Solstice 2022/New Year’s 2023

Dear Ones,

A year later than last I wrote, the strange and challenging times in the world around us, both here in the U.S. and in the larger world, continue: Covid numbers on the rise again, increasingly compelling, scary and in-your-face evidence of climate emergency, escalating devastation in the Ukraine and the endlessly persistent presence of the orange-moron in the news. (About this last, I keep thinking of Henry II of England’s lament about Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett: “Will no one rid me of this damned/meddlesome/turbulent priest?!”) My heart aches for the so-many people and four-leggeds dealing with so much upheaval, loss and suffering, made so much worse by the current intense and freezing weather and tornadoes. 

I feel evermore enormously blessed, in these turbulent times, to be living in this peaceful, gentle, throwback-to-the-fifties town in my sweet, little, recently updated (new windows, new bright mango-yellow exterior paint, newly refreshed decomposed granite walkway, newly refreshed redwood bark ground cover) 1938 cottage. I take refuge here, surrounded by the flourishing organic garden I tend: both in containers (greens for salad and for steaming, tomatoes, 30+ year-old rosebushes, a variety of overflowing succulents) and in the ground (one each of apricot, pluots, tangerine, plum, mulberry, Pakistani mulberry, and avocado trees along with a now-30-foot-tall pepper tree planted 4 years ago and a 15 foot young live oak planted this fall). The garden nourishes both my soul and my body in these strange times.

I continue, starting my fifth year of it this October, to be in a fallow, between-time creatively. The only moments of being lifted from the creative doldrums into the juicy creative energy flow have come at this time each year as the Grandmothers have blessed me with words and a companion image (each of yet another primordial/ancient Mother-Totem) for a Solstice/New Year’s card. I miss the creative flow but am clear that there is nothing to do about its absence but to live in radical trust that it will come again at some unknowable time, and to feel/compassionately embrace my crankiness and sadness about its absence whenever those feelings arise. I remember recently seeing an herbal tea bag message (!) that said, “Don’t just sit there, DO something!” It totally irritated me, yet one more typical message/imperative from our busy/doing culture. I yelled at it: No! Don’t just do something, SIT there!

For several months, from the first week of February till the first week in June, my usually calm, peaceful life was disrupted. I was plagued with phone service issues both with Spectrum and then with a server I tried as a replacement. Their service people tried various fixes over the course of NINE visits. Each time the problems returned the next day. There were other issues with the service I tried as a replacement for Spectrum and as well, problems with my cell phone service. It was baroque; it beggared belief!  Since I was dependent on the phone for my work with clients, it was hugely challenging and frustrating.

After each unsuccessful service visit, I’d be hysterical: ranting and raging, stomping around the house cursing and fuming. Feeling helpless and then overwhelmed that the help I’d reached out for wasn’t helping at all. I was clearly being thrown into a sea of deeply wounding childhood experiences. Suddenly, every minor frustration-of-everyday-life (spilling or dropping something, the kitty vomiting when I need to leave for an appointment, etc.) immediately triggered screaming rage and tears. That this went on for four months was exhausting. Still, I kept making space for all the upheaving feelings to keep pouring out, giving my self permission to feel all the awfulness without trying to ”fix” myself. Cuddling my teddy bear with the covers over my head was my respite during the worst of it. I refused to distract myself from the awful feelings by focusing on all that I had to be grateful for or what was going right in the rest of my life. There were breaks from the worst of it when I was working or reading or doing my chop wood/carry water quotidian chores

Then, suddenly the phones were fixed: they worked consistently and I was done with raging!  What I made of it all? It was, I concluded, a way for me to metabolize a bunch of deeply buried (currently content-less) rage, probably from childhood – it was quite a wild ride. I’m really grateful that I could make the space an allow myself to take it.  Since then, life has been back to normal and peaceful.

My commitment to my ultra-slow-lane, fairly reclusive (though occasionally gregarious) life remains unshakably strong and deep despite all the cultural pressures to live otherwise. I’m blessed to have gathered (over the years) a small circle of close, intimate soul-friends who –though they may live busier, more extroverted/connected lives often with large, close families – nevertheless, like me, live deeply inside themselves. They accept, appreciate and even delight in my different way of being in the world. One of these dear friends sent me a quote that speaks to the kinds of friendships these are in my life:

 “In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the ‘soul friend.’

In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home.

The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other.

Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's lives. With your anam cara you awaken the eternal.”

May you be blessed with such friendships and gentleness, with peace and with space to feel all your feelings in the year ahead, 

With warmest blessings, always,

Robyn