In this never-to-be-forgotten year, we have reached the midpoint – called, quite literally in Europe – Midsummer Eve. June 23 or 24th is the ancient celebration of the beginning of summer, and the traditional celebration of Midsummer Day. This is the mid-point of the calendar year, on or around the summer solstice – the longest day of year when the sun is at its northern-most point in the sky. These are the days when the light lingers long in the sky and hesitates to give up its warmth or it's clarity.
Considered by many Northern and Eastern European countries as one of the greatest festivals of the year, Midsummer Eve origins date from neolithic times. It has always been focused on new life and the fertility of growing things, although in the Christian era there has been an attempt to add a veneer of modern religion to it as the Feast of st. John the Baptist.
Every country has its own customs, but every one of them has some aspect of light in the celebration. This is the time for great fairs and feasting. Enormous bonfires are built and to them are added savory grasses and herbs. In the north, Midsummer is also called “White Nights” because the sun, which hid away during the dark winter, returns. So far north is the sun toward the Arctic Circle during those weeks, that in cities like St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Helsinki and Oslo, it never really sets at night.
Tradition says that this is the time of year when magic is at its strongest; it's a time for Will-o-wisps and fairies, witches and the legends of the fern blossoms. Shakespeare recognized its influence so much that he named his famous play “A Midsummer Night's Dream” after it.
In Norway Midsumer's Eve is called Sankthansaften. In Finland Ukko-kokko. In Russia and Ukraine, Midsummer is Ivan Kupala day, when girls float garlands in the rivers and from the direction they drift, tell their marital fortunes. People build great bonfires and then dance around them and leap over them as night falls. In Sweden, dancing to traditional music around a maypole (majstång or midsommarstång) is a family activity and many wear traditional folk costumes. As in Russia, the year's first potatoes, pickled herring, sour cream, and if possible the first strawberries of the season are on the menu.
This year I arrived at Midsummer Eve breathlessly, because the schedule for the past several days has been breakneck. Swim meets, Father's Day, a special family wedding shower for my soon-to-be daughter-in-law. College orientation for my daughter. A mad dash across part of the state through thundering storms to coordinate rides to a wedding in the mountains.
We have certainly been celebrating. Last night, we did a bit of dancing and feasting as well. What we haven't done, is to reflect on this very special summer. We haven't paused to savor the flavor and texture of the precious moments that make up our days. Rushing, rushing, always rushing, our days go by and before we know it – those days that seemed as if they could last forever – those days are gone. For me, at Midsummer, I am choosing to pause – and consider the deep magic of the moments given me. I invite you to do the same.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Bridges and Dots and Lines – Oh My!
I've been thinking about bridges. The wise journeyer learns to differentiate between bridges that connect with your future -- intimate passageways to new beginnings -- and those that allow you escape, but no forward progress.
May was my bridge month. In fact, this summer is my bridge summer. I am crossing from one stage of my life into another. The crossing has its smooth, “yellow brick road” moments and it's scary, bumpy parts. Does yours as well?
It was the intimate bridges that cross Paris' Seine River that got me thinking; the Pont Des Invalides, the Pont Arch, the Pont St. Louis. They're human, small-scale, walkable and they come with that world-famous scenery!
I've crossed all sorts of bridges. The formidable Brooklyn Bridge, the covered bridges of Madison County, the Minneapolis bridge that famously collapsed last year, the fog-shrouded Golden Gate connecting San Francisco with Marin County, the world's highest suspension bridge over the Colorado River. Just last week, I crossed Iowa's modest freeway bridges over the North Skunk and the Middle Raccoon (or was it the South Skunk and the North Racoon? I can't recall.) Those last bridges I crossed out of love – traveling to and from my son's college graduation.
Bridges exemplify the fundamental shift that occurs in passing over from one place to another. And this is the thing about bridges. The best don't just allow you passage, they sometimes give you moments to pause, reflect and relate. The best are all about relationships.
My new favorite bridge, the Pont St. Louis, straddles the islands in the Seine called the Ile de la Cite and the Ile Saint Louis, upon which sits Notre Dame. The bridge is tiny. Just a bit of an arched segment less than a hundred meters long. History likes this spot; a bridge has occupied this place for a thousand years.
Every person who comes to Paris walks across this bridge. It is full of multi-nation strollers and Czech jugglers, struggling artists and American jazz musicians performing for thrown Francs. It holds tourists peering at maps held upside down and iPod-toting teens sizing another digital shot of the backside of Notre Dame. Confused Japanese tourists puzzle on it and German travelers argue there. People dine at the sidewalk cafes and Brasseries that border it. Children do somersaults and dance to the music on it. Twilight lovers stroll hand-in-hand. My family waited on it for me to return from a Left Bank forage on the St. Germain and the Rive Gauche. As I crossed the Pont Arch toward them from the Left Bank booksellers, I observed them, people-watching, patient. My people. This bridge is like them – human and alive and connected with MY life.
Another day while on the Pont St. Louis I wrote for a bit. I found myself musing that someone must have written a book called Islands in the Seine. Then I realized that I had mixed this thought with Ernest Hemmingway's Islands in the Sun. But he wrote in Paris, so we know he crossed this way too!
The artist Paul Klee traveled to Paris in 1912 and famously observed that “a line is a dot that takes a walk.” I like to think that that walk also crossed this bridge. Many of us have days when we feel like the smallest, most insignificant dot on the planet. If we consider that our place in time is moving and changing as we change, then what each of us is, really, is a line. Yes, there's a beginning. And an end. But our mark is bigger than that dot. And oh, the bridges we can cross....that magnificent, wandering line of our lives!
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
May was my bridge month. In fact, this summer is my bridge summer. I am crossing from one stage of my life into another. The crossing has its smooth, “yellow brick road” moments and it's scary, bumpy parts. Does yours as well?
It was the intimate bridges that cross Paris' Seine River that got me thinking; the Pont Des Invalides, the Pont Arch, the Pont St. Louis. They're human, small-scale, walkable and they come with that world-famous scenery!
I've crossed all sorts of bridges. The formidable Brooklyn Bridge, the covered bridges of Madison County, the Minneapolis bridge that famously collapsed last year, the fog-shrouded Golden Gate connecting San Francisco with Marin County, the world's highest suspension bridge over the Colorado River. Just last week, I crossed Iowa's modest freeway bridges over the North Skunk and the Middle Raccoon (or was it the South Skunk and the North Racoon? I can't recall.) Those last bridges I crossed out of love – traveling to and from my son's college graduation.
Bridges exemplify the fundamental shift that occurs in passing over from one place to another. And this is the thing about bridges. The best don't just allow you passage, they sometimes give you moments to pause, reflect and relate. The best are all about relationships.
My new favorite bridge, the Pont St. Louis, straddles the islands in the Seine called the Ile de la Cite and the Ile Saint Louis, upon which sits Notre Dame. The bridge is tiny. Just a bit of an arched segment less than a hundred meters long. History likes this spot; a bridge has occupied this place for a thousand years.
Every person who comes to Paris walks across this bridge. It is full of multi-nation strollers and Czech jugglers, struggling artists and American jazz musicians performing for thrown Francs. It holds tourists peering at maps held upside down and iPod-toting teens sizing another digital shot of the backside of Notre Dame. Confused Japanese tourists puzzle on it and German travelers argue there. People dine at the sidewalk cafes and Brasseries that border it. Children do somersaults and dance to the music on it. Twilight lovers stroll hand-in-hand. My family waited on it for me to return from a Left Bank forage on the St. Germain and the Rive Gauche. As I crossed the Pont Arch toward them from the Left Bank booksellers, I observed them, people-watching, patient. My people. This bridge is like them – human and alive and connected with MY life.
Another day while on the Pont St. Louis I wrote for a bit. I found myself musing that someone must have written a book called Islands in the Seine. Then I realized that I had mixed this thought with Ernest Hemmingway's Islands in the Sun. But he wrote in Paris, so we know he crossed this way too!
The artist Paul Klee traveled to Paris in 1912 and famously observed that “a line is a dot that takes a walk.” I like to think that that walk also crossed this bridge. Many of us have days when we feel like the smallest, most insignificant dot on the planet. If we consider that our place in time is moving and changing as we change, then what each of us is, really, is a line. Yes, there's a beginning. And an end. But our mark is bigger than that dot. And oh, the bridges we can cross....that magnificent, wandering line of our lives!
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Friday, May 1, 2009
Paris eyes make me see more clearly.
It might sound odd, given the world's art heritage stored at the Louvre, that I spent time there writing. It was after we passed the artist trying to paint in the Grand Gallery that it dawned upon me that the Louvre is a place to create as well as to view that which has been created.
It was after the Venus de Milo. After the Mona Lisa (which by the way is disappointingly small, which is probably why Leonardo choose it to carry around with him anyway) and after a room full of Rembrandts. Does one actually cry the first time one sees a work of art one has waited her whole life to see? Yes, she does. Quite unexpectedly too. When the object is priceless, one doesn't need to waste time coveting them. It is only to be appreciated.
The poor fellow trying to paint had positioned himself to copy a 16th century Italian master. A sign placed above his canvas stating quite clearly that he was NOT to be photographed. He looked the part, beret planted on his intense head, paint-smudged smock covering his bedraggled clothing, brushes in hand. Though not an art critic, I thought his work was progressing well.
This did not stop at least three groups of giggling girls armed with digital cameras from stopping behind and trying. Flashes went off. The girls moved closer to his shoulder, shrill voices rising. He waved off one group. The next one he shouted at. The third group he leaped up and began to gesture wildly. leaving no doubt that he would punch the next girl who clicked. It brought a museum guard and a goodly bit of what I am sure were choice French words, all lost on me. It was small theater among grand masters.
