Sunday Best – December 18, 2022
On this day in 1966, the original Grinch animation was aired for the first time – the good one, the real one, the one with Boris Karloff.
There is Cindy Lou Who, who is no more than two.
There is Max with the reindeer horn tied on his head, sliding down Mount Crumpit.
There is one of the best song lines of all time – you’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauuuuuuuuuce!
There is the Grinch himself, heart expanded, carving the roast beast.
Friends, here we are, in the darkest days of the year, waiting for the light.
May our Grinchy ways be forgiven.
May our gatherings warm these longest nights.
May our traditions sparkle like stars.
Sunday Best – December 11, 2022
I was lucky to have a glorious hour at the Tate Modern museum this past week, where the enchanting papery sculptures of Maria Bartuszova are currently featured.
Some of the pieces were bound tightly by thin bands, the plaster forms bulging around the edges. In other cases, those same bands were cradling the sculptures, holding together delicate pieces that otherwise might have collapsed.
Friends, we all have ties that bind us in our lives, and we offer them to others as well.
In a world that sometimes feels caged,
may all of our constraints be cradles.
Photos from the exhibit, with all credit to the artist and the museum.
Sunday Best – December 4, 2022
After many fruitless seasons, imagine my joy to notice a huge bumper crop of pears ripening this past summer. Hardly any fruit dropped during the usual early summer winnowing, and the crows stayed away long enough for the limbs to bend with the coming harvest.
Alas, this abundance came with a cost. A little greedy and a little lazy, I left the pears unattended through the heart of the season, and when the picking time finally came, it was accompanied by a windstorm.
Under these conditions, the abundance became unbearable weight. A number of main limbs snapped, and it will take years for the trees to recover.
It’s so easy for bounty to become overload, especially when the elements involved are positive, or important, or both. Whether a person or a company or a pear tree, maximizing in any one dimension leaves us fragile in others.
Friends, as we tip into these longest nights, let us celebrate the harvest that this year has given.
Let us tend to the small strains, before they become breaks.
Let us prune with care, extending abundance for the seasons to come.
Sunday Best – November 27, 2022
When I turned fifty, I declared to friends and family that my intention was to become even more earnest. That might sound simple, or even simplistic, but in a world of ever-escalating cynicism, it was the most courageous resolution I could imagine.
As Ferris Bueller reminds us, life moves pretty fast. Before we know it, we’re in grown-up mode, and from there it can be a slippery slope to mortgage calculations and Twitter trolls and lumpy mashed potatoes.
And yet, we have choices, all day, every day.
We can sing along to the surprisingly great soundtrack in the grocery store.
We can opt for compassion over clever barbs.
We can buy a gadget whose only purpose is to send love notes.
We can refuse to hide behind jargon when questions also demand humanity.
We can fill paper turkey feathers with gratitudes big and small.
Dear ones, we need not display maximum cheesiness, or oblivious good cheer.
But let us be earnest.
And thankful.
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My favorite writer on gratefulness is Brother David Steindl-Rast, who also reminds us that the common root for human, humor, humility, and humus is “hum” – of the earth. The volume of his Essential Writings is a great introduction to Brother David’s wisdom.
Sunday Best – November 20, 2022
and there in the dust of my heart (where
so many plentiful things will be stored),
you will come and go among the melons.
– Pablo Neruda
This week I received a gorgeous new publication from the Arion Press,one of the few artisanal publishers remaining. Each book is hand set, hand printed, and hand bound, accompanied by the work of ingenious contemporary artists.
When I opened Pablo Neruda’s Love Sonnets, these final lines from sonnet 99 leapt up to me. Now visions of honey-barrels and melon gardens of the heart have been wafting around me all day, as I ponder “the silence of plants and of planets.”
Friends, let us bless the artists among us – those who write the poems and those who set the type, those who bind the pages and those who deliver them to our hands.
May their work quiet our minds, expand our hearts, and spark our souls.
