Epiphany

 

Many years ago, my husband and I were in London, attending a service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on New Year’s Day. The young priest who gave the sermon spoke of the evils of war and the abuse of power by political leaders around the world, in particular speaking about the American President at that time, George Bush, and the conflict with Iraq. She told the biblical story of Herod the King commanding three wise men to follow up on stories about the birth of a baby who was touted as the King of the Jews and to report back to him.

The three wise men, she said, were wealthy and influential. They had followed the star, travelling on a path of power, position and privilege. She emphasized this point before continuing to say that, having seen and worshipped the infant, the three men were warned by God in a dream that they should not return to Herod And so, according to the Bible, they departed into their own country another way.

They travelled on another path, said the priest, without the power, position and privilege upon which they had always relied.

That sermon struck me powerfully at the time. And now, I believe, the virus has shown that power, position and privilege will not get us through a pandemic.

Clearly, we need a new path. Systemic inequality, racial violence, social unrest, the climate crisis and the need for reconciliation with indigenous peoples demand new approaches. The pandemic has made this need much more urgent. Crucial.

If we and the planet are to survive, we must change. Secretary-General António Guterres has proposed a new social contract as a way forward:

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/a-new-social-contract-for-a-new-era/

This idea has also been suggested by various environmental, political, spiritual and financial leaders. If you enter “Social contract 2021” or “Social contract pandemic” in your search engine, you’ll find several hundreds of results. The details vary, but all of them propose a radical shift in how we deal with pervasive inequalities and the climate crisis. Various consultation processes, assemblies and tables are recommended. That’s all needed for meaningful social contracts, no doubt.

But perhaps it’s also necessary for each of us to examine our own new path and to choose a better way individually. A social contract needs to be supported from the ground up as well as with whatever may be developed and imposed from the top. What can an individual do to choose as a better way?

It’s the time of year when, traditionally, people make resolutions. I don’t do that any more because I never keep them. And I don’t set out intentions, because I know what the road to hell is paved with. Often, at the time of Epiphany, I’ve chosen an inspiring word like trust or hope or community as something to guide me in the coming year.

This year the word I’ve chosen is real. I’m tired of lies, fabrications, dishonesty, alternate facts, fake news, and inauthenticity of every sort. The self-deceptions that prevent us from pursuing transformative change.

I’m going to pay attention to what is real in the world around me. In the people, In the ideas, in the words, in the physical world, in the things.

And most of all, in myself.

 

The Year Ahead

 

What are we to make of the year ahead? Whether it’s about the environment, the stock market or the pandemic, predictions seem to vary widely.

I recall the mythical story about Zhou Enlai, in response to a question about the impact of the French Revolution, saying “It’s too soon to tell.” And that reminded me of the old-fashioned Victorian cards that pictured a cherub wearing a sash that carried a New Year's greeting

It's early days yet, and the new year will appear in its infancy.

My friend Pat sent me a Christmas card that contained a quotation from a letter Rilke wrote to his fiancée Clara on January 1, 1907:

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

What wonderful letters people once wrote, before the days of email!!

I enjoy a British website which regularly sends out what they properly describe as “letters of note”:

https://lettersofnote.com/

Check out their website to order one of their beautiful editions of collected letters or just to sign up for email notifications which will send you random letters from time to time.

Today’s letter was from Sylvia Townsend Warner writing about having received an empty matchbox, one which was “neat and charming with a tray that slides in and out as though Chippendale has made it.” She writes that she had shut her imagination up in it instantly, and “it is still sitting there, listening to the wind in the firwood outside.”

At this time, I doubt many people are celebrating the gift of an empty matchbox so enthusiastically, but I do hope some of us are taking time to actually write real letters of thanks for our gifts.

Many have spoken about how thankful they are these days, especially for the various connections we can still have. Without close interactions, we’ve made greater attempts to greet our neighbours. We’ve made telephone calls. We’ve connected with old friends through email and social media. We’ve learned how to employ Zoom for family gatherings. We’ve used our wonderful postal services much more frequently to send and receive parcels, Christmas cards, and even real letters.

