As we enter the season of magi(c)

 One of our favorite songwriters, Joni Mitchell, has a refrain in her song Big Yellow Taxi, that goes like this:

Don't it always seem to go 
That you don't know what you've got 
Till it's gone 

We remember reading, but not who wrote, that one of the hardest things to notice is what's missing or not there. We've observed recently that our cardinals, the pair or two who were hanging around all Summer, have been absent from the feeders for weeks approaching a month or more. Where they've disappeared to is beyond our ken, but we miss them, especially now that we've noticed they're gone.

male cardinal at a December feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Another thing we've been missing during the past several years, even before COVID-19 struck, is the Christmas spirit of "peace on  earth, good will toward all." Several of the early Christmas presents we've given to ourselves this year prompt us to be more thoughtful and kind whenever possible. To act instead of reacting. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot (one of my presents to myself) points out that

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

We can easily scale that observation down from the cosmic and global to the individual, can't we? In two days the most magical month of the year begins. It includes the shortest day and longest night  of the year. Shall we practice acting in the season soon to begin so that, when the days again grow longer, being kinder to each other, including ourselves, and our only home, will be a permanent habit we've developed? 

Red Bird Explains Himself

By Mary Oliver

“Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bringing sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed there, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.  Do you understand?  for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.  And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.”

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Please be kind to each other while you can.