Hello Dear Subscribers,

Thanks, Note, and Warm Wishes!

First, I want to thank you for being here and reading my blogs—when they appear. Since my husband’s death last year, it has been a slow return to work, especially writing, where I have to usually dig deep. Uncovering that vulnerability once again takes time. However, over the past few months it feels like I have turned a corner, immersing myself in his love rather than the grief of my loss. At least on most days, that’s what I try to do.

Secondly, I want to let you know this blog and my website are under a major revision. It has been at least 10 years since I updated. I hope by the end of January to be visiting you again with new graphics and a fresh start!

And before I take a 2-week Winter Solstice rest and renewal break, I wanted to wish you all a most wonder-full holiday season with your loved ones. These are precious times, indeed. Lots of bustle, usually. And why not? Our hearts seek to give the greatest of joys to our beloveds. Sometimes that means running ragged with preparations. Often it means spending as much time as we can with them. Always the significance is in deepening relationships.

In a world of such turmoil as ours, we naturally gravitate to what brings genuine solace. I wish you that, along with the magic of the season and many blessings throughout 2025.

Gloria

Leaving you with what I thought to be inspiring words from Michael Meade: storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology.

“While great uncertainty and fear can cause people to quickly choose one side of each dilemma, maturity, a word which can mean both “ripe and timely,” is related to our ability to withstand and understand the tension of the opposites. When we hold the tension of opposites long enough a surprising third way can appear that allows a truly creative solution that renews the energy of life itself.
 
This creative third way does not produce a one-sided victory, nor is it the result of simple negotiations, of bargaining or compromise. For in the end, only a creative solution can bring a genuine resolution of the things that tear us apart. And what ultimately stands against the threats of extremism, the delusions of conspiracy theories and the emptiness of growing nihilism is the awakening of the individual soul. For the human soul knows the presence of both chaos and creation. It can survive all the lost dreams and all the betrayals that break us down and nail us to the cross of life.
 
It is our mutual fate to be alive when culture has become divided and fragmented and needs to be made whole again. Yet, as the danger of further polarization and greater dissolution grows, the balancing imagination and the inherent energy for healing tries to awaken in each individual soul.
 
The courage demanded of us involves the necessity of facing the unknown and being open to the unseen that has always been nearby seeking to be revealed. For, something ancient and knowing that has already survived many catastrophes is now trying to catch up with us and be known by us again.

The modern keepers of the dictionary have proclaimed the word of the year to be polarization, but the soul, which also keeps track of what people are thinking and feeling and which is always trying to reconnect people and things that have become divided, might say that the word of the year is Kairos. For Kairos is the opportune moment in the midst of a crisis when meaningful change and genuine transformation become possible.
 
The radical moments in which polarity shifts to creativity depends upon the willingness of people to suffer the tensions of the opposites long enough. Then, the opportune moment becomes a breach in the relentless march of time, in which the eternal enters the world again and all manner of little redemptions become possible. Kairos names the moment of sweeping change that arrives just in the nick of time and makes it possible for everything to turn around and for life to renew itself.”