Tis the season....

When we speak

By Mark Nepo

I have only now realized that something endless has broken ground in me, and I have no choice but to live and love until it grows me like a tree.

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I met an old man at a gathering, and when everyone went on their way, he leaned into the hushed space between us and talked to me as if we were trees.

Scratching his chin, he said, "We start out thin and green and each time the sky grows dark, we think we will break, but the downpour makes us grow, though never straight, always twisting for the light, and strangely, the more we reach above the earth, the deeper something in us fingers its way down, and it is this-our unseen fingers reaching for the core- that keeps us from blowing away. Now there is no more running and very little swaying, and up till now, there have been many languages, though none that could be heard, just a creak at dawn and a moan at night, and sooner or later, we are brought down. It doesn't matter how. We are undone. But stacked we burn, and here the poetry rises from us, leaving wisdom in the ash."

Tis the season………

By Barbara Monahan

There are many of us who suffer throughout the year and the holidays bring that suffering to the forefront because the core to this celebration is about sharing life.

I am late with the holiday prep this year.  The pause I have experienced with not jumping right into the busyness has allowed me to see that life is not in all that we do but in who we are in all that we do.

I am reminded, after reading Mark’s story above, of a time before my children were born. They did not exist at all. Then after 9 months of pregnancy they entered life. We stood in the nursery staring at our first son the day we brought him home from the hospital and asked ourselves, “ok, now what do we do?” And I thought to myself how amazing it is that just a few days ago he was not here. He could not be touched, held or fed. Poof! Here he is!!!

Recently, after a lifetime of only knowing my parents as being here among us, poof, they are gone. Never knowing a time without them, they are now nowhere to be found. Memories of my experience with them remains and is what shaped me.

Our experiences and how we move through them is what matters in life and each experience is our legacy = leaving wisdom in the ash.