Beginning to see the lights

At the Sunrise River pools in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area, the water is high and there’s no sign of ice. Most of the snow on the ground has melted. We may, or may not, get more snow in the foreseeable future. My smartphone’s weather app has the snowflake symbol appear at times and disappear entirely at others. Such is life in a season of transition.

Have you heard there may be problems due to supply chain issues and/or shortages? We’ve already been informed that one of the Christmas presents we ordered will be delayed in delivery by an unspecified amount of time. We have a recommendation that may serve as at least a partial solution for many of you. Last year we got and mostly read the book Merry Midwinter. See if you can lay your hands on a copy of it and follow advice therein. If, understandably, you want more insight into what the book is all about, here’s a link to the author’s website page celebrating its publication. An even more abbreviated executive summary goes like this:

“... It demonstrates how we can dress our houses with traditional authentic evergreen decorations, give thoughtful and sincere gifts, celebrate more genuinely, and be more inclusive in all our activities. It suggests how we can be more considerate and honest in our dealings with each other. How, for instance, we can more authentically and genuinely send out greetings cards and ‘round robin’ letters. When we can ask for – and expect/get – support and help. How to deal with the challenges of difficult relatives and family members and to remember the less fortunate, lonely and sick. All this in a flurry of family recipes, craft instructions, historical facts and explanations, fresh and inspiring suggestions, stories, vignettes, childhood reminiscences and present day snapshots of a busy but dedicated family.” 

 

merry midwinter lights

Photo by J. Harrington

Consonant with the preceding version of the Christmas spirit, we hereby suggest that the current status of our neoliberal, global, capitalist society is a barely mitigated failure. We are destroying global ecosystems on which we depend for food, water, air and shelter. We have created unsustainable levels of economic and social inequity. We have foregone truth, respect, integrity and authenticity for the sake of social media memes, misleading ads, inept journalism all for the sake of accumulating more individual power and/or material wealth than we know how to enjoy. There is little, if any, sense of community among US. At the risk of overstressing a point, we close today’s posting with Yeats’ The Second Coming. Although we’ve closed with it before, it fits too well as a descriptor of the prevailing themes of our times. Nevertheless, we wish one and all a Merry Midwinter leading to better years ahead!

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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