The Gifts of the Season

‘Tis the season of gift giving and I have been given some lovely gifts.  Some are gifts of sweetness which are so welcome as the days get shorter and shorter and the clouds get lower.  They show appreciation for the work that I do all year.  Some are gifts of beauty for those who know that I love artwork and animals.  And some are gifts of warmth and clothing to take care of my physical needs.  And then, there are the gifts of stories that are shared from the heart, stories of life experiences so out of the ordinary that they must be shared.  Stories of love shared, care given, community created.  Here are some of those stories.

At this Solstice time of the year in this extra cloudy fall, the gift of sunshine and hoarfrost is particularly bright.  Ordinary leafless brown stems are transformed miraculously by the building up of ice crystals, decorated by delicate constructions that emerge from out of “thin air”.  Water that goes from vapour to ice in the night.  Then when the sun shines on this multitude of magic you are transported into a kind of fairy world where everything is beautiful and bright.  I tried to take pictures to share with you but anyone who has seen this phenomenon knows that that pictures do not tell the whole story.  Somehow my heart opens, my imagination is ignited and life is suddenly exciting.  That is a gift.

In early December I had the gift of holding a three-week-old baby while he slept.  His perfect face was framed by his impossibly tiny hands.  Every now and then his face would contort just before passing gas which made me giggle.  His legs would occasionally stretch out and I could imagine him doing the same thing while still inside his mom who sat beaming beside me.  We talked about the miracle of a new person growing inside you and the amazement of giving birth.  This feminine story, as old as the human race is one that still does not have its due space in the collective story.  It is one that women tell to each other over and over.  It is one that new fathers tell in a different way, through the lens of their own fatigue and helplessness.  It is one that is told at this time of year in Christian celebrations.  But, if we truly regarded this as a miracle, if we saw this new being as the collections of cells that came together as magically as the frost, nurtured for nine months by a women whose body gave all it had to create a new being; if we saw how the light caught this lovely being and lit up the room; if we felt our hearts open and our imaginations ignite and we stayed that way, then we would create a different kind of world.

I heard stories this week of how women supported and were supported by the people they took care of in their service industries.   Women who while self-employed created communities of care where their clients could feel safe and nurtured.  A story of someone who is suffering from early dementia who asked her local bakery owner to remember her daily order so that when she can no longer remember it, she can still get what she loves.  A story of a woman who is creating safe spaces near her home where she can go despite a terrible tragedy and not have people ask the every day greeting of “how are you?”  She is struggling and just wants four safe place to go.

I have heard many stories in this season of loved ones who took the opposite journey from birth.  Some of these journeys were a long time coming and others were sudden.  They told me stories of the gentle gifts of palliative care teams and how they felt surrounded by support for the first time since their loved ones began falling ill.  Why do we wait for death to suddenly be gentle and caring?  We must have forgotten the teaching of the frost, that the water vapour that created the tiny kingdoms of ice, will return to the sky once the sun warms the air.  We are all beautiful collections of genes, cells, carbon and water that come out of thin air and return again.  We are all beautiful when the light of love shines on us and just as miraculous.  When we are seen as gifts, then we are gifts to those who have the eyes to see them.  We are appreciated, cared for and treasured.

Maybe Christmas reminds us of this, maybe Hanukkah does or maybe the it is the frost.  We all have our own stories. They surround us like the invisible water vapour.  This dark time of the year is the time to tell stories. It is the time to gather around fires and candles and listen to them.  It is the time to treasure what lights us, what warms our hearts and what ignites our imaginations.  Our stories will crystalize into the world we create.