Month: December 2020

December 26th
One person had posted:

How soon are you taking down Christmas?

Replies came quickly:
“DONE!”
“Today!!”
“So over it!”
“Already packed away!”
“Finished with this year.”

This year, this tired old year
of lockdown,
pandemic, and madness–
perhaps it
can’t end soon enough,
but I’m long-lived and learning
to breathe, to scrutinize reflections, to consider
the opposite of impulse and inclination.

Am I finished with this year?

I carry my questions
like a newborn, and travel
the landscape of my life:
city blocks of memories,
neighborhoods of years,
buildings crammed with months, and
just here, walking down December hallways,
I encounter my mother and grandmother,
wise women, spirit magi,
stepping out from doorways to enlighten,
one on either side of me.
“Life
is meant to illuminate.
Don’t let go of it all
so quickly.
Wait.
Sift.
Listen.
Epiphanies will come.”

And I stood in their light,
and knew.

A lifetime of sparks, flashing, but rarely
did I recognize my magi, all things,
everywhere: the passing word, choirs,
the overlooked stranger, the loss,
the leaf, the heat, this moment, the next,
messages streaming
from bag-ladies, blackbirds,
the screaming child, the exit sign,
the cruel lover, the doubting nun,
the wisdom in stories
told at tables lit by love…memories
all my memories,
so much wisdom shining,
overlooked,
strewn on my path,
impeding my progress
to new years; why weren’t
they ever new?
They felt like
every year that came
before
I rushed through
their front doors, insight and mystery
glowing unseen, the regret
of a busy life, of flying
past gift, such gift.

In my December hallways
the wise women said,
“Life is meant to illuminate.”

And, if we missed
the invitations
to break open and be new,
they’re still arriving,
new magi meeting us
now, and now, and
the wise ones,
waiting
in the hallways of memory,
still part of us, still offering
the chance to stand in light
and transfigure.

And this virulent year?
I won’t let go its hand
till all its darkness whispers
wisdom in my ready heart:
how fear summons tempests
only an infant held
at the breast can calm,
how sorrow
compounds to tonnage
only a cardinal
slicing through snowfall
can lift,
how one disease
reveals deeper and many,
and none are healed
if any are denied.

This moment,
this season, this year,
this tired old year,
this mighty magus,
we can’t
let it go too soon.
Wait. Sift. Listen.
Receive its
brilliant epiphanies

and illuminated,
transform.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

And when you’ve bid farewell to 2020, I wish you bright blessings and epiphanies in the year ahead.
Joy to your hearts from all of us at Full Moon Cottage.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

The impact of Covid-19 on the global poverty rate has been dramatic.

In 2017, 9.2% of the world population, or 689 million people, lived in what is termed “extreme poverty,” meaning they subsisted on the equivalent of $1.90 or less every day. This was a reduction in the rates followed over the past 25 years. However, as recently as October 7, 2020, the World Bank estimated that the Covid-19 pandemic would push an additional 88-115 million people into extreme poverty. Climate change compounds this. By 2030, its effects could force another 100 million people into poverty.

There are other income groups the World Bank designates as living in poverty: 24.1 percent of the world lived on less than $3.20 a day and 43.6 percent on less than $5.50 a day in 2017.

This week, the Washington Post reported that almost 8 million Americans fell into poverty over the past five months. The poverty rate jumped to 11.7% in November – up 2.4 percentage points since June. The federal poverty line is $26,200 for a family of four.

These statistics became more visually real for me as I browsed the captivating images captured by Bert Teunissen, a Dutch photographer who, since the mid-1990’s, has photographed Europeans in the type of home he knew as a child. The rooms shown are simply furnished and the subjects sit in natural light, as their homes were built before WWII, when both electricity and urbanization began to change world communities dramatically. Most of these people would likely not have qualified as living in what the World Bank identifies as “extreme poverty,” but they certainly lived in tiny spaces with few of the amenities and luxuries many of us enjoy. Spending time with them through these profoundly intimate photographs offered a deep meditation on want, need, gratitude, reciprocity, consumerism, and obligation.

I invite your reconsideration that almost half of the Earth’s population lives on the equivalent of $5.50 a day or less. This speaks to who we are as a species as surely as do the ways we’ve managed the pandemic and our inability to mitigate climate change by lessening our greed and disregard for the Earth and her needs.

We are unbalanced.

