as 2009 ends

It was a year unlike any other of my life, and one that has taught the lessons of adversity. I think we're getting good at the making lemonade when life hands you lemons thing. We had a power outage for the last night of Chanukah, and sat by candlelight all evening, playing board games, roasting mini- marshmallows in the tiny candle flames, and finally just talking. It was one of the best evenings we've spent.

Next we had a blizzard, and when the shoveling was done, we made a snowman. He is still there, a symbol of the crazy mad laughter that is available no matter what the circumstances. When you strip everything bare, you can see quite clearly how the simplest moments and the humblest things are an invitation to happiness and joyful abandon. The way a cardinal looks against the stark snow. The cat that curls up on a present under the tree. The teenage girls, who for no particular reason decide one day to begin a conversation as if you are someone worth asking.

I walked past the brook I love today, and it was silent with ice, as if holding its breath. There is no breeze. Only expectation, as we wait for the last night to invite our wishes and prayers.

Happy New Year! Dare to dream huge, and may all you envision be yours!

The Circle: Chranukah

A clever and talented perfume maker and blogger, Roxana of Illuminated Perfume, asked me to participate in a holiday round robin Advent-ure. For each day of the Christian Advent, a different blogger creates their own little post about scent and its relationship to the experience of the holiday season. If you enjoy my post, check out the links above to read all the posts in this series!

We are a blended tradition family who celebrate the Christmas of my Episcopalian childhood with the Chanukah of my husband's faith, in a season that we now refer to in our household as Chranukah. Time has smoothed the blend, and I can now sing the Hebrew blessings as artfully as my husband hangs outdoor lights of blue and white, but it wasn't always that way.

In our first holiday season together in one household, it became painfully obvious that the plethora of Christmas decoration swallowed up our menorah, the carols hogged the airwaves, and the cookies, candies, and cakes were like painted harlots vying for attention with a singular plate of latkes. My husband and his sons were woefully uncomfortable.

Our new kitten, aptly named Loca, created the comic relief that smoothed over our tension by perpetually stealing baby Jesus from our nativity scene and leaving Him to be found under pillows, in a shoe, or under a chair. One day Baby Jesus went missing, not to be found, and we had a whole Christmas with a manger scene that lacked Jesus.

The next spring, while tending to the new growth in our gardens, my husband burst into the house, holding the tiny sewn figure, and exclaimed "I found Jesus!" My daughter and I laughed ourselves silly! "Don't tell your mother!" "Don't tell my mother what?" "Don't tell your mother that you found Jesus! She'll think we've converted you!"

This story is told every year as we hang ornaments, and put our nativity scene under the tree. We now eat gingerbread Star of David cookies, and send batches to my in-laws who love them. I've become a great latke chef, and make homemade applesauce, so those smells now evoke our holiday memories: gingerbread, fresh and pungent applesauce, steaming plates of latkes. And Baby Jesus still maintains a slightly earthy scent. What we are all celebrating is not really so different, or so it seems to me. Hope. Miracles. The light that comes into the world and our hearts and cannot be extinguished.

Gifts for Her

What do women really want? I hope lots of them want a Deco dragonfly mug, because mine is in this week's Voter (Gifts for Her)! And not getting enough love at the moment, so please, consider voting for me! Here is the difference between men and women, according to me:

What do men want? A: What other men have.
What do women want? A: What other women want.

I think that it's so easy to buy gifts for women. Make it personal, heartfelt, slightly luxurious, and at least one notch beyond what she'd buy for herself. Do the little, non-material things for a woman you are gifting- a thoughtful card with a personal note, a great setting in which to present your gift, and sometimes a story about why you thought of her when you chose that gift.

I hope all your gifts this season come with kisses and hugs and shining eyes and maybe some of those golden moments when you know that all is truly well and your heart's desire is actually all around you.

A Potter does Thanksgiving

I was looking forward to baking with my daughter on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, as a break from making a gazillion ornaments in clay. When we made our sweet potato buscuits, cut out in Star of Davids, I realized that this is basically the same thing as working in the studio, except it smells better baking. And when it came time to put a lattice crust on the apple pie, I couldn't control myself. The potter in me took over, and soon I was cutting out leaf shapes, and hand forming acorns. Then adding a milk and organic sugar coating to make it brown nicely.

Yes, I have always been this way, and so has Marci. I knew that she had the artist's gift when she requested broccoli at age 5. She didn't eat it. Instead, she made a hump of potatoes and stuck the broccoli heads in like little trees.

I guess you just can't take a break from being who you are.

grateful

When I rise from the ocean of sleep, my eyes open with gratitude. Last year at this time we were all so fearful, wistful, hoping for a change, a way out of economic collapse. I did not let that fear climb into the driver's seat of my life nor tell me what to imagine, nor write the story of my year. Everywhere I saw light upon frozen snow, painting a softness, and glowing from the eyes of moths at my window, and shimmering cool dappled shadows beneath the tall trees. I gave my heart to the light, everyday.

My pottery has been a refuge this past year, a doorway into a land where something deep and precious waits to be born. And I've opened my kiln, curious to see who is there.

And so this year, I am most grateful for creativity and active imagining and dreaming and all the attributes that they tell you, in 3rd grade somewhere, you must outgrow in order to memorize endless useless lists of facts.

As my heart and soul have dreamed, so my life has become. Hope has been a winged bird this year. And for this, and the other gifts of grace given to me this year, I am grateful.

lessons from a woodpecker

My daughter noticed this helpless feathered life lying on its side. A heart beat but a bone protruded from its delicate wing, and blood seeped from its beak. Still, I cradled it in my hands. Marci got a small box with a soft towel, and we laid the immobile bird, a downy woodpecker, to rest in the softness. It looked with acceptance into my eyes and we spoke to it in gentle tones, the language of comfort.

I asked Marci to take it to her room, away from the cats, and warm. The plan was to see if it could rest, and perhaps survive. I wasn't sure if the limp body could support life. About an hour later, Marci burst into my studio claiming that the bird was out of its box and sitting on her rug! We hurried with joy to her door, and the startled woodpecker, with improbable lightness, flew into the closet!

There were a few minutes of comical chase, as I, after catching his tuxedo-ed body in a towel, released him upon command. Just as he understood our soothing, I know when I've been told a thing or two! It occurred to me to open the window, remove the screen, and turn off the lights. It worked! With gentle nudging, Mr. Woodpecker took flight, and dissappeared from our world and into his own.

I think of the lessons from the world, and this is how soothing works. Healing is an unseen ball of light that we pass amongst us, willing all that is broken to mend, and finally, to take flight.

Abundance

I've learned an interesting lesson over the past year, which is that abundance has little to do with what you actually have, and a lot to do with your relationship with what you have. Abundance is less of a bank statement and more of a state of mind. Abundance is a feeling of having everything you need and just a little bit more, and generously giving from that context of gratitude that you've been blessed beyond your needs.

I was not born into a Norman Rockwell picture, and I did not learn these types of Precious Moments platitudes from my saint of a mother. I spent many years convinced that abundance was something I would acheive if my income went up $50,000 more, that generosity meant calculatingly giving to prestigious charities, and that gratitude was something we faked in order to not hurt grandma's feelings when we opened her gifts.

So this knowledge that abundance is not about money is new for me. My riches are now like this bowl, pictured above. The outside is a soft white, which absorbs all light, and all the beauty is on the inside.