We had spread out because it's exceedingly difficult to keep four people together while spending the day inside this world cathedral of creativity. I tried my best to avoid the gaggles – 100 Japanese tourists armed with cameras and a museum guide are loud! Mid afternoon I found myself at a quiet, second floor window of the 14 - 17th century French paintings with a surprising view of the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triumphe and the gates of the Louvre, as well as the famous glass pyramid. The Louvre must plan on people contemplating life here, because the windows come equipped with window seats. I sat.
“Today,” I wrote, “I have nearly forgotten that I am in Paris, so immersed am I in the centuries of history through which I have wandered. I have been in ancient Egypt and Greece. I have been on the streets of Rome, the canals of Venice, the byways of London, in the shadows of light and darkness along the waterways of Holland. I have been deep in the fjords of ice and snow in Norway, on the side streets of St. Petersburg, and in the grand salons of European royalty. I have come to Paris and found the entire existence of mankind.”
Outside, the sky that I will now always call “Paris Blue,” glows. The walkways coming and going from the Louvre are full of people. But inside, I sit, pondering the moment. Since I never expected to be here, I can only explain it this way. Life is a series of moments. Both big and small things that added together make life. Artists know this. Writers who finally discover this become real writers. New eyesight is a gift.
Le seul véritable voyage ... ce ne serait pas d’aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d’avoir d’autres yeux, de voir l’univers avec les yeux d’un autre, de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d’eux voit …
In English:
The only true voyage of discovery … would be not to visit new landscapes, but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.
— Marcel Proust
'La Prisonnière', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
I re-entered Paris at 6:00 pm, seeing this great city differently too. And I have brought my Paris eyes home with me.
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
It was after the Venus de Milo. After the Mona Lisa (which by the way is disappointingly small, which is probably why Leonardo choose it to carry around with him anyway) and after a room full of Rembrandts. Does one actually cry the first time one sees a work of art one has waited her whole life to see? Yes, she does. Quite unexpectedly too. When the object is priceless, one doesn't need to waste time coveting them. It is only to be appreciated.
The poor fellow trying to paint had positioned himself to copy a 16th century Italian master. A sign placed above his canvas stating quite clearly that he was NOT to be photographed. He looked the part, beret planted on his intense head, paint-smudged smock covering his bedraggled clothing, brushes in hand. Though not an art critic, I thought his work was progressing well.
This did not stop at least three groups of giggling girls armed with digital cameras from stopping behind and trying. Flashes went off. The girls moved closer to his shoulder, shrill voices rising. He waved off one group. The next one he shouted at. The third group he leaped up and began to gesture wildly. leaving no doubt that he would punch the next girl who clicked. It brought a museum guard and a goodly bit of what I am sure were choice French words, all lost on me. It was small theater among grand masters.
We had spread out because it's exceedingly difficult to keep four people together while spending the day inside this world cathedral of creativity. I tried my best to avoid the gaggles – 100 Japanese tourists armed with cameras and a museum guide are loud! Mid afternoon I found myself at a quiet, second floor window of the 14 - 17th century French paintings with a surprising view of the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triumphe and the gates of the Louvre, as well as the famous glass pyramid. The Louvre must plan on people contemplating life here, because the windows come equipped with window seats. I sat.
“Today,” I wrote, “I have nearly forgotten that I am in Paris, so immersed am I in the centuries of history through which I have wandered. I have been in ancient Egypt and Greece. I have been on the streets of Rome, the canals of Venice, the byways of London, in the shadows of light and darkness along the waterways of Holland. I have been deep in the fjords of ice and snow in Norway, on the side streets of St. Petersburg, and in the grand salons of European royalty. I have come to Paris and found the entire existence of mankind.”
Outside, the sky that I will now always call “Paris Blue,” glows. The walkways coming and going from the Louvre are full of people. But inside, I sit, pondering the moment. Since I never expected to be here, I can only explain it this way. Life is a series of moments. Both big and small things that added together make life. Artists know this. Writers who finally discover this become real writers. New eyesight is a gift.
Le seul véritable voyage ... ce ne serait pas d’aller vers de nouveaux paysages, mais d’avoir d’autres yeux, de voir l’univers avec les yeux d’un autre, de cent autres, de voir les cent univers que chacun d’eux voit …
In English:
The only true voyage of discovery … would be not to visit new landscapes, but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees.
— Marcel Proust
'La Prisonnière', À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27).
I re-entered Paris at 6:00 pm, seeing this great city differently too. And I have brought my Paris eyes home with me.
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Sometimes you've got to become fierce about guarding your light.
I've always loved the ugliness of Gargoyles. I've had one guarding my cookbooks in my kitchen for years. He's ferocious-looking, crouching atop a stack of Food & Wine magazines. His eyes bulge. His mouth is parted in a snarl, as if he'd gobble up anyone attempting to get at my French onion soup recipe.
Many people have commented on my ferocious-looking protector, wondering why on earth I keep him. I like what he stands, or rather crouches, for. (I’ll also admit that my French Onion Soup recipe is pretty darn good.)
So of course I looked for gargoyles in Paris, their natural home. I found them everywhere! Gargoyles glaring from hotel porticoes and grand arches, staring down from Paris’s unique apartment quadrangles. Peaking over courtyard doorways. But especially, gargoyles guarding churches. It’s possible there are more gargoyles in Paris than anywhere else on earth. The most famous residence for gargoyles is, of course, Notre Dame cathedral! Situated on an island in the Seine, the Ile de la Cite, the cathedral and it’s famous protectors are the literal heart of France – the point from which all distance in France is measured.
My first glimpse of those famous profiles was after dark, when their grotesque visages are wonderfully lit against a night sky. But we visited again – and again – during our Paris week. We were drawn back via the Left Bank while browsing the book stalls along the Seine. Notre Dame was in our gaze from one of the bridges in the shadow of the Cathedral, the Rue de Pont Arch and the Pont St. Louis. We glided beneath the flying buttresses and gargoyles on a river Batobus. And we rested in the square in front of the cathedral in the shade of France’s great unifier, Charlemagne astride his charger and yes – beneath the gargolyes. From every position, a chorus of gargoyles with every manner of fierce visage, glared upon us. It was comforting.
Gargoyles were the rage in Medieval Europe. Contrary to the notion that they represent the devil, Gargoyles were created as tangible symbols to ward off the evil spirits and the dangers of the world. And there were a lot of dangers back then. For centuries, through famine and plaque, through invasions and political turmoil, light and hope came from God and the church and the view was long-term.
The peasants, who build Notre Dame literally by hand, began it in 1163 with the hope that their great, great, great, great, great great grandchildren would live to see it dedicated. It took over two centuries. Know anyone these days with that amount of hope in the future? Thanks to Victor Hugo’s almost single-handed effort during the 1860’s to save the crumbling façade with his “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” we can see those gargoyles in their full fierce glory today.
Perhaps the gargoyles are a fitting symbol for all of us working to find and hold our own light in this day and age. As a writer, I find that there are now so many ways for our thoughts to be diluted; for original expression to be polluted. You could say the influence is good – or terrible. Everyone who can tweet or string a couple of prepositional phrases together now assumes they are a great writer. Anyone with some technological ability announces that they are now a great marketer – regardless of whether or not they understand brand relationships, strategic positioning or have much in the way of the world’s wisdom. It’s gotten rather crowded with amateurs.
I’m thinking I need more gargoyles to protect my light. Gargoyles are not just the province of the old world. You’ll find them on the great cathedrals of America and on many of our public buildings. In fact, those of us who frequently travel through Denver’s new DIA airport are comforted by the presence there of a few of these protective beasts. Know where to find them? Next time you find yourself in baggage claim, look around. What you find may not just guard against lost luggage!
Come to think of it, maybe I’ll start by relocating my gargoyle to my desk.
Many people have commented on my ferocious-looking protector, wondering why on earth I keep him. I like what he stands, or rather crouches, for. (I’ll also admit that my French Onion Soup recipe is pretty darn good.)
So of course I looked for gargoyles in Paris, their natural home. I found them everywhere! Gargoyles glaring from hotel porticoes and grand arches, staring down from Paris’s unique apartment quadrangles. Peaking over courtyard doorways. But especially, gargoyles guarding churches. It’s possible there are more gargoyles in Paris than anywhere else on earth. The most famous residence for gargoyles is, of course, Notre Dame cathedral! Situated on an island in the Seine, the Ile de la Cite, the cathedral and it’s famous protectors are the literal heart of France – the point from which all distance in France is measured.
My first glimpse of those famous profiles was after dark, when their grotesque visages are wonderfully lit against a night sky. But we visited again – and again – during our Paris week. We were drawn back via the Left Bank while browsing the book stalls along the Seine. Notre Dame was in our gaze from one of the bridges in the shadow of the Cathedral, the Rue de Pont Arch and the Pont St. Louis. We glided beneath the flying buttresses and gargoyles on a river Batobus. And we rested in the square in front of the cathedral in the shade of France’s great unifier, Charlemagne astride his charger and yes – beneath the gargolyes. From every position, a chorus of gargoyles with every manner of fierce visage, glared upon us. It was comforting.
Gargoyles were the rage in Medieval Europe. Contrary to the notion that they represent the devil, Gargoyles were created as tangible symbols to ward off the evil spirits and the dangers of the world. And there were a lot of dangers back then. For centuries, through famine and plaque, through invasions and political turmoil, light and hope came from God and the church and the view was long-term.
The peasants, who build Notre Dame literally by hand, began it in 1163 with the hope that their great, great, great, great, great great grandchildren would live to see it dedicated. It took over two centuries. Know anyone these days with that amount of hope in the future? Thanks to Victor Hugo’s almost single-handed effort during the 1860’s to save the crumbling façade with his “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” we can see those gargoyles in their full fierce glory today.
Perhaps the gargoyles are a fitting symbol for all of us working to find and hold our own light in this day and age. As a writer, I find that there are now so many ways for our thoughts to be diluted; for original expression to be polluted. You could say the influence is good – or terrible. Everyone who can tweet or string a couple of prepositional phrases together now assumes they are a great writer. Anyone with some technological ability announces that they are now a great marketer – regardless of whether or not they understand brand relationships, strategic positioning or have much in the way of the world’s wisdom. It’s gotten rather crowded with amateurs.