I’m hopeful that, if we keeping sticking together while following the rules, the sun will continue to rise, spring will come, and we’ll find new ways to meet the real challenges that we'll face in the year ahead.

I like the Victorian notion of relating the new year to the image of an infant. Neither has done anything wrong yet. They both need us to love and hope and care for them in order that they may flourish.

Let’s give 2021 the care and hope it needs. Let’s help it become the best year it possibly can be.

 

Christmas This Year

 

It’s that time of year again, but there seems to be a little less scurrying about and perhaps not so much getting and spending. It's a time which Bernadine Evaristo, in her novel Girl, Woman, Other, winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, refers to as “Greedymas.” 

For some time, the Christmas season in North America has been characterized by greed and gluttony, but this year people seem to be more thoughtful. Lots of people I know are giving donations to local social agencies. In one branch of my family, instead of doing the usual Secret Santa gifts, they are all contributing to a large family charitable donation to a non-profit organization that is helping with the current challenges.

Most people are doing much less travelling this holiday season, which is a good thing. Often people express concern about visiting older people who are “compromised.” It’s true that the compromised are more likely to get very sick and perhaps die if we contract the virus but, as far as I know, we are no more likely than anyone else to actually catch the virus.  The point is, you don’t want to pass the disease on to anyone, compromised or not.

The virus needs us to convey it from host to host. That’s why Dr. Henry and Minister Dix are telling us to stay home. Jane Godley says this more forcefully:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsiXbrH_vUA

Being in a global pandemic makes this a very different holiday season. It’s particularly hard for people who’ve experienced losses such as loss of income, loss of work, lack of contact with friends and family, and anxiety of the future. 

Even without a pandemic, Christmas and other holidays are often mixed for older people, who are remembering happy times and are missing loved ones who are no longer with us.. This year many will be missing children and grandchildren who are unable to visit. Lots of people will be spending Christmas alone. It will certainly feel lonely, but there will be a sense of satisfaction in doing the right thing. At a spiritual level, it might actually feel inspiring. There may be a new awareness of Peace and Goodwill towards others.

Which reminds me, on a nostalgic note, that I have always liked the Christmas carol which is set to the words from Longfellow’s I heard the Bells on Christmas Day:

https://poets.org/poem/christmas-bells

It’s encouraging to think that “The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, with Peace on Earth, Good-will to Men."

Perhaps that might be too much to hope for. But poets continue to give us encouraging words. Recently, my friend Marian sent me this quotation of Leonard Cohen’s parting words from his Old Ideas World Tour in 2012:

May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude."

I can think of no more appropriate words for us at this time.

May those blessings be with us all.

 

 

O Christmas Tree

 

Like most children, I was always greatly excited when, at last, the time came to get the Christmas tree. In those early years, my father would pack my brothers and I into the family car to head out to Lulu Island to find the most beautiful tree. Many years later, my husband and I and our friends would go to a property in Yellow Point where we could find, not a perfect tree, but one that was crowding out another and should be removed to allow the better tree room to grow. Those trees, my young daughter claimed, were like something from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas: scrawny, crooked, misshapen. Eventually she bullied us into buying a Christmas tree from a lot.

No matter where they were found, all these trees provided a good base for lights and decorations and offered that wonderful smell of the outdoors which so interested our various cats and dog, but some of my favourite trees were the ones my husband and I had in Montreal when we were first married. We had no decorations and very little money but we managed to get a tree. I had remembered a Christmas story I loved as a child about a lonely tree who was left behind when others were taken away to homes where they shone with light and tinsel. Happily, some children went out to hang cookies on that little tree and then the birds came to sit on the branches making it the most beautiful tree of all. Inspired by that memory, I made birds of various sizes from coloured construction paper and baked cookies with faces made of raisins, nuts and bits of maraschino cherries.

