That time of waiting… Christmas has gone and contained all the elements expected and traditionally upheld. Family, games, yummy food, mulled wine, cheating at cards, ping pong, crying babies, building towers and consequent tumblings, walks and talks, table stories - then they all went home. It’s quiet. Beds are stripped and remade. I am already missing the buzz of people, little voices and big ones. Bustle, bodies in the kitchen, on sofas and across the rug with the train track. We burst at the seams for a short while and now those seams have eased back into themselves.
.These are a few days when perhaps it’s time to sit and think a bit. A new year lies ahead, there are already some things pencilled into the calendar here, but by and large what waits is a big empty space. I don’t like filling up dates too far in advance. All the wise spiritual folk on Instagram are dispensing advice for managing our lives well in the next 12 months. Keep growing seems to be the general consensus of opinion. Manifest the life you deserve and yearn for…not bad advice and there’s plenty of it mixed in with holiday suggestions. Retreat locations. Self betterment courses. There is only one who is currently advocating ‘doing nothing’, @melrobbins. At first this suggestion irritated me because it dropped into my email when the house was full of family and the possibility of ‘nothing’ was a far point on my personal horizon. Irritating also because I really wanted to press the ‘stop’ button but couldn’t. Her words made great sense, but frankly the timing didn’t. Now, however, with the silence ringing in my ears and BB preparing to go for a day’s golf, I can sit with her thinking and work out quietly how I want to move into the new year that lies ahead. There is a slight melancholy in the air, a lack of motivation. Mustering up purpose is not always straightforward, especially when so much of my purpose and identity has focused on family, our children and their lives. For some time now the realisation that they are fully fledged and there is little need for my input, has identified a vacancy. I can see that this feeling is repeated year on year at this time. That when they are here, I’m restored, when they leave, I’m bereft. It is a little death, a small grieving and only for a short time, until I reassert that other me. The one who knows and lives a good life separate from them. It is always thus.
Perhaps now is the time to practice the presence of God, which sadly gets a little lost among the crumpled wrapping paper and slices of turkey. Even though I dare to place Jesus at the centre of everything, knowing my family have moved in other directions. I like to hope that in my heart and from that place comes my action into our family group at all times. That Christ, another word for everything, infuses our household with love and union. Over the Christmas period I’ve heard myself say things that are not of love. My own ears shocked by a sentence formed by my mouth…. Something coarse or judgemental, who is speaking? I realise it’s me, but me has lost connection with real ‘I’ and functions very much from a surface level. Clearly there’s work to do. Perhaps betwixt and between is the ideal time to reestablish connection.
Outside a hurling wind gusts across the garden with an apocalyptic type force. Does it herald the wind of change? Possibly. Weather so cleverly represents mood and delivers with it’s greyness and violence, a picture of unpredictability and bleakness. Right here at my back door. A necessary path, perhaps, upon which we must all tread to arrive at peace. There is stillness and quiet inside the cottage and wild fomentation outside. The trick will be to harmonise these two and bring steadiness out of it. Peace. What will my contribution be? This, a microcosm of the bigger picture
.Over Christmas, something I realised is that my personal state of being can greatly inform what takes place around me. Let me offer an example, I had a minor melt down on a lack of fresh herbs - I didn’t do any of the Christmas food shopping because I had flu and wasn’t quite back to 100%. This lack of herbs caused my brain to explode in tears and activate the fully unreasonable in me. Much to the dismay of my son, his partner and BB. I had to go away and weep it out, meanwhile my dear husband made his thousandth trip to the supermarket….. for herbs, my son offered a healing hug and gentle words. Their ‘presence’ soothed my lack of it. Gandhi said “be the change you want to see”. Don’t we all know that keeping peace, a sense of calm and contentment, stems from each individual? It is a solitary personal chosen act in a corporate community and when we each offer it, there is a chance of success. Warring is easy, finding fault, setting ourselves against someone or something is seemingly justified because they’re the wrong ‘other’. What then follows is disagreement, argument, dissent and fighting. It starts within ourselves, in our families, communities, countries and infects the world with a global dissatisfaction. It starts with each of us.
2024 waits and in using this quiet few days to explore my place in it, I hope to find a peace that stretches across water, through space and time, to locate itself with love in those places torn up and shredded by hate. I wish you peace and love, join it with mine and together we’ll make a better world.
Till the next time
A
Hello A
Glad you have found a quiet moment space to reconnect with your writing and perhaps your mind after a whirlwind of Christmas family activity. Absolutely the best of times to be celebrated, but so are these quieter moments of reflection and to a certain degree anticipation of what a New Year will bring forth. I am sending up positive vibes for all good things especially in the things that matter mostly the benefits of good health and well being and with that your peace of mind.
Sending you much love into this forthcoming New Year x