If I could give you any gift, I’d give you good health and love and laughter, a peaceful heart, a special dream, and joy forever after. (Me)
Are you, like I, sometimes amazed and bemused by the myths by which we live our lives in this wacky and wonderful world?? I look at this picture of old St. Nick whizzing his magical way across the sky tonight, (tracked by NORAD even though our government is currently shut down), and once again I am a child, and for one mighty fine moment, all the pain and loss and melancholy of this season, all the existential angst and crazy ambiguity of our contentious ‘real” world disappears. And “white Christmases” and peace-on-earth and maybe even “happily ever after”— it all becomes possible.
We all want it so much. Surely we can make at least an approximation of it happen.
i have written in these pages about my lone guinea pal, the only survivor of my spring guinea-peeps, and my concern for his survival with all the predators about. I have been unsuccessful in enticing him into shelter in the barn at night, and I know he roosts in a high tree in the garden, regardless of the frigid weather. I was awake very early this morning, maybe because of the full moon, and peering nearsightedly out the glass door next to the bed, I saw an unfamiliar shape on the porch table. After retrieving my glasses, I saw that there huddled Mr. Guinea, “roosting” as close as he could get to us, a scant three feet away from our bed. He looked back at me in the glow of the outdoor Christmas lights, muttered something in his soft Guinea-ese, and re-settled his feathers comfortably.
Strange almost-bedfellows we are, giving a new meaning to diversity maybe. Perhaps he was compelled to seek safer digs by something like the gray fox we saw yesterday — or maybe it was some strange compulsion for companionship in this very wild, but communal bird. At any rate it made me think anything is possible.
So, Santa, wing your way across the sky tonight! Bring us peace on earth and loving kindness as a way of life and a peaceable kingdom where guineas and gray foxes can live in harmony.
. . . Or at the very least, a warm bed and a loving heart to welcome guineas seeking solace and safety . . .