To Close with Gratitude…

A live reflection expanding from the moment.

As the Gregorian year comes again to its close, I touch this proverbial ink to page in honoring a threshold of shared significance.

And yet in this era of postmodern integration, the hard and fast certainty of that midnight moment’s window between December and January seems somewhat unmoored in my attention.

I remember, as a child, growing up with some longing for that staying up late experience of ringing in the new year. Then there was a time when focus turned to the celebration, the circumstance and pomp of the occasion taken for granted. As a (in broad terms) middle-class white American male born in the early 70s, New Year’s Eve was New Year’s Eve was New Year’s Eve and that was that. Stay up and watch it happen, what else would you do?

Then we age, perhaps have children, find our lives fuller, and maybe fudge a little on that wide-eyed witnessing of the turning of the clock. Eventually, we might even come to ask silly questions like “what is time anyway?” Who was Gregory, and why do I care which point in our orbit he picked to favor?

But, per usual, I digress… I do not mean to pick apart the finer points of time, but rather to notice the increasing cultural complexity of our shared context. Helping me out of bed this morning, Zack commented “I count from the solstice, so the New Year’s already happened.” A fine distinction, to be sure. Zach happens to be Jewish and also celebrates Hanukkah.

Of course Hanukkah doesn’t mark the Jewish new year, that is Rosh Hashanah, but Hanukkah does fall near Christmas, the winter solstice, and the Gregorian new year; what we in America (and probably other regions) commonly refer to as “happy holidays.” :-)

So as a Gregorian new year approaches, and I sit to share a few words with you my friend, I noticed a sentiment of collective honoring and reflection, but also I notice the ways in which we mark the passage of time. New moons, full moons, solstice, orientations relative to galactic center, my own felt sense of reverence for the Tibetan calendar – based on nothing more than my own joyful appreciation of wisdom traditions stemming from that region of the world — all of these swirl as I lend these words to the symphony of these final days of December.

If I had to fall somewhere in all of this, I might find it interesting to honor a balance of years running in parallel. I fall easily and with Zack – to my city mind, the shortest day and darkest night seems as good as any way of marking threshold of the year. This of course offers a polar balance with our calendared friends in the southern hemisphere, I think I might appreciate the aesthetic of running two parallel but offset years on planet Earth.

All of this to say, I reach out to reflect with you, not knowing where you stand, what traditions, what cycles of time have meaning in your life? Where are you in your own turning? I’ve just begun my sixth decade as the person I’ve become, approaching my 31^st trillionth mile traveled spiraling around this star in the fragmented arc of a lifetime in this place. Am I Buddhist, Hindu, Integralist, American, existentialist, do I prefer to follow the moon, the seasons, from which indicators do I take my clues to mark with some care the cycles of this life we share?

And so this is a New Year’s letter, and maybe it’s not. The view from my little corner window is quiet, the energy of those about me tending to the vestiges of the holidays, the next week of business waiting to surge forward in that strange way of new promise and resolution and return.

It is with appreciation for this broad amalgam of view, and allowance for a wide window with which to see this threshold, that I offer a salutary greeting and thanks for our making this world together, such as we do.

This week has seen a death in the family.

Elements of closing cycles and opening new.

My orphan grandfather would have celebrated a 111^th birthday on Christmas Day.

Just in time for the full moon.

My brother’s father will have his body committed to the earth for final resting.

I and Yogananda and bitcoin will celebrate birthdays very soon.

Then a friend will go under care for open heart surgery. We will offer prayers.

I will look more closely with my dear friend John to understand the ebbs and flows of things.

I have been given so much just to see these things.

To live in this Divine Confusion,

to observe these interesting times.

I am grateful for the striving, for the struggling, and for the raw wonder of our lives together.

When I think about this frame of endings and beginnings, I find myself turning inward, not like an arrow, but more like running around a doughnut, inside and out, round and round the spiral. This inward turning is a search I find for fuller ways of being in love. Being in love, not simply being happy (though that is certainly a part), but being in the action, the service of love. Being in love as “being in the flow,” the river of kindness and generosity and care, vigilant and skillful to the utmost in every moment.

Inhale. Exhale. Receive with gratitude. Give love. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

Notice how everything we do seems to fit that pattern. Every longing, a longing to feel that warmth and fullness of gratitude. Every gesture, a seeking to make things better, somewhere, somehow, for someone (including ourselves.) Every inhale, a longing for the gift of life. Every exhale, striving to make beauty. The stillness between, just appreciating one another.

I could not begin to list the things for which I have gratitude in this past year measured 2023. There is not enough ink in these pixels, nor enough blank in these pages to cover that territory in exhaustion for even a moment, let alone a year.

Then again, of course I can begin…

There are those care giving souls who come to my every day to ensure I can live in this paralyzed flesh. There is the stillness in that same flesh which calls me again and again to consider the fullness of opportunity within limitation. There are the friends who stand by me week after week, year after year to shine brightly in the face of this monsoon of crisis. There are those countless beings working tirelessly, revolution through revolution, to ease suffering and shed light on the path stones ahead.

There are those flowers that bloom in December. There are the tricky new Caledonian crows and their “not at all artificial” but quite inspiring intelligence. There are all those beings who came before, made wellness and care, and left worn pathways of wisdom to make our way today just a little bit easier.

I have encountered all of these things this year, that and innumerable blessings beyond. I do pray that even some small portion of these gifts have made their way through me and out again as loving kindness and real care for the world.

Therein lies the work, does it not? To realize, under the weights of hardship, challenge, threat, and ambiguity, to feel that VUCA wind, and yet underneath it all, to discover our own strength to be a light in that storm. Therein lies the work, does it not? To see in ourselves the beauty and unspeakable majesty of life, and to let that pour out as the gift of love that we have received, not to keep, but to pass along in the spirit of flourishing and the spirit of wonderful awe.

Happy turnings to you. Be it the inhale and exhale, the comings and goings of light to the moon, a turning of season or honoring of spiritual tradition, maybe even this grand evolutionary fulcrum on which we all stand, may these moments in your own reflection sparkle with the light of gifts you have received and illuminate those gifts you have to give.

In kindness and gratitude…

Kabir

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