Quiet celebration

My Girl and I went to a dinner to celebrate the solstice tonight. It was lovely to take a break from all the Christmas craziness to celebrate such a quiet and natural moment as the return of the light. One of the women there read a poem that really spoke to me, and I want to share:

Winter's Pause

by Kaaren Whitney

Dark like the mole's black velvet back,

dark like Gaia's womb,

unwrapped as from deep boroughs of excavated earth,

Winter slows to the pace of a moon white icicle

as sun completes its final exhalation, and stops.

Savouring the pause, the freedom of emptiness,

the solstice half-yearly turning begins again,

revived, breathing in fresh rays of light and life and love.

A very blessed Yule to you all.

Peanuts

The 3rd grade did a wax museum project this past week - they had to choose a historic figure, do research, write a 1-2 minute speech, and costume themselves. The Girl chose George Washington Carver. Fascinating guy - doesn't she look just like him?

I was pretty freaking proud of the mustache, though. I made it my very own self, from felt and elastic. And I made a very nice peanut pin out of felt, because, you know, he discovered over 300 different uses for the peanut.

It was a pretty cool project.

Tonight we had our annual Christmas celebration with one group of relatives, and tomorrow we go up for another annual family gathering. Lots of family fun this weekend. I hope you are all enjoying your's.

Ways to stay warm

Today is cold and dark, with occasional wet, sleety snow. Sometimes this is the sort of day I want to curl up on my couch, under the sage gaze of my Yoda tree topper, snuggling with cats, drinking coffee and reading a good, if mindless, book.

Other gloomy days, however, call for coffee and conversation, and snuggle time with gorgeous, chunky babies. So when A called me over for coffee, how could I resist. She makes the loveliest coffee - light and sweet with vanilla-scented sugar. And these ladies are the snuggliest, most scrumptious babies - and they grin at me like I am the most amusing person on earth.

This was a very nice way to spend the morning.

Some thoughts on a very good Sunday

Two posts ago I talked about religion. The next day I visited a Unitarian Universalist church, and enjoyed the people and the message very much. Today was my third visit, and my first time hearing their minister speak. She was a little fidgety, which drove me nuts - she kept messing with her mike, her necklaces, her hair...I wanted to tie her hands behind her back. But...she was an excellent speaker. Her sermon had me thinking the whole time, which is the point of a sermon, right?

"Half the fun of travel is the esthetic of lostness." Ray Bradbury

She began her sermon with this quote. The gist was, when you travel in a place where you are foreign - whether you don't speak the language, or the customs are different, or even just stepping out of your comfort zone - you are reminded of the very hugeness of humanity, and your own smallness in the midst of that humanity. It reminds you that you are only one of many, and this being "lost" is a reminder that you are not the center of the universe. She asserted that if people were to travel and become "lost" more often, perhaps there would be less war, because while when we are "lost" we are reminded of how very different we all are, we are also reminded of how we are all the same in very essential ways.

I haven't traveled much. I like to think I would be a good traveler - I respect most people and their cultures, I like to make friends, and I am pretty flexible. I would like to travel more than I have. I began to think, though, about how very lost I feel in a crowd. Most people who know me think of me as a very gregarious, outgoing person. The word "shy" is a word almost nobody would connect with me, but that is only because those people probably met me when I knew someone else in the room. If there is another person around with whom I feel comfortable, I can relax and talk to an entire room of strangers, and walk out friends with most of them. I'm not saying I'm the coolest, nicest person on earth - but I am ridiculously friendly, and I'm interested in what you think. That being said, if I don't know anyone else, or if I know half the room, but not well enough to be comfortable, I will shrink into a corner, blush a lot, and not talk to a soul. I found myself doing this very thing last Sunday - my friend A went with me to church the first week, and this week, and both weeks I felt very comfortable, went up to people and talked to them, and enjoyed myself very much. Last week, however, I didn't know anyone there, and after a few minutes of awkward half-smiles at perfect strangers, I turned around under the ruse of examining the row of bookshelves in the room. Thank goodness for bookshelves. How many times have I been saved from dying away from embarrassment by the ability to peruse somone's bookshelves. And oftentimes, a shared interest will spark a conversation, which kills the reason I was poring over the shelves so intently in the first place.

Anyway, I never relaxed. I said hello and goodbye to a few people, and nobody was rude to me, but I was ready to leave right away last week. I felt "lost" in a room full of people who spoke the same language and had the same sort of culture. This is such a common feeling for me, and I wonder if it's this very thing that has perpetuated in me a very liberal mindset. I very rarely feel myself the center of the universe, because my own shyness makes me so very aware of the existence of the vast rest of humanity.

She also remarked upon the fact that criticizing someone else's accent is another way of making ourselves feel superior, and making the other person feel lost, and so I suppose I have to stop constantly correcting my brother-in-law's grammar. Which will, of course take all the fun out of our interactions.

December: It's the most wonderful-crazy-ass time of the year...

Since we are about to start December, I thought this would be a fun time to make some lists. Holiday-type lists. What I want to do this month, things I need to do this month, present ideas for me...have I mentioned I love presents?

