All is well

The news came this morning. My heart is light and bursting with joy. My baby is safe. All of the uncertainty and wandering of life is over for her, she has achieved happiness. I spent the day yesterday wondering if all had gone well and this morning brought the good news. I spent much of the day yesterday tempted to call her and find out but each time I reached for the telephone I stopped, realizing that this would be a busy day for her and the last thing she needed was for her cell phone to ring during the ceremony and hear the voice of Cassandra on the other end. No dire predictions, I see love and peace and happiness and rainbows and a child not just walking through life but skipping and singing and laughing and HAPPY! "A kiss for luck and we're on our way!".

Oh won't you stay, just a little bit longer?

And so, once again, Christmas passes. The season of warmth and compassion and cookies and the glow of anticipation and stare of wonder in the eyes of a child slowly withers as the petals of a rose. Christmas is the time when the cold, calculating, balance sheet minds of Western civilization fold their ledgers and remember that Mankind is their business. It is a time when the memory of home and family and lights and warmth and love are dusted off and held close. It is a time when the memory of the financial triumph is replaced by the memory of the stableboy. It is the time when getting is banished by the joy of giving. What is the part that we remember most? It is not the getting,a moment of unwrapping, a smile, a thank you, a feeling of peace because someone took the time to remember you. It is the giving, the planning, the consideration of the mind or needs of the receiver, the warmth that spreads from the mind to the heart when the final bow is tied and we can tell ourselves "Well done.". We don't remember the packages we opened but we do remember the look on the faces of those we love when they open the package we brought or the meal we cooked. It is the time when Mankind can be proud of itself. It is sad that it comes at the end of the year and marks a short period of our life in that year instead of coming at the beginning of the year and being a harbinger of the entire year to come.
There was a time when I thought the words of a Demi-Prophet were the wisest thing that I had ever heard. I had not experienced much of life at that time but now I have. If he were alive today, I would ask him "Imagine, above us only sky
Imagine, below us only dust
Imagine, where does your heart yearn to be?".
Christmas passes but I have a gift for Mankind. It is not a tangible thing, only an ephemeral, seasonal feeling. "Mankind, I am proud to be one of you today.".
Most of the world marks the year to come with a "Happy", "Happy New Year!". There is a unique place where the unity of mind and heart mark the new year with another "Happy", "Happy Christmas!". We will see which is appropriate for the year to come.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday. None of us knows what year you were born, never mind what day but this is the day we celebrate your life.
You sat on a hill and set the bar so high that none of us could ever reach it. We had a hard enough time with the first ten rules and spent our lives looking for an asbestos suit to wear to our funerals. Then you negated the ten and said there is only one. Love one another, that's the One. Suddenly the rules from the hill became easy, just follow the One. You did away with justice and installed mercy. Justice is for the deserving and the innocent. Mercy is for the undeserving and the guilty. There is little need for justice, the world cried out for mercy.
Happy Birthday! May this be the best day of your life, it is ours.

History

And it came to pass that on Christmas Eve of 1917 in Moscow, one of the founders of communism in Russia, Rudolph Kemenev, and his wife were sitting in their dacha by the fire. Rudolph's wife, Emma, said "OOH I think that I hear the sound of Santa's sleigh on the roof. I can hear the pitter patter.".
Rudolph said "Don't be ridiculous Dear, there is no such person as Santa Claus. That is simply rain that you hear on the roof.".
Emma said " Don't you be ridiculous. This is Moscow in December. It can't possibly be raining outside. Snow maybe but the pitter patter can't be rain because it can't be raining.".
Rudolph went to the window and opened it and stuck his hand outside. When he brought his hand back in it was soaking wet.
Emma said "I'm sorry, I should have never doubted you.".
Her husband replied "Of course because as everyone knows, Rudolph the Red knows rain Dear!".