I’m thinking I need more gargoyles to protect my light. Gargoyles are not just the province of the old world. You’ll find them on the great cathedrals of America and on many of our public buildings. In fact, those of us who frequently travel through Denver’s new DIA airport are comforted by the presence there of a few of these protective beasts. Know where to find them? Next time you find yourself in baggage claim, look around. What you find may not just guard against lost luggage!
Come to think of it, maybe I’ll start by relocating my gargoyle to my desk.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Light and Great Expectations.
Few places really live up to our expectations. Paris exceeds mine.
I know, I know. In a literary sense, great expectations go more with London than Paris. Too bad. I've never been to London, but now I've been to Paris. It's better than I hoped for and probably slightly more than I deserve.
I can only write about what I know, reaching for the light with both hands.
Our first full day dawned late, gray and rainy; just the weather we expected from a late March day in Paris. It didn't matter. By 11:00 a.m. we set out for the sunlit spaces and dreamy days of impressionism at the Musee d'Orsay; into the world of late-nineteenth century Paris and the invention of French modern art.
Zipping pass the soggy ticket line as we waved our nifty Museum Passes, we entered this historic train station turned museum and pushed upward. First stop, the top rooms of Impressionists and Post Impressionists....Renoirs, Monets, Chagelles, Manets, Gauguins and Van Goghs. I've been in the great art museums of Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia. But to go to the place where artists reinvented how light appeared on canvas.....
I made a point of going to the Musee d'Orsay as an artist and not a tourist. It is said that the Musee d'Orsay on a spring morning is a writer's church. They say that to pray as an artist...you do what it is you do. So I prayed by soaking up the light, writing a near perfect “prayer.” I chose to focus on the thousands of points of light...as paint....in a Pissarro. I found the Renoir of which I dreamed, and tried to replicate quite unsuccessfully, as a girl in high school art class. It is said that “Those whose expectations are God’s, will never be disappointed.” He didn’t intend for me to be a painter.
I dwelt on the fabulous, light-drenched color of the Gauguins, painted in Tahiti. It is a place to which I have actually been. I can now honestly say that he captures the soul that is French in the spirit that is Tahitian. At last, I understood his mocking journals and took his words with, yes, a grain of salt. I discovered, (as Eric Maisel, the writer and writing coach notes) that Gauguin was a gentle soul who did not withstand well the criticism of the established art world.
The artist in me was sobered by the fact that Van Gogh never sold a single one of his paintings during his lifetime. Some of the best writers this world has ever known wrote in Paris, and never found an audience for their words. I remind myself that one does not stop praying just because the object of my faith cannot be definitively proved. So I pray my way.
So, focused on the light was I, that I have already forgotten where we ate that night. I intended to record it, but the romance of a pink-yellow sunset (indicating a better day tomorrow) and glimpses of that signature tower, took the name of the cafe out of my memory. It bothers me. I only remember the delicious bread, the tender lamb shank, the “Frenchness” of the ideal rose wine carafe, the perfect apple tartlet with soft cream.
It will have to be enough; more than enough for a day in Paris. My expectations are exceeded and I decide to be kind to myself.
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
I know, I know. In a literary sense, great expectations go more with London than Paris. Too bad. I've never been to London, but now I've been to Paris. It's better than I hoped for and probably slightly more than I deserve.
I can only write about what I know, reaching for the light with both hands.
Our first full day dawned late, gray and rainy; just the weather we expected from a late March day in Paris. It didn't matter. By 11:00 a.m. we set out for the sunlit spaces and dreamy days of impressionism at the Musee d'Orsay; into the world of late-nineteenth century Paris and the invention of French modern art.
Zipping pass the soggy ticket line as we waved our nifty Museum Passes, we entered this historic train station turned museum and pushed upward. First stop, the top rooms of Impressionists and Post Impressionists....Renoirs, Monets, Chagelles, Manets, Gauguins and Van Goghs. I've been in the great art museums of Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia. But to go to the place where artists reinvented how light appeared on canvas.....
I made a point of going to the Musee d'Orsay as an artist and not a tourist. It is said that the Musee d'Orsay on a spring morning is a writer's church. They say that to pray as an artist...you do what it is you do. So I prayed by soaking up the light, writing a near perfect “prayer.” I chose to focus on the thousands of points of light...as paint....in a Pissarro. I found the Renoir of which I dreamed, and tried to replicate quite unsuccessfully, as a girl in high school art class. It is said that “Those whose expectations are God’s, will never be disappointed.” He didn’t intend for me to be a painter.
I dwelt on the fabulous, light-drenched color of the Gauguins, painted in Tahiti. It is a place to which I have actually been. I can now honestly say that he captures the soul that is French in the spirit that is Tahitian. At last, I understood his mocking journals and took his words with, yes, a grain of salt. I discovered, (as Eric Maisel, the writer and writing coach notes) that Gauguin was a gentle soul who did not withstand well the criticism of the established art world.
The artist in me was sobered by the fact that Van Gogh never sold a single one of his paintings during his lifetime. Some of the best writers this world has ever known wrote in Paris, and never found an audience for their words. I remind myself that one does not stop praying just because the object of my faith cannot be definitively proved. So I pray my way.
So, focused on the light was I, that I have already forgotten where we ate that night. I intended to record it, but the romance of a pink-yellow sunset (indicating a better day tomorrow) and glimpses of that signature tower, took the name of the cafe out of my memory. It bothers me. I only remember the delicious bread, the tender lamb shank, the “Frenchness” of the ideal rose wine carafe, the perfect apple tartlet with soft cream.
It will have to be enough; more than enough for a day in Paris. My expectations are exceeded and I decide to be kind to myself.
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Monday, April 6, 2009
Salt. Lots of salt.
That's how the Paris trip began. Who would think that our journey to the city that made light an aspiration would be made possible by the lowliest of minerals?
Sometime in the early hours of March 25, thousands of pounds of that crystalline stuff was liberally spread on roads so that we could make it to the airport and our plane could make it down the runway. Before daylight this spring morning, a classic Colorado upslope began dumping snow, on the very day we planned to begin our Parisian adventure. If you've never experienced an upslope blizzard, you've missed out on adventures in continuous snow-shoveling, tree branch-rescue, snow-shoeing for food and survival for days without heat. Until recently, Colorado hasn't been much for plowing roads because the old-west culture was -- “It'll melt!”
Once at the airport, it was a nail-bitter as to whether our flight out would survive, or join the list of canceled flights. It wasn't. A couple of de-icings and news that ours was the last flight allowed out, and fate took over. We made Chicago, met up with Nic and departed over the Atlantic, landing early Friday morning for our adventure in Paris.
The difference between Paris and the wide-open spaces of Colorado that I call home, is a real mind adjustment. Where I live, you can see one hundred miles from my favorite writing cafe, to the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. But Paris....Paris surrounds you, envelopes you, infuses your soul in a way both fragrant and gritty, that I haven't experienced before.
It does this, even though it is, physically, a small city; only twenty Arrondissements laid out like a pinwheel. Arrondissements one through eight of this cookie-cutter-shaped space hold most of the attractions for which Paris is renowned; from the Eiffel Tower to the major museums, the Arch de Triumphe, the river Seine and the great cathedrals. We stayed in Arrondissement 15, bounded on the west and north by the Seine, only a block from the Port de Versailles metro stop.
First impressions: it's an easy city in which to get around. Truly, Paris is meant to be strolled, but if your shoes hurt, your partner's back is protesting, or you want to cram more than three things into a day, you take the metro. It's warp speed, clean, handsome and using it, you're right there with the locals. You can get anywhere and if you get a metro pass as we did, you zip in and out, switch gears from the Latin Quarter to a museum and back again. The U.S has such a loooooooong way to go.
Take it easy your first day or you'll miss the next morning. We were so energized that we set out for the Place de la Concorde to pick up our Museum Passes, retrieved our Metro passes, had lunch on the Rue St. Honore, met our niece who flew in from Edinburgh on her way to Rome and took her to dinner in the shadow of Notre Dame. It was a lovely little Alsatian place on the Saint Louis en I'lle, but we nearly fell asleep in our soup! Nic, for his part took time for lunch with a friend at the American Embassy and he's the one who got up at 4:30 am. to make sure our niece made her metro connections for Rome. I knew we'd raised a gentleman! It was 10:30 am, Saturday morning, before the rest of us roused. From that moment on...we set an exploration pace on Paris.
Even if you never eat bread – eat the bread. The French are so serious about their baking that in culinary school, bakers-in-training have to decide if they want to become a bread-baker or a pastry baker. Seriously! Each morning Nicholas has trekked the couple of blocks from our apartment to the bakery to await it's opening, returning with croissants still warm from the oven. They are so exquisite that they melt in your mouth with the strawberry jelly we liberally spoon on to them. Katie, for her part, buys entire baguettes and carries them around in her back pack to nosh on between museums!
I've gotten both good and bad comments from people about this trip. Most are happy for us, that we have set out to share a precious celebration of discovery before our family moves to its next stage. To those who express concern about this trek in the midst of economic turmoil, about justifying it when my marketing contract work is down, about picking a place that could appear too exotic in today's new realities...to these nay-sayers I say, if not now, when? I've economized all my life..when it wasn't fashionable and when many of you were not. I guess I have always “yinged” when others “yanged.” We prayed about this trip...and now was the time, for us. This adventure says the four of us believe in our future, whatever it holds.
Marcel Proust noted that, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
In my case, my new eyes have found an unlimited resource of light....for writing ideas, places to write and small moments to write. But technology, in the form of a malfunctioning transformer, prevented me from posting anything after my first few twitters because my laptop batteries, instead of recharging, were drained dry and would not recharge. (No, my i Phone and Blackberry friends, I don't have an international phone, or a fancy one, so there was no twittering without that transformer.)
