... the close and holy darkness ...

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six ...

... I got into bed.  I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

(Dylan Thomas)

*

It snowed a little bit last night, as promised, before I went to bed.  We've had no snow to speak of until now.  When I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, there was only a dusting of snow.  Just now I looked out again in the darkness and see that it is snowing steadily. 

December is full of celebrations from numerous traditions and days that are meaningful to me because of what happened in my life on those days.  It is a joy to celebrate all of the days in December, including those of Hanukkah, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Ramadan when it occurs in December.

And then a New Year begins in January.

* 

Always sending love to blog friends near and far.

A TIME OF GREAT HOPE

The theme for the fifth day of Kwanzaa is Nia, which means "Purpose." Today is the fifth day of the twelve days of Christmas. Hanukkah has ended.

Barack Obama's American University Speech on January 28, 2008, began with:

"Today isn’t just about politics for me. It’s personal. I was too young to remember John Kennedy and I was just a child when Robert Kennedy ran for President. But in the stories I heard growing up, I saw how my grandparents and mother spoke about them, and about that period in our nation’s life—as A TIME OF GREAT HOPE and achievement. And I think my own sense of what’s possible in this country comes in part from what they said America was like in the days of John and Robert Kennedy."

If you have time, listen to the entire speech:



If not, listen from approximately 8:41 to 9:24:

"And it lives on in those Americans -- young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian and Native American, gay and straight -- who are tired of a politics that divides us and want to recapture the sense of common PURPOSE that we had when John Kennedy was President of the United States of America."

"Boy with Amaryllis and Orion" is a drawing by me, using the trackpad on my iBookG4, on the day before Martin Luther King Day in January of 2008. I had just received a letter from R, who had been in the stroke rehab unit of a VA hospital in California ever since coming out of a coma caused by a brain stem stroke in September 2007. The letter to me was written in R's behalf by his nurse, Yolanda. He signed it in a shaky hand, but drew a perfect rose for me. He was an artist, too. In the drawing above, I pictured him as a young boy with his life before him, standing alone at night looking out the window at Orion. I knew that boy was still a part of him.

I didn't know he had had a stroke until December 31, 2007, when his sister wrote me a letter after I had sent her a holiday card. I had been out of touch with R since 2003, due to his drug and alcohol problems aggravated by PTSD. His sister hadn't had my home address, phone number or email address.

For anyone new to my blog, I met R on the beach at Half Moon Bay, California, when we were 17 years old. In 1969, R was was drafted into the U.S. Army, almost a year after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, in the first few months after Richard M. Nixon was elected President of the United States.

R spent 1970 in Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic stationed in Da Nang. He was against the war. He almost didn't go to Vietnam, calling me from Oakland Army Base the day before he left, asking me to pick him up and take him to a draft resistance center for conscientious objectors. He talked with a woman who was a draft counselor, as I sat out in a hallway. The door opened, and he thanked her. We walked back out to my car. He looked out the car window as he said to me while we drove away from the draft resistance center on that winter morning in January of 1970, "If I go ahead with this, I am going to meet the defeat of her challenge." He didn't believe he would be able to obtain conscientious objector status because he was a high school drop-out who didn't go to church and didn't believe in God and had set no precedence as a conscientious objector in his life up to then. I was willing to go to Canada with him. He didn't want to go to Canada or to prison. He made the decision to go to Vietnam. We lived together from the day of his return from Vietnam on December 8, 1970, until early in May of 1971 when we separated, remaining friends.

In the letter the nurse wrote in January of 2008, R said that he wanted to see me again but he encouraged me to continue with the college classes I had just started. R saw the above drawing, along with the others in that series of drawings that was inspired by him. In April, I was able to drive to California to spend four days with him in the intensive care unit the week before he died. He was unable to speak, but his last "words" to me were the thumbs up sign. It's a long story, 42 years long. I'm working on a book of art work and poetry from those years.

I just remembered something R said to me in 2002, while he was undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer. There was something he had done that he believed was absolutely unforgivable, something that he believed he could never tell anyone. I encouraged him to talk with someone at the VA hospital. He said he wasn't going to tell anyone. He couldn't forgive himself. He said, "I was young then. . . "

THIS MUST BE THE DAY

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa (Umoja = Unity), the first of the twelve days of Christmas and the 5th day of Hanukkah. The 6th day of Hanukkah begins at sunset.

Some mornings look better in black, white and grey.

"This must be the day that all of my dreams come true."
(Bob Dylan)

And just after sunset:

TRADITIONS / RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS

When our mother was alive, she always sent wreaths she ordered from Starcross Community to my two sisters and me. My wreath always arrived on December 1, and I would hang it on the outside wall next to my front door until Valentine's Day. In 1994, the year she died unexpectedly on December 3, no wreath had arrived. I've wondered why she didn't send a wreath that year. Did she know she was going to die? For the next year, I continued her tradition by ordering a wreath. When our mother met our father, she was a church secretary in an Episcopal church. Our father had been raised as a Lutheran in Minnesota. By the time our mother died, she was celebrating the Jewish holidays in secret, not wanting to upset our father. In the years after her death, I have developed my own traditions.

When the Starcross wreath arrives, I place it outside next to my front door, where the evergreen fragrance lingers, and the wreath remains amazingly green. I get out a box marked Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, Winter Solstice and Eid al-Adha. I upwrap the figures of Mary and Joseph that our mother gave to me and place them facing a menorah on my living room table. I didn't have the menorah until two years ago. The menorah remains there until the end of Hanukkah.

