Merry Jolly Happy Wonderful Thankful

And as I spend a few moments to catch my breath before scurrying off on yet another Christmas related mission, I have to be thankful for a few moments. It's not thanksgiving, but the end of the year and the Christmas season always trigger reflection over the past year... I can lean towards getting all atwitter at some of the less than favorable things afoot in my life... and it is easy enough to invoke the "look at me, woe is me" thing... What I choose to reflect upon at this moment is all the things with which I have been blessed.

I could list or catalog or inventory the many blessings with which I am surrounded... my kids first and foremost, and the love and support of friends, my abilitiy to think and communicate, and my nice girl Maggie, who loves me without condition and reflexively... a warm house, and on and on and on... Liane is so very important to me, and I would be remiss without mentioning her. Rather than blather on and repeat and recook the same sentiments I leave you with this: Merry Christmas, and many blessings to you and yours in the coming year.

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." Thornton Wilder.

and again...

Besides the multitude of celebrities, I have been party to at least ten funerals this year, four in the month of January alone. Over Thanksgiving the father of another close friend was buried.Yesterday, my daughter and her boyfriend attended the funeral of a woman from her boyfriends Army Reserve unit, who involved in a horseback riding accident just before Thanksgiving, and passed away last weekend. My brother's mother-in-law died Wednesday at the age of 83. We go, we hug family, we hear eulogies, some powerful and inspirational, some tired and empty - some we don't hear at all, as we are lost in our thoughts of mortality and the meaning of it all...

Cayla, the woman whose funeral was yesterday, was 22. She was married January 9, 2009. Her husband was in Iraq when she was injured in the accident. She never regained consciousness... and last week the family made the decision to donate her heart, liver and kidneys for transplants. Four people will get new life because she lost hers. Cayla joined the Army right out of high school, and had been in Kuwait for a year from mid 2007 to mid 2008. She was in college seeking a degree in large animal veterinary science. It's over now, she is resting in the cold, frozen ground.

Her husband will have to go back to Iraq. Her unit will carry on without her. Her family has memories and a whole in their hearts. And life will go on, whether we want it to or not. My prayer is that her almost 11 months of marriage was fulfilling and made her happy. In years to come, her husband will be able to remember her and smile and know that their time was fleeting, but good. We all need to remember that life is like that, fleeting, but good. Embrace today, and each other.

first snow

And the snow begins to fall outside my window. It is the first snow of the season. The farmer has just finished cutting down the corn in the field across from my house. Everything is so quiet, a car goes by once in awhile, and the sound carries a long time. I always wondered why the quiet seems so much quieter this time of year, and the sounds that do come seem to echo across time and space almost endlessly... then I looked around and discovered - it's the leaves.

More so the lack of leaves. When the trees have leaves, there is a constant white noise of rustling, of the breeze meeting leaves and knocking around inside a tree, dusting the branches, caressing each leaf. And when those leaves have fallen, there is silence in their place. And the millions of leaves that serve as buffer or shields to all the sounds between our ears and the source of those sounds... swallow up and don't allow what we are able to experience in the purity of winter.

Taking a walk this time of year unlocks treasures that are kept hidden from us during the other times of the year. The leaves hide many things from us, and though I love the fall, and as the leaves leave us, they give us a splendor and grandeur that give new expression to the spectrum of color. When those leaves rest on the ground, they give our ears that same chance to drink in a spectre that eyes cannot comprehend. Nature has so many treats for all the senses, but this kind of quiet surely has to be a balm for the soul. The cool air dives into the lungs and refreshes and renews us as well, but being able to turn off all the other sounds and hear just what peace sounds like, is a peace that heals, a peace that caresses and soothes.

Yes, there will be the howling swirling gusts of winter that pound at the foundations, and the snow will pile up and bury many of these treasures, and the cold will be so raw and penetrating, and we will be left wondering what purpose we have in ever leaving our homes... but now, in this light, with the first snow falling, with not a sound to be had for miles around, I can feel the blood pressure plummet, I can feel a peace descending that won't be quickly dissipated. We all have our vision of a perfect day... and yes, a clear blue sky, with a whisper of a breeze on 75 degree day surely might be that.

But here and now - the grey in the sky is sprinkling the confetti that celebrates another change of season. That sky seems to have swallowed up every sound as well, so when that deer darts for cover just ahead, his hooves are like thunder, and we share a kinship of accelerated heartbeat and adrenaline, and does he know that he startled me almost in the same way that I startled him? Around the next bend in the trail, a fox and I share a moment of pensive study, as each wonders what the other will do. I have the luxury of stopping this time, allowing her to go wherever she would like, as I am not out seeking food, just more silence.

In this season of giving and receiving, nature wants to take part as well. It gives us that sense of awe and wonder, and reassures us of the timelessness of all things, this quiet existed eons before I got here, and will not be chased away by helter skelter busyness that people want to chase after. I have come to reclaim my gift of wonder, and the woods gives ceaselessly, unselfishly, breathtakingly, heartbreakingly, quietly.