So think of this as the one week delay, sort of like old post mail, from a friend who's wanting to share the flavor of a new landscape and the discovery of my new eyes.
Sometime in the early hours of March 25, thousands of pounds of that crystalline stuff was liberally spread on roads so that we could make it to the airport and our plane could make it down the runway. Before daylight this spring morning, a classic Colorado upslope began dumping snow, on the very day we planned to begin our Parisian adventure. If you've never experienced an upslope blizzard, you've missed out on adventures in continuous snow-shoveling, tree branch-rescue, snow-shoeing for food and survival for days without heat. Until recently, Colorado hasn't been much for plowing roads because the old-west culture was -- “It'll melt!”
Once at the airport, it was a nail-bitter as to whether our flight out would survive, or join the list of canceled flights. It wasn't. A couple of de-icings and news that ours was the last flight allowed out, and fate took over. We made Chicago, met up with Nic and departed over the Atlantic, landing early Friday morning for our adventure in Paris.
The difference between Paris and the wide-open spaces of Colorado that I call home, is a real mind adjustment. Where I live, you can see one hundred miles from my favorite writing cafe, to the peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. But Paris....Paris surrounds you, envelopes you, infuses your soul in a way both fragrant and gritty, that I haven't experienced before.
It does this, even though it is, physically, a small city; only twenty Arrondissements laid out like a pinwheel. Arrondissements one through eight of this cookie-cutter-shaped space hold most of the attractions for which Paris is renowned; from the Eiffel Tower to the major museums, the Arch de Triumphe, the river Seine and the great cathedrals. We stayed in Arrondissement 15, bounded on the west and north by the Seine, only a block from the Port de Versailles metro stop.
First impressions: it's an easy city in which to get around. Truly, Paris is meant to be strolled, but if your shoes hurt, your partner's back is protesting, or you want to cram more than three things into a day, you take the metro. It's warp speed, clean, handsome and using it, you're right there with the locals. You can get anywhere and if you get a metro pass as we did, you zip in and out, switch gears from the Latin Quarter to a museum and back again. The U.S has such a loooooooong way to go.
Take it easy your first day or you'll miss the next morning. We were so energized that we set out for the Place de la Concorde to pick up our Museum Passes, retrieved our Metro passes, had lunch on the Rue St. Honore, met our niece who flew in from Edinburgh on her way to Rome and took her to dinner in the shadow of Notre Dame. It was a lovely little Alsatian place on the Saint Louis en I'lle, but we nearly fell asleep in our soup! Nic, for his part took time for lunch with a friend at the American Embassy and he's the one who got up at 4:30 am. to make sure our niece made her metro connections for Rome. I knew we'd raised a gentleman! It was 10:30 am, Saturday morning, before the rest of us roused. From that moment on...we set an exploration pace on Paris.
Even if you never eat bread – eat the bread. The French are so serious about their baking that in culinary school, bakers-in-training have to decide if they want to become a bread-baker or a pastry baker. Seriously! Each morning Nicholas has trekked the couple of blocks from our apartment to the bakery to await it's opening, returning with croissants still warm from the oven. They are so exquisite that they melt in your mouth with the strawberry jelly we liberally spoon on to them. Katie, for her part, buys entire baguettes and carries them around in her back pack to nosh on between museums!
I've gotten both good and bad comments from people about this trip. Most are happy for us, that we have set out to share a precious celebration of discovery before our family moves to its next stage. To those who express concern about this trek in the midst of economic turmoil, about justifying it when my marketing contract work is down, about picking a place that could appear too exotic in today's new realities...to these nay-sayers I say, if not now, when? I've economized all my life..when it wasn't fashionable and when many of you were not. I guess I have always “yinged” when others “yanged.” We prayed about this trip...and now was the time, for us. This adventure says the four of us believe in our future, whatever it holds.
Marcel Proust noted that, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
In my case, my new eyes have found an unlimited resource of light....for writing ideas, places to write and small moments to write. But technology, in the form of a malfunctioning transformer, prevented me from posting anything after my first few twitters because my laptop batteries, instead of recharging, were drained dry and would not recharge. (No, my i Phone and Blackberry friends, I don't have an international phone, or a fancy one, so there was no twittering without that transformer.)
So think of this as the one week delay, sort of like old post mail, from a friend who's wanting to share the flavor of a new landscape and the discovery of my new eyes.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Light Tomorrow with Today.
“Light Tomorrow with Today.”
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861)
This past Friday the world slipped quietly into spring. In Denver the spring equinox occurred in the pre-dawn darkness. Nevertheless, the light arrived exactly when it was supposed to.
One's skin can actually feel the light source shifting northward. As it does, the edge of afternoon sunlight is creeping closer to the north-facing French door by which I work my daily words. I like the light. Come July I'll wish there was a shade on the door!
I don't know about you, but I spend too much of my time focused on tomorrow. My mind messages go something like this: “Tomorrow when I've finished the job application I'll call my friend....” “Next week I'll go to coffee when I've earned the break...” “Next year when I've finished the book and found a publisher, I'll do more volunteer work....”
I've decided that I've got the light thing backwards. It was Elizabeth Barret Browning who reminded us of the right order. Each of us has got to use today, live in today, and use the good that we do today to guide our way to the next day. And if that good is merely to do a good day's work, to be civil to our fellow human beings, or to go out of our way to be kind to just one person who could use some light in their life right now? Well then – we don't have to worry that we're not negotiating world peace!
Next week, if I master the technical setup to be able to do a mobile blog using my lap top, I'll be blogging from Paris. I might even Twitter! I find it the ultimate in irony. That I may be able to write my muse about the light an individual can make in this world, from the city...THE CITY... that personifies light? Well, grace has indeed shown upon me.
I'm prepared. I've already packed my writing journal, my high heels and what chic, black clothes I own. I'm debating how best to carry my laptop. And I ordered A Writer's Paris from Writers Digest Books. It's called “a guided journey for the creative soul.” I don't think you have to be a writer to read it, but it helps.
Precious family time will occur on this trip; a graduation gift to our son and daughter, who graduate this year from college and high school. But I will write as well. For as I know the book will tell me, I need to write in cafes and in perfect little parks, on the grass at the Eiffel Tower, under the flying buttresses of Notre Dame and from a river boat on the Seine. If I can do that, then....I have truly used the experience of today's light to light tomorrow; perhaps for more people than myself. Write and light do rhythm after all.
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861)
This past Friday the world slipped quietly into spring. In Denver the spring equinox occurred in the pre-dawn darkness. Nevertheless, the light arrived exactly when it was supposed to.
One's skin can actually feel the light source shifting northward. As it does, the edge of afternoon sunlight is creeping closer to the north-facing French door by which I work my daily words. I like the light. Come July I'll wish there was a shade on the door!
I don't know about you, but I spend too much of my time focused on tomorrow. My mind messages go something like this: “Tomorrow when I've finished the job application I'll call my friend....” “Next week I'll go to coffee when I've earned the break...” “Next year when I've finished the book and found a publisher, I'll do more volunteer work....”
I've decided that I've got the light thing backwards. It was Elizabeth Barret Browning who reminded us of the right order. Each of us has got to use today, live in today, and use the good that we do today to guide our way to the next day. And if that good is merely to do a good day's work, to be civil to our fellow human beings, or to go out of our way to be kind to just one person who could use some light in their life right now? Well then – we don't have to worry that we're not negotiating world peace!
Next week, if I master the technical setup to be able to do a mobile blog using my lap top, I'll be blogging from Paris. I might even Twitter! I find it the ultimate in irony. That I may be able to write my muse about the light an individual can make in this world, from the city...THE CITY... that personifies light? Well, grace has indeed shown upon me.
I'm prepared. I've already packed my writing journal, my high heels and what chic, black clothes I own. I'm debating how best to carry my laptop. And I ordered A Writer's Paris from Writers Digest Books. It's called “a guided journey for the creative soul.” I don't think you have to be a writer to read it, but it helps.
Precious family time will occur on this trip; a graduation gift to our son and daughter, who graduate this year from college and high school. But I will write as well. For as I know the book will tell me, I need to write in cafes and in perfect little parks, on the grass at the Eiffel Tower, under the flying buttresses of Notre Dame and from a river boat on the Seine. If I can do that, then....I have truly used the experience of today's light to light tomorrow; perhaps for more people than myself. Write and light do rhythm after all.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Fog is the absence of clarity. Or is it?
In fog, what you think you see, may not be real. What you imagine can appear more real, more terrorizing, than it really is. Boundaries can either disappear, or seem artificially close. Limitations, most surely, seem to multiply, grow and surround us.
I've been in the fog for weeks. Today, on this last day of winter, I admit it.
Fog isn't the absence of light. You can have foggy darkness and pea-soup light. No, fog, in all its connotations, is the absence of clarity. My life is in flux right now and the fog that has descended is a fitting metaphor for the cross-roads of choices, complications and competing priorities that confront me right now. Perhaps it is, for you as well.
Reality shifts in the fog. There's a reason that horror movies make liberal use of it. Where would the Hound of the Baskervilles have been without the creepiness of the misty Scottish moors? And what self-respecting vampire movie doesn't have at least one scene with the damsel in distress, high on the foggy castle ramparts fleeing from the clutches of the undead Dracula?
Interestingly enough, the recent weeks I've spent considering fog match, almost exactly, the longest stretch I spent in in the Rheinstrasse of Germany living through a murky, sunless winter. Six weeks without the sun is like death to a sun-loving American! Combine that with the fact that my German wasn't much beyond toddler talk and you have the setting for a down and depressed ex-patriot!
