White Dove and the Evergreen

I made this advent calendar when my daughter and my inclination to decorate for the holiday still lived at home.  These days my daughter no longer lives at home, I somehow have more time yet not always enough to tend to daily routines and what my soul requires, and I have a need for something different to mark the season.  

Garlands and lights and the meanings of the season make my heart glad. If you’ve seen my studio you know fairy lights twinkle day and night and I would surely delight in the town’s or a neighbor’s decorations and good cheer.  This year, though, I simply don’t have it in me to do the physical and emotional work to honor externally a season that is living itself through me.  For the first time that I’m aware of I am both the growing darkness and the returning light and it’s hard work to grow a container big enough to hold both with no map of the territory, pre-estabished timeline, or guarantee of success.  It requires a different kind of care and feeding. It’s been a hard few years with plenty of stressors, a lot of mettle testing, and tempering of old patterns.  Sometimes life gets turned inside out, or we turn it inside out, we get tossed about in dark and murky waters, and finally washed up on unknown shores.  On the face of it, life begins to look like a shipwreck, but under the surface lies a treasure easily missed during attempts to steady the boat or push through toward our original destination. Glimmers of gold and pearl that can only be seen in the ebb of surrender.

It’s not that the Solstice, or Yule, or Christmas become irrelevant, but when we’re busy becoming the ocean and the waves that ride its currents or the tree and the dove that sits on its branch, we may have to dive deeper for the meaning of the season. We may exist outside of regular time and space for a while, traveling at light speed and at a snail’s pace simultaneously.  It may become necessary to allow tradition and ourselves to breathe in the empty space that is now.
 
This advent calendar was among the few items that didn’t get packed up and returned to the attic last year, there are always a few that miss the boat. It’s sat on the dock all year, a reminder that these holidays would come again whether I could meet them or not. They will come again next year, too, and in honor of the person I will be then I am not decorating the tree with the little felt pieces playing peek-a-boo from the pockets.  Instead I am leaving the tree bare and tucking a note of gratitude into each pocket.  A reminder of where I’ve travelled and a glimpse of this new land. This winter I’ll allow myself and everything else to simply breathe.

In this holiday season, whatever your traditions and your relationship to them, may you treat yourselves well. And if you find yourself at sea, may you see a white dove in the evergreen on the shore.