Happy New Year... maybe?

It’s not been easy to celebrate Christmas.

Not been easy to celebrate New Year.

To celebrate peace on earth. Goodwill towards men.

The hope of a better future.

I don’t expect I need to spell out why.

But for us human beings now, now of all times,

When we most desperately need to come together to deal with the climate crisis…

That we should choose now to engage in large scale infinitely cruel and destructive and senseless wars…

It beggars belief that we should be so profoundly stupid.

Looking at the pattern of wars being so uselessly and cruelly and criminally conducted in Ukraine, in Gaza, and Sudan and elsewhere:

They are all being conducted by male leaders who want to gain power for themselves or are afraid of losing the power they already have.

And western economies, with their grotesque dependence on arms manufacturers, are profiting.

Toxic masculinity. Patriarchy. Capitalism.

These juggernauts that are crushing the life out of all of us and that we most desperately need to learn to effectively resist.

One thing for sure: eating too much and drinking too much and giving each other useless presents is not really going to help the situation.

I ended up doing none of those things, as it happened, and found myself on a silent retreat instead.

It all kind of happened by accident: but there I was, in a lovely warm house suffused with kindness and hospitality.

Eating the most astonishingly good plant-based and wholesome food, without alcohol or the internet or telly.

Walking in beautiful countryside. Able to sit and stare at the fire.

Free to reflect and remember and write sometimes. Free to meditate alone in the mornings and with the invitation to a group meditation at night.

Entering into silence among those of us there very gently opened up the possibility of a beautiful and peaceful Christmas.

Entering the other Silence, the Silence of meditation, is much harder to describe.

When I was seriously ill and entering into heart failure, for the first time I became aware of a powerful intelligence within. Something under or beyond my conscious awareness, something that was a part of me and yet also apart from me:

Something that had all the information about my physical & emotional & mental & spiritual state and was using that knowledge to keep me alive and preserve me.

Its methods felt abrupt and brutal and brought my way of living to an abrupt halt.

But in doing so it forced me to seek the help that eventually saved me.

Reflecting on all this since, I have, I think, come to understand that a similar process operates at a cellular level and a planetary level too.

That intelligence we have come to call Gaia; and we can perhaps see her at work as more and more brutal changes to our weather bring our economic activities to a halt.

Since it appears that the same fundamental laws operate throughout the universe, it could be that these too operate for the greater good, even if on a scale we cannot begin to comprehend.

And perhaps that’s why Dante was able to perceive, at the end of his Inferno, “the love that moves the sun and lesser stars”…

I don’t really know.

And I think the presumption of some organised religions in claiming that they do know, and so have the right to tell us how to behave, is damaging and wrong.

But when I write a play, and I try to allow a character to come to life, I do so by trying to silence my ego and by tuning in.

Tuning in and opening out and trying to let the character speak through me…

And I can’t say for sure but something similar seems to be happening when I try to meditate.

And of course I try and I fail and I try again…

But somehow in the midst of it all something seems to happen and I catch a glimpse every now and then of  a …something… a dimension maybe…a place that is a part of and yet also apart from the chaos and cruelty of the world around us.

A reminder, perhaps, of the love and kindness and the hope and the purpose of our lives.

So that when, yesterday, my daughter asked me what my resolutions were I could say:

To keep loving those I love as best I can. And allow them to love me…

And keep working. Keep working to manifest my imagination of the new world that is undoubtedly coming.

Keep showing up. Keep remembering everything is connected; and to keep remembering, in the words of dear and wonderful Calderón:

“The good you do is never lost. Not even in dreams….”

And that is why I put my grandson’s design for a Christmas card at the beginning of this post; and my granddaughter’s design at the end.

Because, in spite of everything, I think there is a future for them and it is so wonderful to have them in the world…

Here’s the link to the very wonderful Retreat Centre I attended:

Open Pathway Retreat Centre