On Bodhi Day, December 8, I think about the Buddha and remember the day RTN came home from Vietnam in 1970. This year, December 8 was also Eid al-Adha.

On December 20, 21, 22, or 23, I celebrate the Winter Solstice, a beloved turning point.

On Christmas Eve, I watch the videos of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" as well as "A Child's Christmas in Wales," narrated by Denholm Elliott. Either just after midnight on the beginning of Christmas Day or when I wake up on Christmas morning, depending on my work schedule, I unwrap the baby Jesus figure and place it close to Mary and Joseph.

From December 26 through January 1, I watch one section at a time of the video of "Harambee!," written and directed by Fracaswell Hyman.

On January 1, I celebrate New Year's Day. I love New Year's Day. For many years that was the only day of the holiday season when I felt a sense of celebration.

On Epiphany, January 6, I bring out figures of the Three Wise Men, which I didn't have until three years ago. January 6 is the birthday of my nephew, whom I haven't seen since my father died in March of 2003. I celebrate the life of my nephew!

At the end of January 6, I put everything back in the box until the next December.

Last year, between December 1 and January 6, I also listened to the videos of "Muhammed: Legacy of a Prophet" (PBS), "Faithful to Continuance: Legacy of the Plateau People" (a celebration of art and artists produced and directed by Mimbres Fever), "Ram Dass: Fierce Grace" (a film by Mickey Lemile), and "Pema Chodren & Alice Walker in Conversation on the Meaning of Suffering and the Mystery of Joy" (published by Sounds True, Inc.). For me, the traditions are all alive and evolving together.

Come to think of it, the first tradition, before the opening of the traditions box, is celebrating Thanksgiving in peaceful solitude on the 4th Thursday in November.

For most of my adult life, I dreaded this time of year. I'm grateful to have found a way to see it differently.

There was more snow last night, and it just started snowing again. Oboe is curled up, sleeping. It's cold and quiet outside at this moment, except for the Red-Winged Blackbirds singing from the tops of the cattails.

HOLY GROUND / IMANI

Fleeting moments of pink light before dawn on a grey New Year's Day in the far northwest corner of Washington State:


















"Most of us primarily find the sacred within the circle of those we love and find holy ground in our own backyard. Remember the Buddhist monks who go on a three-month retreat during the rainy season? It must be dramatic for them when the retreat ends. For a long time, they have been confined to a temple, with strict instructions to destroy no new life. They carefully watch where they put their feet lest they trample a sprout of grass pushing through the cold earth. Then comes the day the retreat ends and they leave. They are given new robes. At the gate they take their final step out of the temple and their first step into a sunny meadow. It is the same step.

In our own back yards, the leaves may be gone and the tree limbs bare. But tiny new buds are beginning to swell. A time will come soon to step between two seasons. Just as with the monks, it is one step. From holy ground to holy ground.

(Copyright 2006, Tolbert McCarroll, A WINTER WALK, page 150)

Oboe resting on New Year's Day:



















Self-portrait on New Year's Day (semi-contour drawing):























Late yesterday I received news that someone dear to me for the last 42 years is recovering from a stroke in the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California. His sister said that he is unable to speak because of a tracheostomy but can write. I left a message for him with his nurse at the VA Hospital. Anyone who knows me well or has been reading my blog knows him. We were born during the same 24 hours in 1949 and have been in and out of each other's lives since we were 17 years old. Please send lovingkindness his way. Thanks so much.


















"In recent years Kwanzaa, a week-long cultural festival for African-Americans, has been gaining in popularity. This holiday came out of the frustrations, and the violence, of the black power movements in the 1960s, which was one, often controversial, facet of America's continuing struggle for racial equality and justice. At first, Kwanzaa was a black alternative to Christmas. But it has evolved to become a cultural, rather a religious or anti-religious event. This has allowed Christians, who are an important part of the African-American community, to adopt it. It is now estimated that about thirty million people worldwide celebrate this festival. One of Kwanzaa's main attractions for African-American parents is to move beyond the commercial, gift-oriented atmosphere of Christmas and talk about values. The festival goes on for seven nights, and the main event is the evening meal where African clothing is often worn and dances, songs, and symbols are used in an elaborate ritual. Each night one of seven principles is the theme. These are: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith."

(Copyright 2006, Tolbert McCarroll, A WINTER WALK, pages 151-152)

January 1 is the 7th night of Kwanzaa. The principle for tonight is Imani, which means "faith."

Love and Light to all in the New Year!

THE PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY

A thoughtful friend gave me this book as a gift. I recommend it.
























































(1-2 hour drawing time, 5:55 to 6:25 a.m. -- 6B pencil on heavy weight, medium tooth surface, 9 x 12 Canson drawing pad, while not listening to anything except what is right in front of me.

Today's "Paused" images are from an excellent PBS documentary from 2002 titled "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet." Interestingly, it was before September 11, 2001, that this film was in the process of being made.

As I wrote yesterday, I seek out stories from all traditions. Particularly moving, from this documentary, is the story of Kevin James, the son of an African-American/Native American father and a Jewish mother. As an adult, Kevin James became a Muslim as well as a firefighter for the New York City Fire Department. On September 11, 2001, he found himself among the first responders.)

It is my tradition on the first day of Kwanzaa, December 26, to watch the video, "Harambee!". Here's a synopsis.

Which reminds me of what whiskey river quoted on December 23:

""The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
- George Santayana

This morning at 7 a.m. I stood out on my porch in the dark and took this picture.