The practice of bringing evergreens in the home goes back hundreds of years. Egyptians, Romans, Celts and Vikings liked to bring various green plants and evergreens into their homes at the time of the winter solstice, in some cases to keep away evil spirits and illness and in others to celebrate new seasons, new growth and life over death. 

The origin of the modern Christmas tree is often attributed to Germany, and I grew up singing O Tannenbaum in honour of that. One legend about the German celebrations proposes that Martin Luther was responsible for the origin of the Christmas tree in 1500. As the story goes, Luther was walking through the snowy woods and was moved by the beautify of the snow glistening on the branches of trees. In response to this he brought a small tree into his house and decorated it with small candles to illustrate the Christmas sky.

It was the Victorian period that brought trees into popular use in Britain and North America. Queen Victoria, her German husband prince Albert and her children were pictured around the Christmas tree: https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/trees.shtml

Indigenous people have celebrated the winter solstice for millennia. While the tree is not the focus of solstice festivities, Tsatassaya White tells me that the cedar tree is of central importance to indigenous people, a tree of life that is a central source for ceremony and for many applications including cooking, clothing and ritual. To learn more about indigenous solstice festivals, you might sign up for the livestream event that Tsatassaya and Crimson Coast’s Dance Society are hosting on December 20^th:

https://www.bclocalnews.com/entertainment/indigenous-artists-mark-winter-solstice-with-new-music-and-dance-festival/

We continue to learn new things about the importance of trees in our lives. A friend sent me this recent article in the New York Times which describes the research of UBC Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard.  The article describes her work into mycorrhizal networks, the underground communication systems through which the dynamic exchange of resources and alarm signals through which resources and wisdom flow from the biggest and largest to the youngest and smallest trees:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html?referringSource=articleShare

Reading about the awareness and sensitivity of trees makes me wonder about the practice of cutting them down for our Christmas festivities, but many articles suggest that the Christmas tree industry provides positive benefits:

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/yardandgardenreport/2020-12-03/a-greener-christmas-tree

There’s something heartening about bringing a little of the outdoors into our homes. Not just the scent, but the spirit of the tree. As it is an ancient symbols of growth, transformation and connection, it’s not surprising that, at this time of isolation and separation, our Christmas trees are inviting us to communicate with them.  We feel affection our Christmas trees, as ee cummings described so poignantly in his poem Little Tree, which my friend Mark sent to me yesterday:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47304/little-tree

Trees are sending out good messages to us: Stay in place. Connect. Grow. Pay attention. Feel grateful.

 

 

 

Knitting Up the Raveled Sleeve of Care

Despite a few haphazard attempts, I’ve never been any good at knitting, but I was pleased when my granddaughter proposed that it was something we could do together. I told her I could teach her how to knit and pearl so that we could make some of those little six-by-six dishcloths, and then she could find a real knitter to teach her. My friend and knitting guide Trudy dropped off a couple of balls of cotton wool and some knitting needles, and so we began.

At this time of separation and isolation, it feels good to be knitting. Through the years, many people have found solace in this activity during stressful periods. My granddaughter points out that knitting is a lot like life in that sometimes you have to go back and redo a couple of rows before you can move forward.  My own tendency is just to blunder on, ignoring the mistakes, which is why my granddaughter will be a better knitter than I. And a better human being.

Knitting has long been recommended as a cure for boredom. Theatre critic, writer and satirist Dorothy Parker took her knitting with her everywhere. In reviewing a forgettable production, she advised her readers, “If you don’t knit, bring a book.”

Although it helps with stress reduction, there's a dark side to knitting. Virginia Woolf thought of knitting as therapy. Early in 1912 she reported to Leonard Woolf, before they were married and shortly after she had been in a rest home, that "Knitting is the saving of life." That worked until 1941, when Virginia took her own life, drowning herself in the river Ouse.