For most, fog represents the unknown, the mist of things unseen and unrealized. Most often it is used to represent fear, uncertainty and confusion. But in the fog, other things can become more apparent. Until spending a summer week in San Franciso a few years ago, I hadn't thought much about those weeks when I could not see the house across the narrow German village street. Flying in, we descended from brilliant sunshine into the bay fog and didn't see the sun for days.
I was reminded that, when you can't see clearly, your other senses are strengthened. In that cold San Francisco summer shroud, the fog horns on the bay howled mournfully. The clang-clang of the street cars could be heard long before the clackety vehicle appeared out of the drifting air. The smell of roasting nuts in the street vendors carts was intensified and if the fish down on the wharf hadn't been right off the boats, I'm sure the odor would have been different!
The fog I've been in lately is personal and no reflection on the gorgeous, sunny days we perpetuate here in Colorado. I haven't been able to see my way clearly. But fog intensifies other senses I need to deal with it.
Step outside on a foggy day. Stand alone and very still, where the fog seems most dense. Hear things to which you would not normally pay attention. Feel the air against your skin. Sense the acrid smell of smoke. Cringe at the noxious odor of gasoline. Shuffle your feet through last fall's rotting leaves. Touch your fingers to the freshness of just-cut wood. Smell the dampness. Especially in this season, pick up the scent of earth and of growing things beginning to stir. Sense your mind shift speeds.
Fog, you see, is not such a bad thing. In an odd way, that which conceals, reveals. What physical fog can do for the body, so emotional fog can do for our minds; allowing our other four senses to take over where our visual culture has dominated. It makes this little space for the things to come forward that we don't normally allow into our neat and structured schedules. It allows for possibility and purpose to sort themselves out. Things that lie hidden in the glare of bright light, fog reveals to you. Clarity from a little mind fog -- the perfect prelude to the coming days of brilliant sunshine.
I've been in the fog for weeks. Today, on this last day of winter, I admit it.
Fog isn't the absence of light. You can have foggy darkness and pea-soup light. No, fog, in all its connotations, is the absence of clarity. My life is in flux right now and the fog that has descended is a fitting metaphor for the cross-roads of choices, complications and competing priorities that confront me right now. Perhaps it is, for you as well.
Reality shifts in the fog. There's a reason that horror movies make liberal use of it. Where would the Hound of the Baskervilles have been without the creepiness of the misty Scottish moors? And what self-respecting vampire movie doesn't have at least one scene with the damsel in distress, high on the foggy castle ramparts fleeing from the clutches of the undead Dracula?
Interestingly enough, the recent weeks I've spent considering fog match, almost exactly, the longest stretch I spent in in the Rheinstrasse of Germany living through a murky, sunless winter. Six weeks without the sun is like death to a sun-loving American! Combine that with the fact that my German wasn't much beyond toddler talk and you have the setting for a down and depressed ex-patriot!
For most, fog represents the unknown, the mist of things unseen and unrealized. Most often it is used to represent fear, uncertainty and confusion. But in the fog, other things can become more apparent. Until spending a summer week in San Franciso a few years ago, I hadn't thought much about those weeks when I could not see the house across the narrow German village street. Flying in, we descended from brilliant sunshine into the bay fog and didn't see the sun for days.
I was reminded that, when you can't see clearly, your other senses are strengthened. In that cold San Francisco summer shroud, the fog horns on the bay howled mournfully. The clang-clang of the street cars could be heard long before the clackety vehicle appeared out of the drifting air. The smell of roasting nuts in the street vendors carts was intensified and if the fish down on the wharf hadn't been right off the boats, I'm sure the odor would have been different!
The fog I've been in lately is personal and no reflection on the gorgeous, sunny days we perpetuate here in Colorado. I haven't been able to see my way clearly. But fog intensifies other senses I need to deal with it.
Step outside on a foggy day. Stand alone and very still, where the fog seems most dense. Hear things to which you would not normally pay attention. Feel the air against your skin. Sense the acrid smell of smoke. Cringe at the noxious odor of gasoline. Shuffle your feet through last fall's rotting leaves. Touch your fingers to the freshness of just-cut wood. Smell the dampness. Especially in this season, pick up the scent of earth and of growing things beginning to stir. Sense your mind shift speeds.
Fog, you see, is not such a bad thing. In an odd way, that which conceals, reveals. What physical fog can do for the body, so emotional fog can do for our minds; allowing our other four senses to take over where our visual culture has dominated. It makes this little space for the things to come forward that we don't normally allow into our neat and structured schedules. It allows for possibility and purpose to sort themselves out. Things that lie hidden in the glare of bright light, fog reveals to you. Clarity from a little mind fog -- the perfect prelude to the coming days of brilliant sunshine.
Monday, February 2, 2009
At the midpoint of winter, time and light are relative.
This morning I lost track of time sitting in an old Queen Anne side chair in the sun, working on my daily meditations. The Grandfather clock behind me began to chime, startling me from my writing. Sure that I had let much time go by; that it was now 9:00 O'clock and I was now off schedule, I listened to the chimes and counted. Six...seven...eight. They stopped. Turning, I saw the hands read 8:00 0'clock.
Astounded, I got up and checked all three digital clocks in the kitchen. Yup! All read a digital 8:00 am. I had only been seated in thought for 20 minutes, but it had felt like more than an hour. How could this be? Now several hours later, I can attest to the fact that everything I did after those minutes in the sun has sped by in the opposite equation. What seems a frantic twenty minutes is an hour and a half. I liked my lovely, sunny time warp much better.
Time and light are connected. We are exactly halfway between the winter and the spring equinox; the midpoint between the shortest day and the speeding up of the return of light to the northern hemisphere.
Most of us have lost the association, but this day is known as Candlemas Day. This was the day that all the household candles were brought to the church to be blessed. It took that long for all that tallow from the slaughtering and rendering to be turned into candles, I guess. Or, perhaps, because this time of year is so dreary most everywhere, they needed a reason to celebrate. In ancient times, people actually said that Christmas lasted forty days...from December 25 to February 2.
From the Romans to the Scots, acknowledging this day has swung from feast (of light) to royal declaration. In Scotland the weather this time of year is typically dreadful. In olden days this led to an odd school ritual. The children had to bring their own candles to school so they had light by which to study! When candles were replaced by gas lights, the children brought money for the light and the one who raised the most money was declared to be King or queen of a six week long season until Spring.
Candlemas day, the saying goes, is said to be a predictor of the weather:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won't come again.
If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,
The half o' the winter's to come and mair;
If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,
The half o the winter's gane at Yule.
I'm not sure when the groundhog took over from Candlemas, but in Germany, the weather prediction was handed off to a badger, not a ground hog. You use what you've got, I guess.
It was partly sunny here in Colorado today. Six more weeks of winter. Spring lies ahead, but now, now, the light is working on the bare, cold ground. Whether you light candles or believe in groundhogs, this is your reflection time.
Me? I'm going to scare up some more candles and light a few!
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Astounded, I got up and checked all three digital clocks in the kitchen. Yup! All read a digital 8:00 am. I had only been seated in thought for 20 minutes, but it had felt like more than an hour. How could this be? Now several hours later, I can attest to the fact that everything I did after those minutes in the sun has sped by in the opposite equation. What seems a frantic twenty minutes is an hour and a half. I liked my lovely, sunny time warp much better.
Time and light are connected. We are exactly halfway between the winter and the spring equinox; the midpoint between the shortest day and the speeding up of the return of light to the northern hemisphere.
Most of us have lost the association, but this day is known as Candlemas Day. This was the day that all the household candles were brought to the church to be blessed. It took that long for all that tallow from the slaughtering and rendering to be turned into candles, I guess. Or, perhaps, because this time of year is so dreary most everywhere, they needed a reason to celebrate. In ancient times, people actually said that Christmas lasted forty days...from December 25 to February 2.
From the Romans to the Scots, acknowledging this day has swung from feast (of light) to royal declaration. In Scotland the weather this time of year is typically dreadful. In olden days this led to an odd school ritual. The children had to bring their own candles to school so they had light by which to study! When candles were replaced by gas lights, the children brought money for the light and the one who raised the most money was declared to be King or queen of a six week long season until Spring.
Candlemas day, the saying goes, is said to be a predictor of the weather:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won't come again.
If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,
The half o' the winter's to come and mair;
If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,
The half o the winter's gane at Yule.
I'm not sure when the groundhog took over from Candlemas, but in Germany, the weather prediction was handed off to a badger, not a ground hog. You use what you've got, I guess.
It was partly sunny here in Colorado today. Six more weeks of winter. Spring lies ahead, but now, now, the light is working on the bare, cold ground. Whether you light candles or believe in groundhogs, this is your reflection time.
Me? I'm going to scare up some more candles and light a few!
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Life has crystalline moments.
Moments when the tiny squares of our existence come together in a structure that reflects and rotates into a symmetry; sometimes sobering, often profound and occasionally divine.
Our country seems to be having such a moment. As am I.
It would have been quite easy to continue my weekly missives through the ordinary new year and through the old (Russian) new year, that we celebrate two weeks later because of our daughter's heritage. More than in past years, most of us truly wished the personal painful and corporately grim events of 2008 to pass on into history. But I have been deep in thought, seeking the structure that will become my guiding light for this year 2009.
I'm no mystic and chemistry was not one of my best subjects, although geometry was. But at this moment the image that comes to me is the form of a crystal, shimmering in the light. Facets of it's shape reflect prisms of light, as well as shadowy depth; images of the real world. I'm not talking mystical crystals here. Think grains of sand. The salt you may sprinkle on your omelet. Just ordinary life. Some might say – irritants.
Few of us have looked at salt under a microscope. Maybe we should. Microscopic crystals are incredible structures of gorgeous geometry – a delicate lattice of atoms that can honeycomb and twist and turn in amazing dimensional forms. Strangely, they can twist 180 degrees and still retain their original symmetry. Talk about pliable perfection! It can take time for a crystal of salt to arrange itself into the kind of salt it will become; sodium chloride (nice cubic crystals of table salt) or magnesium chloride or calcium chloride (road salt). There's even a salt, silicon carbide, that has the same structure as a diamond. Yes, even simple salt crystals hold lessons in how to look at life.
