears. Nevertheless, we journey to the desert. Nevertheless, we dream of stars and imagine we are one of them.

Spirals and Evergreen Sprigs

Sometimes, a moment is nearly impossible to capture in its full spectrum of wonder. As I drove away from my childhood home this afternoon, having dropped off Oak to spend some time with his grandparents while Robby and I worked, I glanced out my window to see my dad and my son sitting under a tree in the side yard. They had been wandering outside a while before I left, so to spot them in surprise from this distance felt like glimpsing a secret gift.

I could not see what they examined together, but it was clear in their mutual posture that both were engrossed in their common activity. Tears caught in my throat at this fleeting moment of sweetness: the man who has tended to me with the boy I tend, both tending to the other. I was suspended in a space between what has been given to me and what I have given, from and to my past and future. Removed from the center of that cyclical lineage, time collapsed to a still point of amazement as I felt the tug of eternal threads that tie me to these two beings.

Later, when I returned, Dad and Oak showed me the treasures they gathered while walking around the yard: several lovely pinecones of varying shapes and a twig of holly and berries. Spirals and evergreen sprigs - infinite patterns, eternal life, symbols for an afternoon of connections made near and far in time and space. What a joy to know I am part of it. What a gift to watch it unfold beyond me in every direction. What a blessing to know who we are to one another.