The Jon-a-gold Christmas Tree

My older far-flung children and I had a wonderful time chatting on facebook this afternoon.  Five of us scattered clear across the country.  So fun to connect together.  I could even see who was reading the messages back and forth in little light print at the bottom of the page.  I felt like a detective spy!  The primary topic of our communication was Christmas trees.  Our tradition in years gone by has been to dig up a Christmas tree at a Christmas tree farm.  Often that has meant a rather unruly root ball with the tree sitting in a wheelbarrow in the living room for weeks.  One year gardener husband was flat on his back with sciatica for days after digging up the tree.  That year the tree never even got in the house and was decorated by the front door.  After the trees are enjoyed for a couple of weeks, the tradition is to plant them somewhere on our property.  They are always thoughtfully named in honour of someone of importance for us that year.  There was an Uncle Doug tree after our much loved nephew who came to live with us for a time as an adult, a Dorie tree after a Hungarian student who was with us one Christmas, and even a Crystal tree after one of our newly adopted daughters.  Unfortunately her tree died three times. It was somewhat troubling to us as a family, but did at least reflect our perseverance!  You may be puzzled about how a tree can have three lives. My determined and frugal husband takes back the dead trees to the nursery as  they are bought with a living guarantee. The guarantee does not cover our family stress, however.  The Christmas trees were not the only thing testing our  perseverance, so finally something had to give and we abandoned the whole digging up the tree routine.  I went for the Great Canadian Superstore sales and have quite enjoyed the ease of the cut trees.  Last year gardener husband saw a great deal on fake trees and went to huge lengths to buy what he felt would be a unique and special  artificial tree.  Christmas has its stress around here and somehow the poor artificial tree became the lightning rod for quite a family ruckus.  As much as an artificial tree made sense, it was a significant loss  for me.  Although I had initially endorsed the switching to a fake tree, once it actually arrived I felt like I was losing my soul along with every other thing that I  had come to value in my life.  I was missing the piney smell and the symbolism of the tree's green life emerging in our midst.  Coping with a stressed and unreasonable wife, poor husband returned that tree too, with no replacements this time.  We all vowed to quietly skirt the Christmas tree issue for now.  Until today.  Older daughter had forgotten about the angry artificial return and wrote to suggest that we leave the fake tree in its fake box in the attic.  We all reluctantly remembered the angry ruckus and switched quickly to the plans for trees this year.  As they sit at their computers studying, far flung kids are making plans to resurrect the digging up the tree tradition.
This year the tree will be the Jon-a-gold tree.  We are hoping we can find a place of good nutritious soil that is not too wet for his roots.  We want him to live and survive in our family garden.  Husband is thinking we might even try planting in a prominent position in the front yard.  A new position and a radical departure from the back yard plantings previously.  Jon is indeed a man of a golden heart.  He does have a prominent place in our lives.  He will be spending much of Christmas with us, and I call him my newest adopted son!  Welcome for Christmas Jonathan.  We love you and are looking forward to you being with us in the family garden.

Giving Our All!

My daughters are all dancers.  They each come to dance with their own style and enthusiasm, and I am delighted in their joy as they move to music.  One of my daughters is particularly enthusiastic and unique in her dance expression.  She had years of significant neglect culminating in a very significant brain injury almost ten years ago.  She fell from a balcony and could not walk for many months.  She still has some weakness down one side.  Even a few years ago she could not stand on one leg or jump.  For years she was also very disconnected from her body.  The emphasis of her therapy for more than a year was to help weave together her mind, heart and body. We integrated weekly psychotherapy with massage therapy and carefully chosen activities including lots of music to help with integrating and healing.   Dance has continued the very significant healing and integration of her beautiful self.  She takes two dance classes each week, one in jazz and one hip hop.  She loves music too and plays the flute and sings in a choir at school. She savours each of these activities and they bring her joy and radiance from the inside out.     Surprisingly, she now has more confidence and dance experience than most of her peers at school.  Today she reported on their dance unit in phys ed.  She felt awkward because her enthusiasm for dance stood out in her class. Her partner stood and stared at her. In her confident way she smiled at me, eyes sparkling.  "I always want to give my all, mom.  No matter what!"

I was deeply inspired by my daughter again tonight.  I too want to always give all of who I am from my mind,  heart and body, no matter what my skill level or what others around me might think.