You don't believe it? Think! We say that something crystalizes when it becomes clear in our minds... when the choice stretching before us becomes obvious...when the fuzzy hypothesis gels. And when the sheer simplicity of an idea once so obscure is elegantly revealed, or when the pipe dream suddenly presents itself in all it's glory, fully formed, as if brought on a beam of revelation, in those moments, we say that what can be, becomes “crystal clear.” As clear as a crystal of – salt.
In those moments the micro chasm of ordinary days become extraordinary moments. An ordinary day, January 20th, became a day lit by millions of symmetrical crystals -- of hope. My ordinary life, beset with uncertainty and doubt, becomes a brilliant mirror plane of possibility. I am one grain – salt to some, light to others – but to myself I am a symmetry being shaped by time and circumstances according to a divine plan. So are you.
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Our country seems to be having such a moment. As am I.
It would have been quite easy to continue my weekly missives through the ordinary new year and through the old (Russian) new year, that we celebrate two weeks later because of our daughter's heritage. More than in past years, most of us truly wished the personal painful and corporately grim events of 2008 to pass on into history. But I have been deep in thought, seeking the structure that will become my guiding light for this year 2009.
I'm no mystic and chemistry was not one of my best subjects, although geometry was. But at this moment the image that comes to me is the form of a crystal, shimmering in the light. Facets of it's shape reflect prisms of light, as well as shadowy depth; images of the real world. I'm not talking mystical crystals here. Think grains of sand. The salt you may sprinkle on your omelet. Just ordinary life. Some might say – irritants.
Few of us have looked at salt under a microscope. Maybe we should. Microscopic crystals are incredible structures of gorgeous geometry – a delicate lattice of atoms that can honeycomb and twist and turn in amazing dimensional forms. Strangely, they can twist 180 degrees and still retain their original symmetry. Talk about pliable perfection! It can take time for a crystal of salt to arrange itself into the kind of salt it will become; sodium chloride (nice cubic crystals of table salt) or magnesium chloride or calcium chloride (road salt). There's even a salt, silicon carbide, that has the same structure as a diamond. Yes, even simple salt crystals hold lessons in how to look at life.
You don't believe it? Think! We say that something crystalizes when it becomes clear in our minds... when the choice stretching before us becomes obvious...when the fuzzy hypothesis gels. And when the sheer simplicity of an idea once so obscure is elegantly revealed, or when the pipe dream suddenly presents itself in all it's glory, fully formed, as if brought on a beam of revelation, in those moments, we say that what can be, becomes “crystal clear.” As clear as a crystal of – salt.
In those moments the micro chasm of ordinary days become extraordinary moments. An ordinary day, January 20th, became a day lit by millions of symmetrical crystals -- of hope. My ordinary life, beset with uncertainty and doubt, becomes a brilliant mirror plane of possibility. I am one grain – salt to some, light to others – but to myself I am a symmetry being shaped by time and circumstances according to a divine plan. So are you.
©2009 Jan Johnson Wondra
Thursday, December 25, 2008
“Peace on Earth, good-will to men!”
"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What an impossible message. The hope of peace and good-will that echoes down through the centuries at this time of year is an aching one. If peace and good-will is what we all want, why is human-kind so horrible at this peace thing? It would seem that we love war more than peace because we spend so much time making it. We excel at hurting each other. As I write this Christmas day, there are dozens of armed conflicts going on all around the world. Why can't we all just get along?
Leave it to the Scandinavians to try, at least at Christmas, to enforce the peace. A remarkable, five hundred years old tradition continues to this day in Sweden and Finland. At noon on Christmas Eve, in the public squares of towns throughout both countries, a declaration is read out loud in the text of the middle ages. It's premise is simple: the twelve days of Christmas are to be a time of civil peace by law. In olden days, a person committing crimes during this time was liable to a more stiff sentence than normal. While the Vikings were long gone, I guess the villagers liked to carouse a bit more than was wise during the extended holiday period and what with all that Wassail flowing, some people forgot themselves. The nudge to seek peace is universal. The hope of mankind is that we can all learn, someday, to live together.
Today marks the first of the twelve days of Christmas; a season to give and receive good will, to spend time with family and friends, sharing in the light that has come to the world. Today my immediate family celebrates, aware that this is the last year before our family structure changes and our traditions will adjust as well. And I celebrate this first day of Christmas with a candle of gratitude in my window in memory of the kind and loving Mother I lost this year and my Father who passed to the light nearly four years ago. I am blessed to know personally the truth of these words:
“The best Christmas gift of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another. “
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What an impossible message. The hope of peace and good-will that echoes down through the centuries at this time of year is an aching one. If peace and good-will is what we all want, why is human-kind so horrible at this peace thing? It would seem that we love war more than peace because we spend so much time making it. We excel at hurting each other. As I write this Christmas day, there are dozens of armed conflicts going on all around the world. Why can't we all just get along?
Leave it to the Scandinavians to try, at least at Christmas, to enforce the peace. A remarkable, five hundred years old tradition continues to this day in Sweden and Finland. At noon on Christmas Eve, in the public squares of towns throughout both countries, a declaration is read out loud in the text of the middle ages. It's premise is simple: the twelve days of Christmas are to be a time of civil peace by law. In olden days, a person committing crimes during this time was liable to a more stiff sentence than normal. While the Vikings were long gone, I guess the villagers liked to carouse a bit more than was wise during the extended holiday period and what with all that Wassail flowing, some people forgot themselves. The nudge to seek peace is universal. The hope of mankind is that we can all learn, someday, to live together.
Today marks the first of the twelve days of Christmas; a season to give and receive good will, to spend time with family and friends, sharing in the light that has come to the world. Today my immediate family celebrates, aware that this is the last year before our family structure changes and our traditions will adjust as well. And I celebrate this first day of Christmas with a candle of gratitude in my window in memory of the kind and loving Mother I lost this year and my Father who passed to the light nearly four years ago. I am blessed to know personally the truth of these words:
“The best Christmas gift of all is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up with one another. “
Sunday, December 21, 2008
"A yule fog fills the sky--Yuletide. "
"A yule fog fills the sky--Yuletide. "
-Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings
"The Winter Solstice, arrived at sunset tonight in the Northern hemisphere. The word winter solstice derives from Latin, meaning Sun set still in winter. Northern peoples called it "Yule”, (Yule Lore ) when the dark half of the year relinquishes to the light half.
Depending upon your attitude, you can think of the solstice occurring either on the shortest day or the longest night of the year. It's a great metaphor for life. Some see life as half full and a golden gift. Others live as if it more than half empty and drearily dark. I choose to think of this day as one of light. Starting tomorrow morning at sunrise, the sun climbs just a little higher and stays a little longer in the sky each day.
For we modern day humans, this night is dark and cold, only until we turn on a light or turn up the furnace. But the mystical nature of the solstice has been a special moment of the annual cycle of the year since neolithic times. The layouts of late Neolithic and Bronze Age archeological sites like Stonehenge and New Grange in the British Isles attest to the importance of this moment; the primary axes of both of these monuments seem to have been aligned on a sight-line framing the winter solstice sunrise (New Grange) and the winter solstice sunset (Stonehenge).
The winter solstice was critically important because ancient communities had to prepare carefully to assure that they would live through the winter. Starvation was common between January to April, called the famine months. The midwinter festival was the last feast before deep winter began. There was feasting because most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter. It was nearly the only time of year when a supply of fresh meat was available because food preservation was so difficult. The majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time. The celebrations usually began, not at midnight or at dawn, but the beginning of the pre-Romanized day, which falls on the previous evening.
Coinciding this year with Solstice, sundown today marked the beginning of Hannukkah, the “Festival of Light” for my many Jewish friends. I think perhaps that this celebration while not as old as the Yule of my ancestors, is more important than most who call themselves Christians, realize. Because frankly, there would not be a Christian religion if it were not for the Jewish religion. And there might not have been a Jewish religion were it not for the Macabees.
Hannukkah celebrates the 165 B.C. miracle of oil for the temple menorah lamps when the short supply of oil lasted many days past when it should have given out after one day. At the time, the Jewish religion was outlawed by the Greek empire, which preceded the Roman empire. But the Jewish Macabees refused to obey. They lit the lamps. The lamps burned for eight days. And the Jewish religion and it's people survived.
Today it's dark. But think about the light to come.
"So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!"
- Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day
©2008 Jan Johnson Wondra
-Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings
"The Winter Solstice, arrived at sunset tonight in the Northern hemisphere. The word winter solstice derives from Latin, meaning Sun set still in winter. Northern peoples called it "Yule”, (Yule Lore ) when the dark half of the year relinquishes to the light half.
Depending upon your attitude, you can think of the solstice occurring either on the shortest day or the longest night of the year. It's a great metaphor for life. Some see life as half full and a golden gift. Others live as if it more than half empty and drearily dark. I choose to think of this day as one of light. Starting tomorrow morning at sunrise, the sun climbs just a little higher and stays a little longer in the sky each day.
For we modern day humans, this night is dark and cold, only until we turn on a light or turn up the furnace. But the mystical nature of the solstice has been a special moment of the annual cycle of the year since neolithic times. The layouts of late Neolithic and Bronze Age archeological sites like Stonehenge and New Grange in the British Isles attest to the importance of this moment; the primary axes of both of these monuments seem to have been aligned on a sight-line framing the winter solstice sunrise (New Grange) and the winter solstice sunset (Stonehenge).
The winter solstice was critically important because ancient communities had to prepare carefully to assure that they would live through the winter. Starvation was common between January to April, called the famine months. The midwinter festival was the last feast before deep winter began. There was feasting because most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter. It was nearly the only time of year when a supply of fresh meat was available because food preservation was so difficult. The majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time. The celebrations usually began, not at midnight or at dawn, but the beginning of the pre-Romanized day, which falls on the previous evening.
