how lovely are your branches

12.16.11 ~ Old Mystic, Connecticut
Christmas Trees at *Somewhere in Time* (our favorite restaurant)
12.16.11 ~ Old Mystic, Connecticut

Christmas/Solstice trees are like the moon, best enjoyed with the naked eye. After failing to capture an image on camera that came close to representing what our tree looks like to me, I realized that Christmas trees posses the same mystery and aura as the moon. Lovely Luna is one huge light-reflecting orb who never shows up on the camera the way she looks to us here on the earth. And evergreens brought in for decorating hold in their arms many small lights and orbs (and birds and garlands), radiating an enchanting glow which also never shows up well on the camera. Sigh………. A gentle reminder to stay in the moment and put down the camera… I can’t help wondering if painters have better luck capturing the magic of it all!

12.28.11 ~ Groton, Connecticut
12.28.11 ~ Groton, Connecticut

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
How lovely are your branches!
Your boughs are green in summer’s clime
And through the snows of wintertime.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
How lovely are your branches!

We had a delightful winter solstice party here, eight of us around the dinner table for hours enjoying the tree, the candlelight, the food and music, the conversation of friends and story-telling.

Christmas day we went up to my father’s home. Every time we see Dad (89), Auntie (96), and Bernie (the cat) they seem to be shrinking in old age still more, if that’s even possible. Dad and I had a few quiet moments sharing a few clementines for a snack. I brought them because I know he loves them. Simple precious moments I will cherish forever. Bernie didn’t want to take a walk with me, so I sat with him at the top of the stairs for a while, petting his thin and bony body, talking to him. Then I went out for a walk in the woods by myself before it got dark.

12.25.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
long midwinter shadows on the moss
12.25.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
12.25.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
somehow we managed to ice-skate in this swamp when we were kids
12.25.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
shortly before sunset

If the weather cooperates we’ll go to Massachusetts this weekend for still another gathering, this time with Tim’s aunt, three cousins and all their children and grandchildren. It will no doubt be a lively day. How different holiday celebrations can be from one place to the another!

Hope your holidays were merry and bright!

science, mystery, wonder

zebras by Gary M. Stolz
zebras by Gary M. Stolz

Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. … I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature.
~ Robert Sapolsky
(Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers)

a life story

“Symphony in White No. 3″ by James McNeill Whistler

Gather up your telegrams
Your faded pictures, best laid plans
Books and postcards, 45′s
Every sunset in the sky

Carry with you maps and string, flashlights
Friends who make you sing
And stars to help you find your place
Music, hope and amazing grace

Maybe what we leave
Is nothing but a tangled little mystery
Maybe what we take
Is nothing that has ever had a name

~ Mary Chapin Carpenter
♫ (Your Life Story) ♫

a new science of complexity

“A Paradox” by Frances MacDonald
“A Paradox” by Frances MacDonald

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos.
~ Andy Hargreaves & Michael Fullan
(What’s Worth Fighting for Out There?)

borrowing weighty words

“Reader with Magnifier” by Lesser Ury
“Reader with Magnifier” by Lesser Ury

I apologize to big questions for small answers.
O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.
O Solemnity, be magnanimous to me.
Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your train.
Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.
I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.
I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,
because I myself am an obstacle to myself.
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and later try hard to make them seem light.
~ Wisława Szymborska
(Under a Certain Little Star)

embracing mystery

“Sewing” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
“Sewing” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Some adopt a rigid system that answers all possible questions and so you don’t have to think beyond its systems. The other response is much more seemingly fragile but much more expansive, because it doesn’t lay down a rigid framework. It allows you to move within the mystery of it. And that seems to be flowering right now. I think people are more and more interested in embracing that because they’ve been through everything else. It is a willingness to embrace mystery, a willingness to embrace not knowing, allowing that intuitive awareness to speak.
~ Paul John Roach
(The Translucent Revolution)

There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
~ Emily Saliers
♫ (Closer to Fine) ♫

Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
~ Wisława Szymborska
(Poems New & Collected)

unity in diversity

"John Burroughs" by Edward B. Greene
“John Burroughs” by Edward B. Greene

Science tends more and more to reveal to us the unity that underlies the diversity of nature. We must have diversity in our practical lives; we must seize Nature by many handles. But our intellectual lives demand unity, demand simplicity amid all this complexity. Our religious lives demand the same. Amid all the diversity of creeds and sects we are coming more and more to see that religion is one, that verbal differences and ceremonies are unimportant, and that the fundamental agreements are alone significant. Religion as a key or passport to some other world has had its day; as a mere set of statements or dogmas about the Infinite mystery it has had its day. Science makes us more and more at home in this world, and is coming more and more, to the intuitional mind, to have a religious value. Science kills credulity and superstition but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the marvelous universe. It quiets our fears and apprehensions, it pours oil upon the troubled waters of our lives, and reconciles us to the world as it is.
~ John Burroughs
(Accepting the Universe)

place of mystery

“Pond at Dusk” by Lesser Ury

There is something more to the world than what you are able to measure, analyze, and quantify. There is a dance between what you know and what you don’t know. The place of mystery is an essential ingredient.
~ Satish Kumar
(Visionaries: People & Ideas to Change Your Life)