End of the year

musings

Before the parties start. lol. There’s a nod of grog to the past.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Tiffany rose window at Christmas. Painting by Peter Richardson.

Holiday season 2022 seems particularly dampened this year. As if our lives, collectively have been captured. Every marker of holiday cheer has been diminished somehow, putting the brakes on. It’s the mood of things.

Gladness and warmth are what I crave in the holidays. The misty view of past present future Christmasy cheery items all at once. Like the array of stolen documents on Mar a lago floor, but of good stuff. One can’t get away it seems from the worries and collective stories we share. As the internet insnares us for everything all the time, I learn my package has arrived before the doorbell rings.

My wish for the new year circles around becoming more centered in my life rather than in others lives. The difference is subtle but real as there is no intension to become more isolated, but to continue to know more people and things through it, the internet. Elon Musk and Trump and all the rest who grab the spotlight and never leave, hammering at the media, at the internet, pouring resources in for that one and only purpose to overwhelmingly aggressive results. So we will meme them through the holiday making some cheer we need badly, albeit, cranky mean-ish cheer.

Late December is for looking back to the things that won’t come again and for the people we have lost as well. And going through closets.

Nature beings in the real winter of things means going into dormancy and preparation for the much anticipated newness. The last few days of sun lowering in the sky sooner and rising later marks the end of the solar year. In a moment, in the true magic of life the sun begins increase in the sky to eventual warming temperatures. There is a majesty to the Winter Solstice that undeniable. Praise of Summer is a very different thing and will emerge as it does with a sneaking persistence of joy that bursts with new life, maturing and revealing the fruit of its toil.

Before we can ring in the new year with some plans and all the new the new year always brings, we make room. The revision begins with some good byes and some willingness to renew ties, wether it’s a shirt in the closet or work related ideas, stuff just comes up for review as things slow. Even in our busy 2022, nature and the order of things prevails. Nature prescribes the order and we comply.

Letting go and having a rest is the prescription, as we connect with our more intimate nature of family and friends. No matter what the time zone we are resetting in a very real way. The rest gives us a bit of amnesia as we come back, into session, into finance, into a new year, yet there are those who won’t want it. Those folks who have wanted to keep the clock set to 2020. Let us dream them out of our renewal. Empty the closets of the nonsense we hear. Empty the closet of metaphor, of lies and all that holds us back from grappling with the real problems we face for government to handle. Regulation perhaps of some social media and pending Department of Justice business. The money and effort wasted on holding us in a holding pattern is not wasted, but brought us through skulduggery nearly to our knees. Get ready to stuff all that nonsense into a big garbage bag and take it out for “recycling”, as nothing is ever really gone but transformed.