Coinciding this year with Solstice, sundown today marked the beginning of Hannukkah, the “Festival of Light” for my many Jewish friends. I think perhaps that this celebration while not as old as the Yule of my ancestors, is more important than most who call themselves Christians, realize. Because frankly, there would not be a Christian religion if it were not for the Jewish religion. And there might not have been a Jewish religion were it not for the Macabees.
Hannukkah celebrates the 165 B.C. miracle of oil for the temple menorah lamps when the short supply of oil lasted many days past when it should have given out after one day. At the time, the Jewish religion was outlawed by the Greek empire, which preceded the Roman empire. But the Jewish Macabees refused to obey. They lit the lamps. The lamps burned for eight days. And the Jewish religion and it's people survived.
Today it's dark. But think about the light to come.
"So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!"
- Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day
©2008 Jan Johnson Wondra
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Sleigh Bells Ring, Are you Listening?
The sweet sound of bells gives me my salt as winter deepens into the end of the calendar year. That and the crunch of snow.
Coming from northern Wisconsin, you get versed in what “really cold” means. It's the below zero days and nights when boots on snow creak under your feet. When just turning the tires of a car makes the snow squeak and protest beneath the frozen rubber. You just know that unless there is salt spread liberally on the road, you're as liable to end up in the ditch as at your destination. Over it all sweeps the grandeur of the northern lights, majestic ribbons of rainbow light sprawling and swirling across the night sky.
Most have never ridden in a sleigh. I grew up on a farm with two draft horses named Prince and Pearl, and a couple of rickety sleighs. Our city cousins loved to come to the farm during the holidays, where Dad would hitch the horses to one of the sleighs, put on his old fur coat (homemade from trapping lines on the farm) and jingle us out into the fields of snow. The jingle bells weren't on the sleigh. They were on the horse harnesses. Dad communicated with those horse with the mere flick of the reins. Dad, the horses and the bells were one. It is a favorite memory of my Father.
For most, the sound of sleigh bells is a foreign thing. For them, bells mean the sound of church bells on a winter's day. The jingle bells hanging from the office decorations. Or the sound of Salvation Army bells being rung at the red kettles standing sentinel at store entrances. The tinkling sweetness of the sound brings to my throat the reserves of gratitude I feel for just being sheltered and warm at night, the love I have for family and friends near and far. It also brings the sadness of the great need in our world and how small I feel until I drop in my quarters or dollars, receiving more in grace from my gift than I deserve.
For young ones or those who remain young in heart, the sound of the bells is often the first gift of Christmas. It is the signal to believe, as in one of our family's favorite Christmas tales, The Polar Express, that there is a spirit of generosity about in the world. I still hear the bells and I hope I always do.
My Father wrote of traveling to the Norske Evangelical Lutheran church as a young child, secure between his parents in the sleigh, tucked beneath a buffalo robe. He remembered tinkling up the road to Christmas services and the magical anticipation he felt; the sense of complete safety and security. As we all begin the great migration “home for the holiday” I am thinking of my own dear ones who start for home from college tomorrow. Their ride will not be as magical, but I pray it will be as safe. For them and for all of you...here is salt for the journey....the message of the sleigh ride:
"Just hear those sleigh bells
Ringing and jing ting tingaling too;
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you.
Outside the Snow is falling and
friends are calling yoo hoo;
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you.
Giddy Up, Giddy Up,
Giddy Up, Let's Go!
Just look at the show,
Were riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddy Up, Giddy Up, Giddy Up
Its Grand, just holdin' your hand
Were riding along with the song
Of a wintery wonder land.
Our cheeks are nice and rosy and
Comfy cozy are we,
Were snuggled
Upp together like birds of
A feather would be.
Just hear those sleigh bells
ringing and jing ting tingaling too
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you.
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you."
- Christmas Carol, Sleigh Bells Ringing
©2008 Jan Johnson wondra
Coming from northern Wisconsin, you get versed in what “really cold” means. It's the below zero days and nights when boots on snow creak under your feet. When just turning the tires of a car makes the snow squeak and protest beneath the frozen rubber. You just know that unless there is salt spread liberally on the road, you're as liable to end up in the ditch as at your destination. Over it all sweeps the grandeur of the northern lights, majestic ribbons of rainbow light sprawling and swirling across the night sky.
Most have never ridden in a sleigh. I grew up on a farm with two draft horses named Prince and Pearl, and a couple of rickety sleighs. Our city cousins loved to come to the farm during the holidays, where Dad would hitch the horses to one of the sleighs, put on his old fur coat (homemade from trapping lines on the farm) and jingle us out into the fields of snow. The jingle bells weren't on the sleigh. They were on the horse harnesses. Dad communicated with those horse with the mere flick of the reins. Dad, the horses and the bells were one. It is a favorite memory of my Father.
For most, the sound of sleigh bells is a foreign thing. For them, bells mean the sound of church bells on a winter's day. The jingle bells hanging from the office decorations. Or the sound of Salvation Army bells being rung at the red kettles standing sentinel at store entrances. The tinkling sweetness of the sound brings to my throat the reserves of gratitude I feel for just being sheltered and warm at night, the love I have for family and friends near and far. It also brings the sadness of the great need in our world and how small I feel until I drop in my quarters or dollars, receiving more in grace from my gift than I deserve.
For young ones or those who remain young in heart, the sound of the bells is often the first gift of Christmas. It is the signal to believe, as in one of our family's favorite Christmas tales, The Polar Express, that there is a spirit of generosity about in the world. I still hear the bells and I hope I always do.
My Father wrote of traveling to the Norske Evangelical Lutheran church as a young child, secure between his parents in the sleigh, tucked beneath a buffalo robe. He remembered tinkling up the road to Christmas services and the magical anticipation he felt; the sense of complete safety and security. As we all begin the great migration “home for the holiday” I am thinking of my own dear ones who start for home from college tomorrow. Their ride will not be as magical, but I pray it will be as safe. For them and for all of you...here is salt for the journey....the message of the sleigh ride:
"Just hear those sleigh bells
Ringing and jing ting tingaling too;
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you.
Outside the Snow is falling and
friends are calling yoo hoo;
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you.
Giddy Up, Giddy Up,
Giddy Up, Let's Go!
Just look at the show,
Were riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddy Up, Giddy Up, Giddy Up
Its Grand, just holdin' your hand
Were riding along with the song
Of a wintery wonder land.
Our cheeks are nice and rosy and
Comfy cozy are we,
Were snuggled
Upp together like birds of
A feather would be.
Just hear those sleigh bells
ringing and jing ting tingaling too
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you.
Come on its lovely weather for
A sleigh ride together with you."
- Christmas Carol, Sleigh Bells Ringing
©2008 Jan Johnson wondra
Saturday, December 13, 2008
It's a dark time to be focusing on light.
"Lighting one candle
from another -
Winter night"
- Buson
Act II is upon us. December 13th is St. Lucia Day, (Luciadagen) in the Scandinavian countries of my ancestry. It's the day the eldest, blondest daughter gets togged out in white robes, plants a crown of holly and lighted candles on her head and brings breakfast to her family in honor of an early Christian martyr. Hopefully the daughter's hair doesn't catch on fire, like the day's namesake! The first century Roman girl refused to marry the man of her family's choosing who was not a believer. She was tortured and killed for her faith, reportedly by being set on fire.(http://www.billpetro.com/HolidayHistory/hol/xmas/lucia.html) This “festival of light” begins the traditional extended Christmas season, which lasts until at least January 6th and in Sweden until January 20th.
Why light? Ancient peoples from the Egyptians, Romans and Persians, to people of the far north all celebrate the winter solstice on December 21st or 22nd. This was the time when the light stopped receding, and days at last began to grow longer back toward the season of planting. For the Romans and their empire, it was called Saturnalia.
In a superb act of early Christian marketing, Yule (from the Germanic root geol) festival customs, like many of our Christmas traditions, were transplanted from pagan customs. If you can't stamp out the ancient rituals, you might as well just fold them into the new religion.
After the fall of Rome, the Vikings dominated Scotland and much of England and Ireland for centuries, not to mention much of northern Europe and Russia, as well as the trade routes down to Byzantium and into Persia and the far east. They lent much of their ancient solstice season activity, called Yule (in Swedish, Yul) to Christianity. We're talking major celebrating here, folks! Thus, people were encouraged to continue to dance around their midwinter bonfires but instead of Thor or Odin, it was done in honor of the King of Kings.
The predominance of the far north in the celebration of Christmas may result, not just from the extensive travels of the Viking Varangians, but from the plain fact that nowhere else on earth is the movement of the sun as drastic. From midwinter's near absolute darkness to midsummer's solstice of “white nights” when the sun never really sets, the north exemplifies best the light brought to the world via the “Son of Man.” In Scandinavia, this is an extended time of feasting and gathering together of friends and family. A time to celebrate away the long, dark nights until we are safely into a season of longer days. A time to remember and care for those who don't have the means to “celebrate the light.”
So much of what we have come to see as Christmas tradition comes from my ancient Viking heritage. The cutting of the mistletoe. Bringing in the greens to, literally, “deck the halls.” The giant Yule log dragged by chain out of the woods to provide fuel for the great bonfires. Instead of debauchery, there rose the custom of the midnight bells calling all to the Mass on Christmas Eve and to services on New Year's Eve. http://www.julenissen.no/story.html
So, back to that astute marketing move.
The traditional Christmas is not a single day but a prolonged period, normally from 24th December to 6th January. This included the New Year, thus increasing the festival value of the season. I hate that we have allowed Christmas to be co-oped by the retail profit machine. I hate that there are no songs of celebration on the radio after Christmas day. Who said Christmas ends at the stroke of midnight December 25? Who said this was only about buying things? Who said you had to be rich to celebrate? No one, that's who.