We gave up the traditional advent calendar a long time ago. For several years we did a paper chain - during Thanksgiving weekend we would come up with a list of 24 fun things we wanted to do during the holiday season, write one activity on each strip of paper, and make a paper chain out of it. Each day, one kid would get to take the link off the chain, read it, and we did that activity on that day. Some of our activities included: driving around and looking at lights, reading a holiday story together, make a holiday craft together. I tried to be mindful of the calendar as I made the chain, taking into account days off school, holidays such as Chanukah and St. Nicholas, family activities, etc. This was a big hit, but as the kids have gotten older, and our calendar has filled more quickly, we were forgetting to do our activities more often. So here is a small list of fun December-y activities I'm hoping we get to this month:

1. Look at lights. This is something we do every year, and often more than once. The most fun excursions are the impromptu ones - maybe we've gone out to dinner and we drive around on our way home. Or I make hot cocoa for everyone and we just go.

2. I did find a few holiday crafts I'd like to make, including the jar lanterns in this month's Family Fun. I'll take pictures of any I make.

3. Go to the Solstice dinner at the UU church downtown. I was very excited to see they had one. After the dinner, we'll come home, exchange our gifts (everyone is doing handmade this year) and probably have a fire outside, depending on the weather.

4. Bake cookies. I didn't do it last year. This one may not happen, as my weekends are getting very full.

5. Take lots of pictures of the everyday stuff this month. Ali Edwards always does a December scrapbook, and I've always loved the idea - it's generally a chipboard book, with one photo per page for each day of the month. A lot of the pages are holiday oriented, but not all of them. I like the idea of paying attention to each day during such a crazy busy month.

Things I still need to do! Soon!

1. Put up the tree. I'm not worried about this one - I refuse to put up my tree before Dec. 1.

2. Figure out who's getting what and doing the getting. Yikes, I hate waiting this long.

3. Figure out where we're going during the break. I know what we're doing the first few days, but I'm waiting on some family members' feedback regarding the rest.

4. Make a doctor's appt. I need to get my cholesterol checked. Not really holiday-related, but it needs to be done.

5. Finalize anything that has to be made. I stipulated that Yule gifts be handmade this year, but I still haven't figured out my gifts. Luckily I only do 2 - one for each kid. Makes it easier.

I'm going to think on my fun list - presents for ME! Whee! and post it tomorrow, as my hot chocolate is getting cold, and we just can't have that. After 3 years of never taking a sick day from school, my son was sent home with a nasty fever and feeling dizzy, so tomorrow will be a down day. I got my cards in today, so I think I'll work on those tomorrow. Have a good night, and stay warm.

Happy Happy Thanksgiving!

How on earth did I let a Thanksgiving (on a Thursday, no less) get by without a Thank*ful Thursday post? It may have been the extraordinary amount of wine I drank. Which was really good, by the way - definitely on the list. Anyway, I am also disgusted with myself for not taking any pictures - see above-mentioned excuse. And I call myself a scrapbooker.

Anyway, without further ado, this week I am thankful for:

1. Thirsty Owl winery in New York. I'm not much of a wine drinker; my wine of choice tends to be Reisling, because it's relatively sweet. A friend introduced me to their moderately priced, and way delicious reisling and, even better, their Diamond, which is a little sweeter. I don't care if you wine snobs think I'm a wuss - it's good, and much of my Thankgiving evening passed by in a delicious, very affectionate buzz.

2. My dishwasher. Without which I would still probably be scouring things.

3. The fact that I'm off today, and that my family has allowed me to spend the day either napping or reading. The happy drunken buzz has translated itself to a woman of no energy today.

4. Carbs. Wonderful, delicious carbs. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, biscuits, pie. An Adkins follower, I am not.

5. All the friends and family I am blessed to know and love.

Thank you to all of you for reading. And I wish you and your's a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Shh. We're going to talk about...religion.

I should preface this post by mentioning it is spiritual in nature, and while it is not judgmental, if you are uncomfortable with such personal topics, you should probably go ahead and leave now.

Religion is a taboo subject in polite company.

Bringing religion or spirituality into a conversation is akin to farting on a first date - you just don't do it. One should never discuss religion or politics if one wants to keep the peace.

The thing is, I like to talk about spirituality. I find most religions empirically interesting - even if have no interest in actually following your beliefs, I'll sit and listen to you talk about them. We had Mormon elders (young Mormon men leave home for two years when they are 19-20 years old and perform a "mission" - living together and performing acts of charity wherever they are sent. Not old men - which is what I thought they were when they were first mentioned.) volunteering twice a week at the office where I worked. I asked them endless questions about their beliefs, which they were kind enough to answer without trying to convert me. I enjoyed these conversations immensely, and learned a lot about a significant part of our population.

Our spirituality is such an important part of ourselves, it saddens me that many people do not feel comfortable having a mature conversation about it. I personally do not subscribe to any one religion, but consider myself on a journey - an exploration of my own spiritual self. When my friend S. suggested to me in the spring that we start a spiritual discussion group, I jumped at the chance. An opportunity to have respectful and informative discussions about what people believe, or don't believe...this spoke to me on the deepest level. We began the group only two months ago with only two rules - be respectful and do not judge. We are there to learn and explore, not to pass judgement on others. We call it "a safe space for spiritual exploration."

We are a small group so far, and we have no name, so I've been calling it "my spiritual discussion group" which is a bit cumbersome for my taste, but it's the best descriptor I've got. One of the things I miss most about organized religion is the fellowship and spiritual guidance for my children, and I've been wanting to visit a Unitarian Universalist church, but have not wanted to go alone. Since we are so small yet, and the idea appealed to the rest of our members, we are visiting the church as a group tomorrow.

I feel that over the past few years I've neglected this so important part of myself. This discussion group is helping me to address my spiritual needs, as well as giving me a chance to talk about something I'm truly interested in with like-minded people.