New Year's 2013

New Year's bells are beginning to ring around the world as I write my New Year's resolutions, once again. So many things in 2012 had us feeling dismayed,  devastated, and hopeless from "forces"greater than ourselves which, after the trauma settles, can bring insight that life is precious indeed, and that many things are beyond our control in this world that we want to be hopeful about, but also must  maintain a sense of the reality, that anything can occur to change our life as we know it, and expect it to be. So, can we move forward today with hope for a good new year? I suppose that this is a question that each of us must answer for him/herself....knowing that just as things can go awry, so too can they surprise and delight. I am hoping for more of the latter. I really do not have much on my resolution list this year. I was disappointed with last year's resolution to feed the winter birds, and after great effort to do so, had the squirrels get to the feeders first. Ugh! For this coming year, I do want to "get on board" to perform (at least) 26 acts of kindness in memory of those who died in Connecticut. This was a suggestion by Ann Curry; formally of the TODAY SHOW (why in the world did they ever let her go???) which I saw on T.V. Generally, I am hoping for more kindness in the world all around, and of course, it must begin with each of us. Once again, poetry speaks to me and I recently came across a poem by James Kavanaugh that reflects my emotions and mood at this time when, yes, time passes and options disappear and love means more.

As time passes and options disappear
Love means more, and sunsets
I want to stroll across green hills
More than to climb mountains
Lately I listen more to the stars
Wise and patient in their silent staring
What is an hour or a year?
What is a week or a lifetime?
What is time?
When love means more,
And sunsets.
Wishing all who read this BLOG many many moments of kindness, peace, love and joy.

Newtown, Connecticut Tragedy

Today is December 18, 2012, and I certainly, like the rest of the world, did not anticipate that I would be grieving for the community of Newtown, Connecticut. Actually, I do not even want to write this BLOG, but my heart says that I must in order, in my very small way, honor those brave people who now must go on with their lives, forever changed. I want them to know that I grieve with them even though I cannot begin to feel the depth of hurt they must feel for the losses they have experienced. "As if the soul's fullness didn't sometimes overflow into the emptiest of metaphors for,no one, EVER, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity." (Flaubert)  I am also thinking of the ancient words of Seneca (4 B.C-A.D.65) who said, in a letter to Lucilius, "Sometimes even to live is an act of courage." It will take great courage to continue to live, and go on in this community, and the families there will need our thoughts and prayers for a very long time. As many of you know, I have a great love of poetry, and sometimes, poetry speaks the words we ourselves cannot say; they often convey a feeling we have within us that wants to express itself, and today, I reread John Donne's poem, "No Man is an Island," and it helped me with what I am feeling. For this reason, I wish to share it here.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND  by John Donne (1572-1631) London, England

No man is an island,
Entire of itself
Each is a piece of the continent
A part of the main
If a clod be washed away by the sea
Europe is the less
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend were.
Each man's death diminishes me
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Today, the world, and the people who inhabit it, are surly diminished by the terrible tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut.
 

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS???

Every year at this time, my husband carries up from the basement, the very large and heavy box of my Christmas book collection. These books are treasures that I read and look at each Christmas season, and something that brings me great joy. I, of course, have my favorites, and this morning I was reading The New Yorker Christmas book collection, and laughing again at all the Christmas cartoons through the years. I have the usual; The Night Before Christmas and The Grinch (an actual autographed edition) and various editions of A Christmas Story, but my absolute favorite of all time is the little gem of the story of Virgina who wrote to the New York Sun Times because she was beginning (at age eight) to have doubts about the reality of Santa Claus. She wrote to the Sun Times because her father told her that, "if you see it in the Times, it's so." Virginia says in her letter, "Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?" I am guessing that most of you are familiar with this famous letter to the New York Sun Times, sent by Virgina, but each Christmas, when I reread it, I grasp a little more of the meaning so I want to share here, the answer that The Sun Times wrote to Virgina. I absolutely love it!

" Virginia, your little friends are wrong (who were telling her there was no Santa.) They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical  age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in Fairies! You might get your Papa to hire men to watch in chimneys on Christmas evening to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see Fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside the curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world, there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus? Thank God, he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virgina, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

And, I hasten to add that Helen Keller had this very same "take" on the world when she said, "The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

So there you are; I believe in Santa Claus and all the other "things" in life that bring me great joy and an everlasting sense of wonder.