Years ago, I used to watch one of my colleagues knit quickly and furiously through tedious administrative meetings. Observing her grim expression, I was reminded of Madam Defarge in Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. With her stitches, Madame Defarge secretly knits a register of the names of the revolution’s intended victims, those who were to be executed. When she is asked about it, she claims it is just a pastime, but later smiles and says she may find a use for it and, if so, “I’ll use it.” And she did.

During the seventeen days that my husband was in hospital before he died, I sat beside him, knitting a long scarf. Nothing fancy and somewhat uneven, it contained rows of stitching on patterned wool and served as the kind of mindless activity I needed through those long days and nights. After his death, I gave the scarf to my daughter, telling her that I had stitched all of life and death into it. I don't remember ever seeing her wear it, although she says she has done.

Yarn representing the thread of life is a very old concept. The mythology of Ancient Greece tells the story of the Morae, or the Fates, who spin, measure, and cut the length of each person’s life. https://mythagora.com/bios/fates.html

These days many lives are being cut short, and it seems that many things are falling apart. Unraveling. I think of Macbeth’s longing for the Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care. The sleep, it suggests, will knit up and make new again all that has been unravelled.

Knitting is a useful image for what we will need to do to heal our damaged world. We will need to bring things back together so that the thread of life can continue. We will have to integrate a lot of pain and loss and knit it all together. The broken world, just like broken bones, will tale time to be knit together.

And how will we do it? Sitting out on my patio this afternoon, I watched the trees swaying gently in the light wind and thought of how much we have been learning recently of the ways in which trees and fungi are communicating and knitting their connections underground. Dr. Richard Atleo has proposed that the Nuu-Chah-Nulth people's core belief of Tsawalk, “everything is one,” offers a foundation for building more equitable and sustainable communities: https://www.ubcpress.ca/principles-of-tsawalk

Maybe that’s a place to start. Acknowledging that everything is one, and honouring the connections we have and will need to forge in the future. And all those ravell’d things that we will have to knit up.

It looks like we’ll all have to stick to our knitting for the next many months and years to come.

 

 

 

Hibernation

This time of year, when the darkness increases until we reach Solstice and can see the return of longer days, I find myself thinking of hibernation. The increasingly tightened Covid regulations intensify that desire. I want to crawl under my big green Hudson’s Bay blanket and sleep for a long time.

Apparently, bears don’t technically hibernate, but rather they enter a state of “torpor” which seems to describe something of what I feel these days. In torpor, according to Science World, bears can sleep more than 100 days without eating, drinking, or passing waste. The remarkable thing about bears is that in this state they are able to turn their pee into protein. For some of us who need to get up two or three times a night to pee, this sounds like a very clever ability:

https://www.scienceworld.ca/stories/do-bears-actually-hibernate/

Bears figure prominently in children's books. From Winnie the Pooh, to Rupert the Bear, Aloysius, Paddington Bear, and so on, children have been entertained for generations by bear protagonists. 

For adults as well, bears figure in our literature. In The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s most famous stage directions is “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Rafi Zabor won the Pen/Faulkner award, for his novel The Bear Comes Home, a brilliant work of jazz fiction which features a saxophone-playing bear as the protagonist.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-04037-1

Marian Engel’s novel Bear, about a woman who is empowered as a result of her sexual relationship with a bear, won the Governor-General’s Literary Award. Rudyard Kipling wrote about Baloo, the bear who is an important teacher in The Jungle Book. Bears provide great inspiration for fiction writers.

And bears are also subjects of interest for non-fiction writers. UBC Professor Emeritus Dr. Margery Fee recently wrote an important book about the majestic and iconic polar bear:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/polar-bear-margery-fee/1130783744

My friend Liz has said that we need happy songs to cheer us these days, and writing about bears reminds me of Teddy Bears’ Picnic, one of my favourite songs as a child:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAKcqXA-EQs&list=RDIrvkHAxnjzI&index=5

I used to sing this to my granddaughter when she was two and three years old. She loved the song and ask for it to be sung. again and again, but at some point, just before the line about Mummies and Daddies taking the little bears home to bed, I would see large tears rolling down her face. There's something about happy songs, I realize, that can also make us feel sad, perhaps because of the recognition that happiness is often followed by sadness or disappointment.

