2025Year

It’s not yet 4:30 and already the sun has sunk behind the western hills.  The pinkish gray twilight won’t last much longer.

I’ve just returned from filling the bird feeder.  I was reluctant to come in, so I lingered in the yard listening to a chickadee scolding me for letting the seed level get so low.  It was also an opportunity to bask in the day’s few remaining moments of sunshine.  They are precious in this dark and cloudy December.

Winter solstice – the longest night of the year – is upon us. Keep reading

Several mid-November snowfalls, just heavy enough to leave a thin layer of white on the ground, caught me off guard.  I hadn’t even begun to make the normal winter preparations.  Up until a week earlier I’d been clinging to the notion that it was still the height of fall. But getting caught in a snowstorm as my husband and I were trying to fly home from Chicago on Thanksgiving weekend finally disrupted my fantasy. 

The day after we returned from our Thanksgiving travels I found myself having to shift gears again.  Advent, the Christian season of ritualized waiting and preparation to welcome the coming of the divine Light at Christmas, had begun.  Advent is my favorite liturgical season. But this year it, too, caught me off guard.Keep reading

Spring equinox – the time when the hours of daylight and darkness are equal – arrived just a couple of weeks ago.  It should be a time of balance. Yet I feel decidedly unbalanced, like I’m living in a Picasso painting.  Everything seems stretched and elongated, nothing is where you expect it to be, things that belong above are below and vice versa.  “Surreal” is the best description I can come up with.
Our government continues to unravel at an astonishing pace, and for no good reason..
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We’ve begun the fifth week filled with chaos, confusion, and fear, and I’m at a loss for words.  Until now my primary coping strategy has been to try to understand the “why” behind what’s happening and then explain it in a rational way.  But these days that’s not working.

So, I’ve had to create a new daily rhythm and routine.  To help me stay grounded I find that I need to include these basic practices every day..Keep reading