The Magnifying Glass

 I have always been intrigued and fascinated by magnifying glasses.  I can spend hours exploring the hidden treasures emerging from magnification.  Magnifying glasses bring forth both beauty and ugliness in the ordinary around us.  My most recent adventures with the magnifying glass were this fall when a number of my kids had lice.    I sure spent a lot of time of with that magnifying glass in hand!  Last summer I took a magnifying glass down to the beach at low tide.  I was amazed at the life squirming that I had never before seen.  Even here at home in the most ordinary of places the magnifying glass brings forth new surprises.  I must say, though, I cannot sustain the high powered effort of looking through the magnifying glass indefinitely or I start to feel rather dizzy.  I have to frequently look up and view the larger picture to help keep my bearings.

Some seasons of our lives seem to be magnifying glass times.  We are confronted more clearly with both the joys and sorrows of our lives in these times.  The lens of our lives sharpens and  life is magnified and brought forth in new and surprising ways.  In these times we often feel more acutely.  Our feelings can be both wonderful and also very challenging to manage, especially when life is magnified.  This season of Christmas can often be a time of magnification. So can times of parenting, adopting and so many events in our lives. Both the joy and the sorrow are sharpened and enlarged in some times.  It can be overwhelming and difficult to cope.

I want to live a full life that does not shy away from the sharp heightening of experience and emotion that can be magnified in special times. It helps to acknowledge these magnifying times and to sometimes change the view through the lens.  I like the fact that my camera has a number of lens possibilities.  It has the magnifying macro lens, but I can also change to the more expansive wide angle or even to the distant telephoto lens.  I also need to practice changing my lens view of life especially in these full days.  I want to consciously move from the magnification to the expansive and even the longer life view.  Those magnified events have a larger context.  It is helpful to learn to shift to see the bigger picture.   In consciously shifting perspective I can enjoy both the magnificence and the full expanse of the specific times and events that are a part of the larger whole of our lives.  May we enjoy both the intensity and the wider view of the loaded and special times of our lives in our relationships, parenting, adoption and even Christmas this year.

The Present Box

Those hours wandering around looking for a baptism gift never did result in a special and memorable delight for my daughter.  The only result was a bit of  progress on the inner dialogue of the blog post on presence.  Finally I resorted to looking in my present box jammed in the back of a cluttered cupboard.  I have a special box put aside for those  items to be regifted and a few unusual treasures successfully found in months and even years gone by.  Since I  mistakenly gave a lovely ornament back to the very person who gave it to me, I have not been as eager to check out that box.  This time I was surprised.  There was a delightful set of Ukrainian painted stacking wooden dolls.  They made me think of the layers of our lives unfolding.  Treasures stacked together.  The dolls are beautifully and intricately painted in rich colours and somehow seemed fitting for my special daughter and the depth and beauty of her challenging but multifaceted, deep and interesting life.

The dolls reminded me in turn of a very special painted Christmas egg ornament that stands here on my desk all year.  This painted egg creatively weaves together the truths of both Christmas and Easter.  Birth and death leading to miraculous new richness of life and hope are  linked in the smooth and symmetrical shape of an egg.  A small painting of mother and child emerge from the intricate woven pattern of colour and shape on the egg.  Sacred in the ordinary.  My career for all these years has been mostly caring for mothers and their children.  I help mothers hold and bond with their unique babies and children. I have never before linked  the importance of that early bonding and relationship with our mothers with  the emphasis in art on the mother and child Jesus.  Even the Son of God was cared for and held by his earthly mother.  Foundations of the world in the arms of a woman.  Those early months in the arms of our mothers are the primal undergirding of the rest of our lives.  For those for whom there was not warmth and comfort in those embraces, there is still hope.  In the rich depths of our hearts we can know the encircling embrace of God and  acceptance and love for our own child selves. All those images of mother and child surrounding us speak to the centrality of those sacred moments in our own lives.  I wonder if the very creation of those images has brought healing and grounding for the artists who perhaps, like so many, were wounded by their lack in reality, but encouraged in the fertile imaginations of their heart.  These images bring special life and depth to the experiences of my family this year.  May our wounded hearts know healing and rest in the quiet foundational embrace of mother and child so graphically expressed around us in this season.

Are you all done?

We all have our own areas of vulnerability.  One of mine happens to be shopping.  As I wandered aimlessly through a packed mall  looking for something special for my daughter-being-baptized last week, I must have been asked at least three times if I was all done.  All done my Christmas shopping was what the nice smiling ladies were asking.  I gave my nice smiling face back, gulping and trying to be funny and meaningful all at once.  "Well actually, I haven't yet begun" or "I just keep it all really simple."  Inside my stomach was knotting and I was thinking,  "I have no idea where to begin."  "This is not my thing!"  "I can't even find a baptism present let alone get started on Christmas!"  It does matter to me as much as I give all the right spiritual platitudes about it not mattering.  For goodness sake, I have eight kids and myriad family to buy for. I want them to feel special and cared for!  Even Jesus got gifts at his birth!

