Connoisseurs of Light

2013-01-15T09:57:43-08:00Categories: midlife, nature, politics, Seattle|Tags: , , , , , , |

In January, we in the Northwest become connoisseurs of light. Gourmets who savor every spoonful. As the sun rises behind clouds on a Saturday morning, I lie in bed and study the bare branches of the old red oak in the park across the street and conclude: yes, they do look ever so slightly fuller. It’s the light, plumping the tiny buds inside each twig, like an artist going over his pencil marks with a black felt-tip marker. Later, we walk out of a matinee at 4:30 and are surprised to see streaks of light still in the sky. The next day, there will be a few more minutes of light. And each day after that. Every single day from now til the 21st of June! We who live nearer the poles love light the way babies love mothers’ milk. In winter, we turn our faces to the sun whenever and wherever we encounter it. This year, our New Year’s Day was dazzling, as drenched in light as Jan One can be in Seattle. My husband and I went for a walk at Alki Beach and everyone, everyone was smiling their most carefree, I’m-letting-my-inner-happy-baby-show kind of smile. It was as if the sun was granting us eight golden hours on the edge of the prism between the dark, exhausted old year and the beckoning light of the new. Talk and walk, the sun said; smile, breathe, drink in this light. You know it won’t last because this is the Northwest. But you live here, so you [...]

Thank you, Mary Margaret

2012-02-02T07:22:06-08:00Categories: midlife, politics, quiet|Tags: , , , , , |

Please help me in my campaign to prolong Mary Margaret Haugen’s moment in the spotlight. Already fuzzy on placing that name? She’s the conservative, church-going, democratic Washington state senator from cozy Camano Island who, like our church-going democratic governor, had the courage to change her mind. Thanks to Mary Margaret Haugen, gay marriage is almost certainly going to be legal in our state, very soon. How I admire a politician who thoughtfully and deliberately Changes. Her. Mind.  This is not what we love to call “waffling.” This is the human brain doing what it does best: considering new ideas. Pondering them. Reflecting. Praying. Departing from long-unquestioned assumptions to ask and answer questions one might never previously have thought to ask. This is why gay marriage is such a linchpin issue: because it is getting rational, thoughtful people all over the American belief spectrum to think in new ways. To have new conversations. I’ve been reading a book by the Quaker writer Parker Palmer called A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life in which he talks about how damaging it is to live a life in which “soul” and “role” are kept firmly separate, our outer selves orbiting further and further from the compass of our true, inner selves.  Politicians, perhaps more than any of us, are expected to wall themselves off in this way, keeping firmly out of sight any quirks or views their constituents might reject. Gay marriage has given them, and us, a chance to ask: OK, how do I really, truly [...]

January

2012-01-11T17:01:27-08:00Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: , |

Reasons why I love every January: one, every single day is longer than the day before. Two, it is my birthday month. Three, the word “January” is so lovely, lilting and full of hope after all those harsh, ever darker, ever colder, “ERR” months. September, October, November, Decemberrrrr. Reasons why I Iove this January: one, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is NOT running for re-election, which means she can throw her heart, soul and political smarts into issues like same-sex marriage.  And two, Newt Gingrich could really, truly be out of the news headlines by the end of the month. It’s just so… unpleasant, having Newt around.  For those of us over thirty, it’s like having some annoying something you thought you were so over—athlete’s foot, a bad credit report, acne—suddenly back with a vengeance.  The bloviating, the bombast, the name itself—“NEWT”—really? You ask yourself? Again? Janus, for whom my favorite non-summer month is named, is the Roman god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings.  His face is nearly always depicted as a double profile, looking both forward and back.  Encyclopedia Mythica says Janus also represents transitions between, quote, “primitive life and civilization, between the countryside and the city, peace and war, and the growing-up of young people.” Governor Gregoire stands at the gate between two phases of her life—governor, and ex-governor—and she uses this threshold, this Janus moment, to say, This is the time to make this historic change.   Gregoire, who is Catholic, told the Seattle Times: "I have been on my own journey. I [...]

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