I'm taking Yule back. I'm selfish. I want all of Christmas, not just the retail version. This year, especially this dark year, I want a real yule celebration. Don't you?
"Holly and mistletoe
Candles and bells,
I know the message
That each of you tells."
- Leland B. Jacobs, Mrs. Ritters First Grade Critters
©2008 Jan Johnson Wondra
from another -
Winter night"
- Buson
Act II is upon us. December 13th is St. Lucia Day, (Luciadagen) in the Scandinavian countries of my ancestry. It's the day the eldest, blondest daughter gets togged out in white robes, plants a crown of holly and lighted candles on her head and brings breakfast to her family in honor of an early Christian martyr. Hopefully the daughter's hair doesn't catch on fire, like the day's namesake! The first century Roman girl refused to marry the man of her family's choosing who was not a believer. She was tortured and killed for her faith, reportedly by being set on fire.(http://www.billpetro.com/HolidayHistory/hol/xmas/lucia.html) This “festival of light” begins the traditional extended Christmas season, which lasts until at least January 6th and in Sweden until January 20th.
Why light? Ancient peoples from the Egyptians, Romans and Persians, to people of the far north all celebrate the winter solstice on December 21st or 22nd. This was the time when the light stopped receding, and days at last began to grow longer back toward the season of planting. For the Romans and their empire, it was called Saturnalia.
In a superb act of early Christian marketing, Yule (from the Germanic root geol) festival customs, like many of our Christmas traditions, were transplanted from pagan customs. If you can't stamp out the ancient rituals, you might as well just fold them into the new religion.
After the fall of Rome, the Vikings dominated Scotland and much of England and Ireland for centuries, not to mention much of northern Europe and Russia, as well as the trade routes down to Byzantium and into Persia and the far east. They lent much of their ancient solstice season activity, called Yule (in Swedish, Yul) to Christianity. We're talking major celebrating here, folks! Thus, people were encouraged to continue to dance around their midwinter bonfires but instead of Thor or Odin, it was done in honor of the King of Kings.
The predominance of the far north in the celebration of Christmas may result, not just from the extensive travels of the Viking Varangians, but from the plain fact that nowhere else on earth is the movement of the sun as drastic. From midwinter's near absolute darkness to midsummer's solstice of “white nights” when the sun never really sets, the north exemplifies best the light brought to the world via the “Son of Man.” In Scandinavia, this is an extended time of feasting and gathering together of friends and family. A time to celebrate away the long, dark nights until we are safely into a season of longer days. A time to remember and care for those who don't have the means to “celebrate the light.”
So much of what we have come to see as Christmas tradition comes from my ancient Viking heritage. The cutting of the mistletoe. Bringing in the greens to, literally, “deck the halls.” The giant Yule log dragged by chain out of the woods to provide fuel for the great bonfires. Instead of debauchery, there rose the custom of the midnight bells calling all to the Mass on Christmas Eve and to services on New Year's Eve. http://www.julenissen.no/story.html
So, back to that astute marketing move.
The traditional Christmas is not a single day but a prolonged period, normally from 24th December to 6th January. This included the New Year, thus increasing the festival value of the season. I hate that we have allowed Christmas to be co-oped by the retail profit machine. I hate that there are no songs of celebration on the radio after Christmas day. Who said Christmas ends at the stroke of midnight December 25? Who said this was only about buying things? Who said you had to be rich to celebrate? No one, that's who.
I'm taking Yule back. I'm selfish. I want all of Christmas, not just the retail version. This year, especially this dark year, I want a real yule celebration. Don't you?
"Holly and mistletoe
Candles and bells,
I know the message
That each of you tells."
- Leland B. Jacobs, Mrs. Ritters First Grade Critters
©2008 Jan Johnson Wondra
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
It's harder to be thankful the week after Thanksgiving.
"O Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."
- William Shakespeare .
Act I of “Holidays circa 2008” is over. Our college kids have gone back to school for a few more weeks. The left-overs are gone, except for the turkey carcass awaiting its final destination in turkey vegetable soup. Americans are collectively hauling out the Xmas decorations, and trying to find reasons to be cheerful as recession bears down on us. Even the weather doesn't cooperate. In fact today the skies in Colorado are in a putty gray funk. The only cheering is going on up in the high country as snow accumulates at the ski resorts. (Which I personally think is a very great thing!)
We gear up for celebration this time of year (many major religions, in fact, share this season of celebration) and most of us are surprised by the odd sadness that can arrive this week. This is an emotional time of year. Our expectations run high. Our memories of holidays past add extra glow to old traditions. Most of us can't possibly measure up to the holidays we hope to create. We stress and fret and in the end disappoint ourselves. And not just because the coffers are low and we're frazzled by crowded malls or grim job prospects.
I think it is because for many of us, we lock thanksgiving into a single day; then we check it off our “to-do” list and move on to the next calendar event. There's a reason that thanksgiving comes when it does in the grand pageant of the year, not the least of which is that it follows harvest time. The difference between saying “I do feel grateful” and “I don't feel grateful” is two letters, an apostrophe and our actions. We are meant to do something. “Thanksgiving, after all,” as W.J. Cameron notes, “is a word of action.”
We aren't meant to relegate Thanksgiving's meaning to the traditions of a single day! Oh, we chuckle when Erma Bombeck notes: "What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving ?"
Yes, but....I've spent the past several days, amidst the hubbub of Thanksgiving really considering what it means to be grateful and what I'm to do with what reveals itself. Cicero said that "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
So in that case, a grateful heart leads to other acts of character; like compassion, integrity and generosity. U.S. President's thoughts on Thanksgiving are recorded because they annually issue a proclamation of Thanksgiving. But they speak profoundly: Teddy Roosevelt commented that “True homage comes from the heart, and not just the lips.”
Other quotable folks have gone on record that gratefulness isn't just a matter of the heart, it's a case of the soul. Aesop Fables instructs us that “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.”
Aesop is not alone in that opinion. John Fitzgerald Kennedy noted that “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
It's Act II of Holidays 2008. I know that this year it is more of an effort than most years. But that is what will make it the most special holiday for us all if we get out and MAKE LIGHT, not just soak it in. Take time to DO something to act grateful, not just profess it.
Me, I've begun on my list of gratitudes: I've signed up to walk in the Jingle Bell Run/Walk (www.jinglebellrundenver.kintera.org ) on December 14th here in Denver to benefit the Arthritis Foundation. Join me or find a walk in your area to raise money for research programs to help fight the single most debilitating cause of disability in America. I've vowed to not miss a single Salvation Red Kettle in any store I enter this year, even if I've only got a quarter on me to contribute. I've prepared bags of out-grown coats for Good Will and this year I'm going to find one of those mitten trees that help kids in need and grab a couple of mitten wishes to fill. It's a start on a grateful heart.
©Jan Johnson Wondra
- William Shakespeare .
Act I of “Holidays circa 2008” is over. Our college kids have gone back to school for a few more weeks. The left-overs are gone, except for the turkey carcass awaiting its final destination in turkey vegetable soup. Americans are collectively hauling out the Xmas decorations, and trying to find reasons to be cheerful as recession bears down on us. Even the weather doesn't cooperate. In fact today the skies in Colorado are in a putty gray funk. The only cheering is going on up in the high country as snow accumulates at the ski resorts. (Which I personally think is a very great thing!)
We gear up for celebration this time of year (many major religions, in fact, share this season of celebration) and most of us are surprised by the odd sadness that can arrive this week. This is an emotional time of year. Our expectations run high. Our memories of holidays past add extra glow to old traditions. Most of us can't possibly measure up to the holidays we hope to create. We stress and fret and in the end disappoint ourselves. And not just because the coffers are low and we're frazzled by crowded malls or grim job prospects.
I think it is because for many of us, we lock thanksgiving into a single day; then we check it off our “to-do” list and move on to the next calendar event. There's a reason that thanksgiving comes when it does in the grand pageant of the year, not the least of which is that it follows harvest time. The difference between saying “I do feel grateful” and “I don't feel grateful” is two letters, an apostrophe and our actions. We are meant to do something. “Thanksgiving, after all,” as W.J. Cameron notes, “is a word of action.”
We aren't meant to relegate Thanksgiving's meaning to the traditions of a single day! Oh, we chuckle when Erma Bombeck notes: "What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving ?"
Yes, but....I've spent the past several days, amidst the hubbub of Thanksgiving really considering what it means to be grateful and what I'm to do with what reveals itself. Cicero said that "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
So in that case, a grateful heart leads to other acts of character; like compassion, integrity and generosity. U.S. President's thoughts on Thanksgiving are recorded because they annually issue a proclamation of Thanksgiving. But they speak profoundly: Teddy Roosevelt commented that “True homage comes from the heart, and not just the lips.”
Other quotable folks have gone on record that gratefulness isn't just a matter of the heart, it's a case of the soul. Aesop Fables instructs us that “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.”
Aesop is not alone in that opinion. John Fitzgerald Kennedy noted that “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
It's Act II of Holidays 2008. I know that this year it is more of an effort than most years. But that is what will make it the most special holiday for us all if we get out and MAKE LIGHT, not just soak it in. Take time to DO something to act grateful, not just profess it.
Me, I've begun on my list of gratitudes: I've signed up to walk in the Jingle Bell Run/Walk (www.jinglebellrundenver.kintera.org ) on December 14th here in Denver to benefit the Arthritis Foundation. Join me or find a walk in your area to raise money for research programs to help fight the single most debilitating cause of disability in America. I've vowed to not miss a single Salvation Red Kettle in any store I enter this year, even if I've only got a quarter on me to contribute. I've prepared bags of out-grown coats for Good Will and this year I'm going to find one of those mitten trees that help kids in need and grab a couple of mitten wishes to fill. It's a start on a grateful heart.
©Jan Johnson Wondra
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