Samhain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice<\/p>\n
The holidays.\u00a0 Important for personal reflection, even have the ability to transform a life as we lay our lives alongside the possibilities suggested by Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, the Winter Solstice, New Years.\u00a0 Birthdays, anniversaries, too, can reach into the deep part of your self, we can call it soul, and help you see yourself in the other.\u00a0 Maybe, they let you see in there, too.\u00a0 Holidays are a time out of time, a break in the straight ahead, up and at’em busyness of career, family, school.<\/p>\n
There is, though, a dark side to the holidays.\u00a0 All moments of possibility contain paths that lead not to transformation but to destruction, temptation, agony and pain.\u00a0 The dark paths often emerge when the vulnerability and self-intimacy of the holiday intersects old ways of being, often ways learned in family settings, banished most of the year; but, as family and holiday conjoin, the vulnerability allows the past to rise quickly, to overwhelm.<\/p>\n
This is as the Tao teaches us.\u00a0 Even the dark side of the holidays offers a chance to become new, a chance to take the past and place it in a new frame, a way of understanding that puts the past in its own place and leaves the future open, perhaps even better for the relocation.<\/p>\n
Darkness is not, in itself, bad.\u00a0 Nor is light, in itself, good.\u00a0 Too much light prevents our ability to see.\u00a0 “Light is the enemy of art,” as the curator of the Thaw wing of the Fenimore museum said.\u00a0 Darkness nurtures and heals, is a time for sleep, for seeds to germinate.\u00a0 The holidays bring a special charge to the light and the darkness in our lives.\u00a0 Our task is to open ourselves to what each has to offer us; to take it in and accept the possibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samhain\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice The holidays.\u00a0 Important for personal reflection, even have the ability to transform a life as we lay our lives alongside the possibilities suggested by Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, the Winter Solstice, New Years.\u00a0 Birthdays, anniversaries, too, can reach into the deep part of your self, we can call it … Continue reading Light and Dark<\/span>