Speaking the Unspeakable

It’s that time of year. The winter rains have come, we’ve moved the Norfolk pine on the deck into the living room and astonishingly so in this digital age, paper Christmas cards are dropping through the mail slot. The boxes of decorations have come up from the basement, the Christmas CD’s and even LP’s are back within reach and yesterday, I sang the old songs with 8-year olds in a school and the day before with 88-year olds in a home for elders. 

 

I’ve put the finishing touches on my annual Holiday letter and soon to send it off with a tap of a key to some 60 friends around the world. Do I miss printing it out, making copies at Kinko’s, coloring the designs on the edges, signing each with a pen, hand-addressing, stuffing and stamping the envelopes, carrying them to the mailbox and sending them off with a little kiss on each envelope? Oddly enough, yes, I miss that. But not enough to revive it and the photos I can send my e-mail are larger, clearer, more numerous and more satisfying. 

 

I won’t duplicate the news here and if you’ve been even close to a faithful reader, you know it all anyway, such as it is. But here I’ll share the final paragraphs. I was convinced I’d have no heart for “the Season,” disgusted by the vile and reprehensible acts done in the name of that sweet little innocent babe in the manger. As they have been for a couple of thousand years and everyone who uses his name still failing to get his memo of peace and love and light and compassion and forgiveness. I didn’t think I’d have the stomach for the hypocrisy now amplified by the power of social media and such. 

 

But continuing my promise to self to shut off the screens that thrive on the horrific and instead choosing the world of the lovely people I actually know, the solace of trees and lakes and birds and bugs, I can face it all with a calmer heart. Reading the books I choose to read, listening to the music I choose to both listen to and play, thinking the thoughts that bring wonder wrapped up in a ribbon and shooing away the ones that try to trap me into the “Bah! Humbug!” mode, it’s working. It helps. 

 

Here's the end to my annual letter and may you all find your own light in the gathering darkness. 

 

SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE: As for that which I can’t bear to mention, I am shaken down to the depths of my heart’s core. After much time cycling between deep grief and red-hot anger, protective denial and shell-shocked repression, stunned disbelief and hopeless despair, after struggling to dig deeper than usual and reach higher than my grasp to face another four years of having to hear about and respond to the next unspeakable act of cruelty and get to know the name of the next despicable sub-human in the news, I have had some moments of clear conviction that if I cave in to it all, they win. And so I refuse it.

 

The best defense is a good offense and I am vowing to renew and strengthen and increase my lifelong conviction that every act of kindness, every outreach of compassion, every encounter with beauty, every moment we choose love, is all we have to work with and perhaps all we’ve ever had to work with. Like the wrestler Anteus who was thrown to the ground and rose up stronger from each contact with Mother Earth, I am determined to laugh louder, love deeper, grieve more fully, stand more firmly against injustice, speak more clearly and eloquently, play music more powerfully and tenderly, and savor every moment of this beautiful precious life as long as I have breath. May it be so for all of us. And may we do it together! Forever love to you and yours. – Doug