a wabi sabi Christmas?

Santa and the reindeer should have no problems in our neck of the woods. There’s several inches of snow on the roofs and the ground and temperatures will stay well below freezing at least through Christmas Eve. Looking at the family letters to Santa, all the adults are pretty undemanding. I think that’s a good sign but it is frustrating for those of us who like to hear “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” come Christmas morning.

I suspect much of my desire to overproduce at Christmas is based on decades of being exposed to marketing that tells us buying something is the key to health and happiness (and someone else’s wealth). Meanwhile, I’m sitting in a comfy chair wearing a flannel shirt and a brown cardigan, eating thumbprint cookies the Better Half baked for me (again) with a couple of mellow dogs loafing about and a drive that I’ve again cleared of recently fallen snow, giving me an unaccustomed sense of accomplishment.

impermanent, not quite perfect, almost complete

Photo by J. Harrington

Some time over the next week I need to run a handful of errands, but much of Christmas appears to be as much under control as ever. The core of wabi sabi is finding beauty in that which is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature. Much of this afternoon, and a little of this morning, has been spent watching the blue sky behind the snow covered tree crowns be sometimes covered by thin clouds, other times by thicker, gray clouds. When the sun is shining on the snow from an uncloudy part of the sky, the brilliance is almost overwhelming. When clouds dim the sun and backdrop the tree tops, the appearance much resembles Japanese paintings.

Toward the Winter Solstice

Timothy Steele - 1948-

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;                           
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

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