A year of all things

Book Announce: The next Zoom call for readers who have finished reading The Beekeeper’s Question is January 11, 2025. One hour: 9:00 AM Pacific (10/mtn/11/central/12/east—US zones). Click here to get zoom link. Casual discussion on plot and background/backstories, how then and now are connected— whatever interests the group that shows up.

The following is a poem by Donna Ashworth, with commentary by me. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

When I say ‘happy new year’,

I’m not for a moment,

expecting this to occur,

for that is not possible,

a year must be all things.

This is the line that calms my heart: a year must be all things. Ann and I spent last week putting together a scrapbook of photos and handwritten commentary on the year past. It is a decades long commitment, a kind of life review, composing pages of collaged photos that help us reflect and remember. We lost a handful of friends this year, endured the rise and fall of our political hopes, and practiced the line below: letting happiness come and go.

Happiness must come and go,

like the tides and the winds,

just as sadness,

and all the emotions in between.

When I say ‘happy new year’,

Maybe it helps that we live on the western edge of the continent where tides and winds are a real phenomenon. We are not in control of the sway of moon over water, or the increased velocity of winter storms.

I’m really wishing you,

a baseline of peace,

of gratitude.

This is the practice: to hold onto a baseline of peace and gratitude. In these dark winter weeks, I am often up two hours before dawn. We’ve had a little tree in the corner of the living room to bring the starlight in. It will go down on Twelfth Night, commemorating the release of the holidays (holy days). The lights and decorations put away for a year, the naked little Doug fir will be tied to the garden fence to shelter little birds that come to the feeder. It will still be January, chilly rain, probably a touch of snow, and a time when I must be my own light.

Because if you can sit with these things,

for the most part,

happiness will thrive,

when it does arrive,

and sadness will know its place in the mix.

For us to know a thing, we must know its opposite. Happiness without sorrow would be an unremarkable state of being and sorrow without happiness, the same. (Here I hear my grandmother saying, “Even in heaven the angels don’t sing all the time.”)  It is fluctuation that makes happiness remarkable and sorrow endurable. I will try to nourish that awareness in the coming months. Emotions are weather: let them pass through.

If you can nourish these things,

daily,

you will also grow hope,

for it flourishes in such soil.

And hope is the key,

to this enigmatic state

of ‘happiness’ we seek.

So, hope. Some folks count on it: some distain it. I think of hope as a verb. To have hope means I am taking action. Hope requires I do something to positively impact my tiny part of the world. I send money to World Central Kitchenbecause they are feeding people in places I cannot reach. I make dinner for neighbors in need because I can walk across the street. Both gestures give me hope.

When I say ‘happy new year’,

I’m really wishing you more happy days,

than sad days,

more joy than misery,

more laughter than tears . . .

and the wisdom to accept,

that they all belong.

When I say “Happy New Year,” I am thinking of the new, the now, the opportunity to change habits, to step out of the holy days grounded by the tiny lights that we have shined in the dark Northern Hemisphere weeks. I am thinking of empowerment, of continuing to define, situation by situation, where I can act to shift, to acknowledge, to celebrate, to hold one another dear.

Here’s to you, dear community: may we keep our hearts open, may we notice how happiness sneaks into even the hardest days, may we be fierce and tender to the right degrees. More soon—after Epiphany.