Small Miracles

At the risk of sounding maudlin, I wish to report another holiday miracle.

It is a small thing, but I believe it illustrates something significant about humanity.

At least six months ago, both of my children's scooters were stolen. I had gone to the trouble of marking them, both with indelible markers and with a metal etching tool, with each child's name and my phone number.

Alas, the phone did not ring.

I sent an email request to my local FreeCycle network, to see if anyone had a scooter or two piled up in the garage.  FreeCycle, by the way, is a fabulous help when it comes to household management. All the world is a swap meet, after all, and if you need to get rid of that something that has been gathering dust, but that someone else might want enough to drive to your house and pick up, this is the network for you.

After a few weeks, I received a reply from a woman who was clearing out her garage. Evidently, her teens had moved on from kick scooters to bicycles or even cars. So she had a tangled mass of scooter frames in various states of disrepair. I took those off her hands, but we hadn't gotten around to reconstruction.

("HA!" You say. "You just added to your JUNK!" Read on.)

Just the other day, we received a phone call from a woman who had been cleaning out her back yard and had discovered a scooter that did not belong to her family, with this name and phone number. Did the scooter belong to us?

My husband had to drive half an hour to retrieve the scooter, which had seen much use during its walkabout. I was emboldened to pull out the snaggle of scooter frames from the garage. From five scooter skeletons, we were able to reconstruct two useable scooters, one of which I carefully inscribed with my daughter's name and my phone number.

The children were delighted to have scooters once again.

I, meanwhile, have resolved to obtain the needed parts for the remaining three frames and to finish fixing them up. I will then donate the four extra scooters to a nearby homeless shelter. One good turn deserves another. Amen! And, let us pass it on!

Even at this time of year, when people seem to be all about things and commerce, there are golden individuals who will go out of their way do the right thing. This is the significant point about humanity.

May your Winter Holiday, whichever it may be, be filled with the goodness and kindness of humanity in all your travels and meetings.

Be filled, and pass it ON!

Feelings

A certain poverty,

the lack of touch,
is felt as isolation of the flesh
from all that is and would be sensuous.

Long the light ponders this quandry,
playing over limpid surfaces,
tracing each plane and place,
'til at last each body is kindled
with the truth:

All that it is not
is touched by all that is;
sensual it is to be,
completely sensual,
in this ever-renewing event,
where one is, where all are,

sensed,
noted,
checked,
equated,
felt,
explored,
and known.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Heavenly Alignment

When I was a child, I remember all the excitement around eclipses. My parents would wake us up in the middle of the night and drive to mountain peaks so that we could see lunar eclipses. If there was a solar eclipse due, the schools turned the day into an astronomy experiment, and everyone made safe viewers and we all viewed, and it was so cool.

Two nights ago, we were all a party to a total lunar eclipse. In the time-honored tradition, even though the weather was iffy, we set the alarm for midnight.

When the alarm went off, we ran out to see if there was anything to see. Yes! And so, we ran back in, to wake the children, telling them to bundle up.

Once outside, I said to the kids, "look straight up, and you see the full moon. We are standing on the earth. In nearly a straight line below the earth, millions of miles away, is the sun. In the next half hour, our earth will completely block the light of the sun from the moon, as it moves into a complete straight line with the earth and the moon!"

A few minutes later, clouds accumulated overhead, obscuring our view. Back to bed went the children.

But for a moment, I think that they could feel that ancient sense of alignment that all people who have ever been stargazers feel when such events occur. That sense of being part of a great celestial mobile of gravitational pull and mathematically precise patterns of movement.

The human story is filled with stars and planets and the wonder of being among them. The earth moves under our feet, as it floats in its course through space in attraction with the glorious light of the sun.

Such events remind us that we really are, all of us, astronauts, flying through space.

Lights vs. Illumination

I admit to being unusual, in that I get into the spirit of the winter festivals by way of music.

So many others prefer lights. Lots of them. Lots too many, sometimes. Well, more than sometimes.

Some of these displays are just butt ugly. Tasteless is too kind a description. Just how much blinking wattage can we add to our house? And bubbles! How about canned music! All night, every night for a month, to the distraction of our neighbors. WooHOO!

Thorstein Veblen talked about displays of material consumption in his Theory of the Leisure Class. All of this costly and conspicuous consumption (yes, some people are using energy saving lights, but however much they supposedly save, they do require energy, after all... and some people think that using them means they can put up twice as many lights as in the past...) is meant to prove something about the person who puts up the lights, not about the festival that the lights are (supposedly) intended to honor.

There was a preacher man who once spoke of each person being a lamp, but hiding that illuminating light under a basket. That preacher man figures greatly at this time of year, in these latter days. And other sages and prophets repeat the message in their own way, both earlier and later in the timelines of humanity.

I will go right ahead and boldly make this gross generalization: No amount of kilowatts can display a person's spirit to the world. It is deeds, even the smallest selfless deed, that show who a person is and measure that person's connection and care of others in their orbit.

Bright light bulbs may offer momentary delight, but it is the smile that lightens difficult moments in a person's day, little kindnesses, a spontaneous offering of food to a homeless person who is begging for change on the corner. These acts are more real than strands of lights, sucking up vital energy, could ever be. These acts create a warmth so much more true than any artificial light can lend its false brightness.

How do we greet the Winter Festival that has arrived? For ourselves alone, in our conspicuously lit houses, or for others, in acts of kindness?

It is up to you and it is up to me.

Light your inner lamps with care and be the light of the world; and may your festivals be merry and bright based on what you give, not what you show!

Presence

      Mornings of Perpetual motion
      roll and swi Rl about me

         without h Esitation—
    time will not Stand still;
             but h Ere I am,
      preserving a N island, of sorts,
       within an o Cean of motion,
         close, pr Ecious and warm.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

stillness, time and music

one body stands,
collecting time into stillness.

the heart of stillness
blesses time in the body
with feeling.

the blessed body,
arms raised to the assemblage,
offers time and feeling,
a gift
granting freedom
and time
to express
each individual talent
as concerted sound:

a joyful noise
that is both
gift and offering,
time and again.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Annunciation

Oh, magnificent existent I,
light a lamp within me,
build me, thy temple;
inspire me, thy thought;
name me, thy song;
enliven me, thy work.

Breath of Love,
blow through the temple gate,
and define the life within,
dispel all darkness,
   all mystery;
tune the amplitude
of my vibrations,
that their simple truth
shall suffice to render
an edifying music.

© 2010 by Elisabeth Eliassen