During the season when so many of us celebrate once again the inbreaking of the Sacred into our lives and spirits, may I suggest there is very little authenticity to the celebration when we so easily tolerate a world where almost half of us live with so little, and usually in the locations most threatened by climate change that we wealthier humans have caused?

We can do better, and must.

The verb “donate” has its source in the word for gift. I encourage us all to re-think the meaning of a Christmas or holiday gift and donate this year, like never before and all through the years to come…Donate energy, money, time, clothes, food, shelter, and love.

Donate locally and globally. We can look around our own homes and see if there are ways to simplify, recycle, pare down. We can plant gardens. We can bring food to pantries and shelters, and unnecessary clothes to thrift stores. We can work to downsize thoroughly, justly, and cleanly.

Here is a highly efficient and effective charity that allows you to sponsor a child, student, or elder with a monthly donation. We’ve been blessed by the connections it’s afforded us.

I wish all of my visitors and readers a most blessed holiday and a far, far, healthier and brighter new year. But don’t bid farewell to 2020 too hastily. She has come with so very many important lessons we need to learn about the ways we treat ourselves and others, offer our gifts to the world, behave as community, and care for the Earth. Let us not shut out the lessons she has taught. And let us honor Christmas in our hearts…and our actions.

I am grateful for every one of you: grateful for your light and gifts in the world, and grateful for your goodness. Be well and safe, and gentle peace.

This is an old poem of mine that I have shared before and offer again, with great love–recycled, as it were–as my humble gift to you.

Welcoming the Stranger

See the weary travelers,
lonely in the night.
In a town of strangers,
searching for a light,
praying for a kindness,
just an open door—
in a world of strangers,
there’s no welcome for the poor.

In a cave that evening,
meant to shelter sheep,
Love was born to heal us,
little lamb asleep.
In a world of darkness,
tossed and blown and wild,
in a world of strangers,
came the poor to greet the child.

No one is a stranger;
nothing’s here by chance.
All of life is welcome
in the holy dance.

See the joyful family,
sheltered from the storm.
In a world of strangers,
Love will keep them warm.
Whirling stars are singing,
angels greet this birth:
wrapped in rags and mystery,
lies the richest child on earth.

While the world lay sleeping,
everything had changed:
power, wealth, possession,
all was rearranged.
Have we learned the lesson?
Have we even heard?
How we treat the stranger
is our answer to the Word.

No one is a stranger;
nothing’s here by chance.
All of life is welcome
in the holy dance.

Wealth is found in giving,
opening the door,
offering forgiveness,
sheltering the poor,
cradling creation,
saying yes to love,
welcoming the stranger,
while the angels sing above.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

I still receive letters and e-mails, many times a week, asking if the writer may use And the People Stayed Home for this, that, the other thing or one more other thing. I deeply appreciate when people write to ask, and I try to be kind, even when the suggestions feel exploitative or as though my name may be used inappropriately–and I have to craft another polite, but firm refusal–but I’m me and human, and there are days I curse out loud because I really want to get on with where I am now and do not want to read about “the poem” one more time. I love the artistic collaborations I’ve been asked to partner with; I’m thrilled with the children’s book; I do not want to sell pharmaceuticals, or t-shirts.

Last night, a woman named Fiona wrote and asked if she could use it for a project that was not for profit…I wrote back, “Thank you; please share your plans and I will respond as soon as I’m able.” Dramatic sigh, and off to bed with a great fullness of self.

Early this morning, I scanned my mail and saw this:

“Thank you for your response! I live in a small close neighborhood in Minneapolis not far from the area where George Floyd was murdered. It is also an area with a lot of Healthcare workers at the University of Minnesota. The reason my parents came to this country in the first place was for my father to study medicine at the U. I have purchased a few hundred luminarias and blue LED candles to distribute to my neighbors to put out in front of their houses on Christmas Eve to honor the Healthcare workers and all those who have sacrificed during the pandemic and I wanted to include a note for my neighbors with the instructions. I thought your poem would be lovely to include with the note but didn’t want to do so without your permission, especially as I cannot control what happens to that note after I drop it off at their homes.

Thank you again for your consideration, it is really a lovely work. And if you do not say yes, I completely understand. Thanks again.”

Well. I cried. I shared it with Phillip, and we both had a moment or ten. Is this not perfect and amazing? What an incredible honor and perfect use of the words I wrote. How humbling.

