sitting in the dark
Here at my house it has been a revolving door of viruses. Just when I think we may have shaken it another arrives. As I have heard from many people this is a common experience. And if you are in the middle of it too, hang in there. It’s not easy.
It is relentless and for me mimics a lot of what it feels like to live life in this moment . Tenuous, steeped in an act of balancing things that are beyond control or reach. Sometimes full of moments of huge blooming grief that spreads across me like it did unexplainably last night during the marimba portion of the school concert.
And it comes alongside these darkest days of the year. Right now, 7:36 am the light of the day is just beginning to make its way into the sky . These short days leave me breathless because I am always trying to get out and be in the light while it is there. A race to be filled up.
I guess I write this because I am curious how we sit in the dark together. I am curious what happens if I stop racing for the light this time of year and instead curl around a child and read, Pete’s a Pizza for the hundredth time, stop and go for a walk in the drizzle, look at ourselves in the kitchen and settle into eggs and beans for dinner, enough, ordinary, nourishing enough.
And also in this time with all my attention frayed caring and tending, endless worrying, with my never-ending cold, with the grief that comes and goes, with the discomfort that darkness brings for me. I wonder in that darkness what am I touching. Is there something fertile? Can I stretch to not bring a value system to it? What happens if I imagine my way out of the polarity of dark and light and instead inhabit the liminality that the long grey days and nights offer?
As we wrap up the year I am sending you love, wonder, and curiosity about yourself and the world. I hope you too have a moment to be in the dark, the liminal, the whirring, and that it is enough.
Looking forward to sharing with you a class, about winter symbolism through cooking I am teaching with artist, writer, witch, with Grey Ellis of
! We’ve been dreaming something since last Spring. Not only are they brilliant but they have an uncanny ability to hold both humor and depth at the same time.Also coming in the new year, (with a working link thanks to
) Being and Breathing will start up again on January 12th, 5-6 pm Pacific Time.