Now don't get me wrong.  I like surprises.  I like perfect meaningful gifts.  I have friends who are good at presents and enjoy it.  I do like giving gifts.  I like sharing.  I just am no good at shopping or even at making lovely little packages of cookies or granola.  Quite honestly, it does significantly complicate Christmas for me.  I know that it is not the gifts that are important.  I talk to myself about "presence" instead of "presents." I could probably even write a nice blog about  "Presence."  I had it half written in my head as I wandered around the stuffed mall last week.  I am good at the presence part of Christmas.  I want to focus on that.  I love the lighting the candles.  Reading the special Christmas books outloud.  Cooking the nourishing warm meals.  Smelling the cranberry-apple cinnamon hot cider brewing on the stove.  It is just that no matter how hard I try to tell myself that Christmas is not about presents, it is those darn presents or lack of them that catches in my throat and brings panic into the whole season.

Yes, we will try to keep it simple.   We will try to focus on the "Reason for the Season."  This year maybe I will be a little more gentle with myself and accept that the panic is okay.  I'll welcome it and include it along with the joy of all that is good and peaceful and loving.  I won't have it all perfect.  Some of the kids will be secretly  disappointed.  I'll be okay with that too.  I'll cook a lovely meal and fill the stockings with toothpaste and soap and an orange.  I'll tell myself to start earlier next year, knowing that will not be as I don't know what to get any earlier than later.  I'll go forward with the mixed feelings, the angst and the incompleteness that is life and indeed a huge part of the whole entire season of being a human being.

Moments in Time

Today was full of wonderful moments and also of very special interactions coming from mere moments in the past.  Sometimes I have been tempted to feel that all that is of importance has to  be somehow weighty, planned and outwardly significant.   I am increasingly resting in the reality that it is often in those unplanned and seemingly insignificant moments where life is most fully lived.
Our daughter invited some people to play an important part in her baptism who have not had long time influence in her life.  Their influence has been in essentially short meetings of time, but profoundly deep in meaning and impact.  The wonderful young woman who baptised her had only really had fleeting contact with my daughter previously.  In short moments my daughter felt deeply loved, understood and cared for by her.  Similarly, another woman came to our home and was an important part of our day.  Our daughter met her for an hour one afternoon at a church function.  The woman enthusiastically encouraged and inspired my daughter through her radiant spirit and life.  My daughter will always remember her inspiration in one short afternoon meeting.
I am encouraged to relax in the momentary being of daily life.  I want to learn to treasure those little moments in time.

Abundance

Daughter to be baptized  and I went shopping today for the celebration lunch that we will have after her baptism.  We were amazed at the lavish abundance all around us. The stores were packed.  Cosco was generous with the free samples, extravagantly offering us whole Lindor chocolates and a delicious caramel shortbread!  The lights were glittering and shelves laden with gifts to be.  We didn't even go down those aisles.  We did find a lovely cake.  My daughter was taken with it right away.  It is decorated with rich reds, greens and browns shaped in a lovely wreath and a bright shining candle.  The inscription is Happy Holidays.  I felt that wording did not quite capture the specialness of the occasion, but after standing with the heavy cake leaning over the counter and trying to get someone's attention, I realized that Cosco does not major in bakery service, so we took it as is.  At another store I bought one of those squeezy tubes so that I can carefully skim off the Holidays to transform it to  Baptism and her most special angelic name which does indeed mean pure and white!

As we walked through the stores I did wonder about abundance.  I do want to live a life of abundance, but somehow at this season of lavish overload I have been thinking that maybe the kind of plentiful bounty that I am after is different than that all around me today.  For me this external abundance does rather cloud my own inner connection to fullness that resonates with integrity in my heart.  For years I have been so enamored by all the external trappings and justifications of my journey.  Although I do love the lights and music and joy of the season, I am seeking more abundance within these days.  In my heart I am sitting with the animals in the quiet and lonely barn, quite content with the prickly hay in my hair and the rich smells around me.  I am listening to the gentle sounds of cows munching their hay and the quiet rustling warmth out of the brightness of the day.  The star is shining down and I am waiting.