The continual invitation to someone like myself, who can meet life cranky, ungrateful, and resistant, is that I am–over and over–gobsmacked/Godsmacked by people who meet life always looking for ways to soften its hard edges and love it back to health. They are my teachers and I am still learning.

The glow you see on my face today is the gift of a Godsmack/Lovesmack from Fiona’s huge heart.

I know the word God is weighty and, sadly, resisted by many who have been cruelly and ignorantly harmed by others’ misuse of its healing power. I prefer the word Love. If we can agree that whatever is sacred, holy, divine, transcendent, and our source might be called Love, then I hope we can also agree that it can only be translated into the world through us, and if that can happen, then we can see that we live and move and have our being on an Earth, in a universe, that loves us back, always.

And if we can wake up to that truth, we’ll work to change how we treat each other and the Earth. We are always in relationship with Love and either participating or refusing participation in the actions relationship demands; chiefly, the propagation and creation of more Love through the use of our gifts in the world for the benefit of all.

With gratitude for Fiona and all the Lovesmackers in our lives: Let us look for the Lovesmacks we may offer and receive; we’ve never needed them more. Go forth, and be Lovesmacked, and make it reciprocal.

(Fiona also offered this link, reminding me that our firefighters also need love: don’t used candles; use LED lights in the luminarias.  https://quickcandles.com/products/eastland-white-luminary-bags-richland-led-tealight-candles-set-of-144)

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

You walk down a road,
the one you know well,
taking you where you’ve
always gone, singing
the song you’ve worked
to make yours, adding
a minor note here, a
fiddle there, maybe the drama
of a bodhrán, the flutter
of a flute…it’s been pared
down over the years. The
orchestra left long ago. ‘Twasn’t you,
your great aunt would say, and perhaps
she’d be right. She always said she was,
and you never questioned. Your song is spare
but honest; anyone would hear
it and know it was yours, who you say
you are, been told you are; you’re proud
in a modest way, being that melody. It’s
enough. And then, comes a stranger, down
your very road, twinkling and shining
her song so purely, filled with such
joy, it lifts you high and drops you,
blinded and knowing
for the first time, the power
of a song that is the singer’s
and then yours, too; it adds
to you without subtracting, it enlarges
you, lifts you up and drops you
to your knees, grateful, fed, instructed,
not minding at all; in fact, ecstatic, knowing
your song doesn’t need to make you
feel proud or modest or anything
but spent and offered, joy spilling
over. You’ll be calling back
the orchestra for rehearsals.
Time for a new song to sing
down new roads. Breathe.
Begin, your light and music
shining from every pore.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Now, at the convergence of everything
I’ve done and felt and learned, I know this:
all I want is to live my life
with ease, like a plum petal falling in spring
or autumn’s oak leaf curling inward,
joyfully twirling as it falls, because
everything falls; all our lives we’re falling,
gravity guides us to our graves:
here comes death, but why not
twirl into it with ease?

Why not
live my days as though they rested
in the deep embrace of my
grandmother’s quilts, or were cushioned
by clouds scented with summer rain? Resting
my heart in every moment’s corner of sanctuary,
the infinite fall into peace between breaths, the
ease of creation’s origin sparking at dawn.

Days of ease would invite the binding
of self with motion, with rest, with all;
the graceful knowing, this step
then the next, becoming the steps;
accepting they will vanish…

the ease with which my
mother ironed my blouses and
moved mountains–any that stood
between those she loved and what
they needed. And she loved
everything.

There’s nothing weak
in ease, nothing indolent; it requires
the steel of remaining present
and then melting the steel
by loving the moment, breathing
and releasing, with ease, molten rivers
of love
flowing into other lives, making
them strong as steel. I felt
strong in my ironed blouses,
mountains removed from my path, but I
took years to understand all the
power came from the ease
of living with falling
and knowing
that was Love.

If I could hover
over my past like angels
in movies, I know I’d see
the younger me ill-at-ease,
shining too bright to hide
the dark; dis-eased, as I sifted and
shifted through my 20’s, 30’s,
40’s. No one’s falling here,
I would have said. I wish I could fly
into my spirit as I confined her
joy and fire all those years
and animate that woman
with ease…

but then, I wouldn’t
be where I am now, with you
and everything I love, nearing
the clarity and peace of a life lived
from the stillpoint I seek. I feel like
I’m almost there, like I’m
falling with ease, twirling,
with a tranquil heart of steel,
its molten power soft and
flowing into a world,
that’s waiting
to feel strong
and loved.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.