You can’t open a newspaper or peruse the new book shelves at the library without coming across yet further evidence of the many benefits of meditation: stronger immune systems, lower stress levels, greater serenity, improved relationships… world peace! May this be the year.
For another resolution, please see Declutter.
Every year I plan to be organized enough to start our vegetables INDOORS instead of succumbing to the purchase of seedlings at the garden center. I’ve managed it only twice, but I remain hopeful. The beautiful High Mowing Organic Seeds catalogue just arrived in the mail, with its tempting photographs of artichokes, fennel, and ornamental gourds… items I know will never be seen in our tiny, semi-shaded Mid-Atlantic garden unless they fall out of the grocery bag on the way to the house. However, those Japanese greens and Red Russian kale look pretty interesting.
I still have time. (And so do you!)
Remember the sketch of Don (December 27th)? Here is the other half: Helga, lovely, artistic, playful, generous, kind, and madly in love with Don. When I bring a bouquet from the garden into the house, I think of Helga, who taught me its transformative power. Today is her birthday, but cancer sent her across the rainbow bridge eleven years ago when she was far too young to go. Happy Birthday, Helga. I hope you are surrounded by flowers, with a dog in your lap.
Helga
Here is our Christmas cactus, budding and blooming in the midst of winter, a cheerful and optimistic omen for new beginnings.
Thank you for a wonderful year, faithful and enthusiastic blog readers! I have lots of ideas and plans for 2011, although after 365 days of posting I may take a break occasionally and not post EVERY day. But I won’t miss any birthdays. And, if there are people and events that you would like to call to my attention, please feel free to speak up.
Happy New Year to everyone, and may it be a year of budding and blooming for you all.
When our son was spending his first New Year’s Eve in Japan, he reported to us on the local celebrations of this most important holiday.
While we at home in the U.S. are staying up late to eat and drink, dance, and generally whoop it up with family, friends, and total strangers, in Japan the courtyards of shrines and temples are slowly filling with hundreds, even thousands, of patient, silent people waiting to make hatsumode—the first visit of the New Year.
On the stroke of midnight, all over the country, the doors open, and the temple bells begin to ring. And they ring for a total of one hundred eight times, representing the 108 sins (such as vanity, garrulity, prejudice, ingratitude, and unruliness) from which humankind must be freed before achieving nirvana. It’s part of a longer turning-of-the-year celebration during which people visit family, pay debts, eat special symbolic foods, and exchange gifts. (Although it seems that in Japan EVERY event—first trip to the dentist?—is an opportunity to exchange gifts.) What a contrast to Times Square, and beyond, where people are probably racking up those 108 sins right and left.
This is a sketch of a temple courtyard (but not on New Year’s Eve) from one of my Japan sketchbooks.
Christopher
Every year Washington National Cathedral exhibits a number of examples from its large collection of Nativity scenes from around the world. The exhibition runs through January 7th, 2011.
This is one of my favorites, a scene made from mud and animal dung by children in Kenya.
Doug
If you have never been to the Garden of Lights at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland, I recommend it. Inside the Conservatory, different local musicians perform each evening, and you can fortify yourself with hot cocoa. Then, sufficiently warmed, you can venture out into the gardens. In summer this is a place of sunshine and glorious blooming color, but at the moment it’s a magical fairyland of lights twinkling in the darkness.
The best time to visit is when it’s bitterly cold, because it is not crowded. However, you might then be wishing for Irish coffee and hot toddies instead of cocoa.
—Howard Thurman
In going through a stack of old sketchbooks, I came across this sketch of Don—whose birthday it just happens to be today—sitting in his shirt-sleeves in his sunny garden, whereas at the moment he is undoubtedly surrounded by heaps of snow. Surprise! and happy birthday, Don! I hope you are having a lovely celebration despite the weather.
And beware, anyone else whom I may have sketched. You may turn up here on your own birthday.
Lauren
Don
Karla & Rob
December 26th is the first of the seven days of Kwanzaa, a festival created in 1966 as a celebration of African cultural and historical heritage. Born of the Civil Rights movement, it was originally proposed as an alternative to Christmas for African-Americans who preferred not to follow the religious traditions of the culture that had uprooted and dispossessed their ancestors. However, for many families it has come to be an additional, rather than a replacement, celebration.
Kwanzaa derives from a Swahili phrase meaning “first fruits,” and its creation was inspired by African harvest festivals, but “fruits” carries a larger meaning beyond the literal, encompassing as well the blessings of family, faith, work, and cultural heritage. Each of the seven days has a special theme and is celebrated accordingly, through openly renewed commitment to significant values, storytelling, the exchange of gifts, special foods, and appreciation of traditional African art and handcrafts.
Kwanzaa has been labeled disparagingly an “invented” festival, but this criticism seems both mean-spirited and short-sighted. Every festival we celebrate was “invented” at some point as the outward manifestation of a people’s beliefs, hopes, and dreams. Somebody had to be the first to drag an evergreen branch indoors as a reminder of the the eventual return of spring and new life.
This sketch is from the Smithsonian’s wonderful Seasons of Light at Discovery Theater, which each December describes and dramatizes winter festivals of light from many cultures.