There were many bears around the North Vancouver home of my daughter and son-in-law, and my granddaughter recalls seeing a bear and her two cubs on her school grounds. The children backed away cautiously! There was a bear outside our bedroom window one night when my husband and I stayed at their North Vancouver house, and one day a bear broke into their shed to get at some garbage. My son-in-law figured out how to deal with that problem and created a short video to teach others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAilTfoUfC4&t=2s

Many homeowners and the bear protection people were pleased with his video. It has now had 19,000 views!

There’s lots to learn from and about bears. 

I’m trying to emulate them through torpor. It’s said to help animals survive difficult periods, and I think it a little suspended animation can also help humans at this time.

What’s important, though, is for us to emerge from brief states of torpor with more energy and greater determination to do whatever it takes to see us -- and to help others -- through the darkest days of the year.

Note: Is you want to write to me with comments about any of my posts – or with suggestions for happy songs – please write directly to me at wayword@telus.com. Sadly, replies to Carol Matthews These Days don’t reach me.

 

Bubbles

 

When I was young and all too free, and living in Montreal, my roommate and I often would jump into a cab to go to Whitey’s Hideaway where we’d drink gin and listen to an excellent jazz jukebox. A couple of young men we would meet there were impressed with the largesse we demonstrated with taxis and with heavy tipping. They said we were like characters from Guys and Dolls and dubbed me “Peaches” and her “Bubbles.”

I thought of this the other day when a friend phoned and sang me that old tune, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. It’s a song with a century-old history.. Written by Nat Vincent, John Kellette, James Kendis and James Brockman, it was first sung in 1918 and was a major Tin Pan Alley hit. Since then it has been sung by Dame Vera Lynn, Doris Day, Dean Martin, and many, many others. I find it a sweet song, a kind of cheerful ditty, although the verses are poignant:

http://mountainstatescollector.com/im-forever-blowing-bubbles-will-never-fade-and-die/

The song quickly became the club anthem of the English Premier League team West Ham United and it has been sung at their games every year up to the 2019 game in Olympic Stadium.

https://spartacus-educational.com/Bubbles.htm.

Through the years, the word “bubble” has come to mean many things: A sparkling drink, something rising to the surface or, more negatively, a place inhabited by someone who is overly sheltered. Living in a bubble has been a criticism of daydreamers or people not open to new ideas.

Bubble was a charmingly ditsy character in the TV serious Absolutely Fabulous and a rather unsavory chap in Trailer Park Boys. Bubbles was also a fish in Finding Nemo.

However, since the virus began the word “bubble” is mostly used in reference to the restricted number of people one is limited to seeing. That’s a total of six. Fewer, if possible.

Although most people are trying to live in tiny bubbles, we notice that there are still a fair number of big bubbles around. I think of them as Bubbles of Privilege or Bubbles of Entitlement. They’re inhabited by people who think the rules don’t apply to them. People who think that their wants and needs are more important than those of the rest of us.

The precise meaning of the term seems to be lost on many people. I’ve heard people say things like, “They are sort of in our bubble,” or “She is in one of my bubbles.”

A bubble is intended to mean a fixed number of people and an exclusive membership, i.e. just one bubble, and you can’t move from one bubble to another.

Sometimes people say the regulations are confusing, or that that they don’t know what a “bubble” or a “household” is, but I think in our hearts we all know what a tiny bubble is meant to be, and the rules seem pretty clear to me.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/emergency-preparedness-response-recovery/covid-19-provincial-support/restrictions

I’m hopeful that by next summer a vaccine will become available and everything will begin to look brighter. In the meantime, if we follow the regulations and keep our bubbles tiny, we may be able to flatten the curve again.

I believe we can. 

We must!