‘Tumultuous’ comes to mind, a word to characterize the departing year. Grace was never absent, but the sacrifices made, the loved ones lost to illnesses of body and mind, the confusions that still abide––its a bitter, bitter drink to imbibe. But I’ll raise a toast to the grim face of the passing year, to its liberating disillusionments, alerting us to the painful distinctions we cannot ignore; to its estrangements that made us strangers even to ourselves. A toast to devaluations that left us asking what our time is worth; a toast to the soulful distillations of an alchemy preparing us for god-knows-what.
When 2020’s hand was called, his cards turned up––all the world to see––in spite of the ill-will, bluster and balderdash, we found among us healers, magnifiers-of-light and grace, a new coin of the realm, a new language heard; its for us to speak and share.
Here’s to that new language, here’s to learning the value what we have––all we have––this invaluably abundant living, breathing moment.
In other words:
Kinglet’s winter kingdom––stript to the bone,
But this flame-crowned bird
Takes of marrow.