Two revelations

It is not often that I get two revelations in one day. Last night I read two. They were written by different authors but in the same tone. Who would have ever guessed that Robert Frost and Garrison Keillor had anything in common? Why two? I always have three or four books partially read lying open beside the bed. Before I go to sleep and if I awake during the night, I read what strikes me at the moment. Frost's poem was "The Masque of Reason". It is about Job and God and I am sure it could be on Prairie Home Companion if they could get Gloria Steinem to narrate it. The Keillor book is "Liberty" and I recommend it to any man over sixty. It has the same theme as "Ethan Frome" but is in a lighter and more contemporary vein. Both reveal how life is what happens while you are making other plans. Things will work out somehow, there is just no rhyme or reason to what happens in life. Just don't mess with a diety with an agenda or a woman with a revolver.

An old friend

I awoke early this morning and looked outside to see that the snow had stopped falling. The sky was clear and dark but the stars seemed to have used this time to recharge their batteries.
Yesterday a question from one of my daughters led me to the volume of Robert Frost's poems. That volume was a birthday gift from my eldest daughter in 1999. I spent some time looking for the answer to the question and eventually found it. There I was with much to do and the volume of Frost in my hand. The to do is still to be done and I spent the day reading the thoughts of an old friend. I chuckled when I noticed that I again skipped over "Death of the Hired Hand" as I have done since I read it in high school. There is just to much to consider in that poem. I remember the darkness that I felt when I first read it. That was when I was young and wanted no part of such thoughts. Now that I am older, there are kinder facets to its theme and life has shown the relevance of how the harshness of expediency can be tempered by tenderness and human compassion. I will have to re-read it as I probably don't remember all of its message. The wall of pseudo-knowledge that I have built up around me must come down. There is more to life than tidbits of esoteric knowledge. There is something about a wall. As the new year begins today, perhaps a new outlook on living will come also. There is hope (when I addressed the wall I almost started off on a tangent about the Minoans but I stopped and thought about what I had just said and I didn't.). The Minoans will remain my own personal pleasure but that volume of Frost that came from a heart that truly understands what is important to me, will remain my own personal treasure!

Blanket of Peace

Yesterday was very peaceful. I went walking in the snow twice. The first time was so moving that I went again. There was close to a foot of snow on the ground and the snow was still falling and the wind was tolerable. It is so peaceful when it is snowing. The brown leaves and the dog waste are all covered up and it is very quiet.

This is the time that defines New England, the time of rest and reflection. If you spend time looking out of the window in the other seasons, all you see are things that have to be done. Mow the grass, trim the bushes, wash the car, or fire up the grill. If you spend time looking out of the window at the snow falling, all that you see is peace. All that you hear is peace. No dogs barking, no radios blaring, just the whisper of the snow as it settles itself in for a long Winter's nap. It is an alluring peace that holds your attention for quite some time until you start thinking of cocoa and baking and roasting. That is New England to me. A place and a people that are beautiful and peaceful. A place and a people that take the time to reflect on and value what is important. Peaceful, pensive, and pot roasty. The cities of New England are not all like that but the back roads and small towns are repositories of peace and quiet and people that don't speak unless they have something to say. Where else would someone write a poem about birches or write a diary about growing peas and cracking ice and walking beside the ocean? Watching peas and watching waves and appreciating them doesn't just happen. One has to learn to silence the cacaphony that is conversation and listen to the symphony of one's own mind. That rare skill is endemic to New England and learned by watching snow fall. That same snow falls on Chicago, hog butcher to the world, falls on the Northwest, where survivalists have guns as clean as their minds are clear of rational thought or thoughts of peace. When that snow falls on New England it finds peace. The west coast has surfers and Hollywood, the south west has Las Vegas, the South has Nascar and country music, the mid-atlantic states have the hustle and bustle of New York and the joy of Washington D.C. where northern hospitality is combined with Southern efficiency. New England has maple syrup and baked beans and fried clams and scallops and lobster and SNOW! A time to rest and reflect on what is really important. We don't have spaceports and mega-amusement parks and huge military bases and gold mines and copper mines and coal seams and oil fields. We do have beaches and parks and colleges and hospitals and museums and Fenway Park. The snow falls on all of them. We are poor in many things. There is a serious lack of failed banks and of failed financial organizations and government scandals and riots and natural disasters. The major historical disaster in New England was the Molasses Flood. We do have Fenway Park and snow. We also have a building with a light on top that forecast rain and snow and the state of the schedule for Fenway Park and our State House has a statue of a hooker in front and a model of the Sacred Codfish inside. We also have snow.