I used to read and sing the 12 Days of Christmas to my daughter as part of our holiday tradition.

I haven’t heard that song on the radio this year. That’s surprising. I guess all stations are too busy playing “Last Christmas I Gave you My Heart” by Wham! Without fail, every time I’m in the car, that song comes on. Twice if I’m going any distance. Okay, enough bah humbug and trash talking Wham!

Deep in meditation the other night, I saw a list write itself in light. It was entitled “12 Days of Gratitude.”

The jingle bells, wrapping paper, and flying reindeer faded away in that moment. As I watched this list, I felt it deeply. As if the light was writing through every distraction to remind my very cells what was most important.

I’m a sucker for Santa.  

Always have been. Always will be. I was that kid at the top of the stairs calling to my parents, “Can we come down now? Now? NOW?” while they took their sweet time making coffee and arranging a healthy Christmas breakfast of homemade chocolate chip cookies.  

I can still access that visceral thrill of rushing down the steps to find the unexpected under the tree. It was a magical time. 

In the midst of holiday planning recently, my daughter laughingly announced “I remember when you told me there was no Santa.” 

Wait? What?! There’s no Santa?  

So full is my enjoyment of this magical flying, red suited, white bearded dude that I am still shocked each time I hear that statement.

“It was in Kohl’s parking lot.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. I have absolutely no memory of that exchange. She filled in some details but it was clear I had definitely blocked out that moment.

At this age, she found it funny, but I’m sure I felt the poignancy of the disappearing magic at the time.



I did recall the year before while putting her to bed when she asked, “Mom, tell me the truth, are you Santa?” I responded like any parent who was infatuated with the magical wonder of innocence and also wanted to tell the truth to their kid. I smiled and asked her,

“Do you really want me to answer that question?”

“Nope.” Sweet dreams. Crisis averted. Apparently the following year I just answered the damn question when asked.

“Yup. I’m Santa and magic is real.”

We still wait at the top of the stairs for my husband to slowly, slowly, slowly put out the coffee and cookies.

The excitement is there, but to tell you the truth, a bit of the wonder has receded.

This year, perhaps more than any time before, I remembered again something important.

The world news: Sorrow. Anxiety. Disruption. Division. Tragedy.

Sometimes the world feels out of control. Your personal world. The lives of friends or colleagues. Your country. That country. The weather. When so much happens around you, a sense of powerless arises. Even when you identify actions to take or ways to help others, the muchness of this sorrowful world can get to you.

Now is the time to come together and generate the energy of healing, compassion, and love. 

Whether you have a religious tradition or a personal practice of prayer or devotion, you know the comfort and potential when you plug into the Divine. Your body breathes more freely, your wild emotions settle, and your mind calms a bit. 

This settling opens a door within your heart where you realize there is something greater than you. 

That you are not alone. This greatness, however defined, offers refuge from the storm within which rages in response to the overwhelming news of the world. And this news is overwhelming. 

So, make sure you don’t drink out of the proverbial firehose. 

Turn off the television and take a break from the news that streams through your phone. Breathe a bit and take a walk. The world will still turn without your witness (and upset).

There is comfort in devotion, centered prayer, and sacred ritual.

Even with a heavy heart and despairing mind, the familiarity of your spiritual practice or sacred tradition ushers you into a new state. Yet it doesn’t descend like manna from heaven. It’s up to you to head in the direction of peace, healing, and clarity. 

It helps to bring attention to breath and focus strongly upon your intention to feel peace. 

The world is wild and seemingly out of control. So is your mind. This is why the strong focus is necessary. While it helps to have a daily practice to fall back on, you may easily resurrect your earlier traditions or enter a new one. Even when you’ve not prayed, attended a religious service, or meditated regularly, you can find your way into the benefits of calming the body-mind and reconnecting with the Divine. When it’s hard to do this on your own, especially when you’re unable to regulate your upset, joining with others enhances this potential. 

Group devotion is contagious.

Just like fear, hatred, and division. The good news is that you’re in charge of what you “catch.” The media thrives on creating fear. Bad news sells. Good vibes calm. Your choice. 

The higher states of love and compassion are accessed when your energy, body, and mind are regulated.

When these levels of your being are coherent, you offer a gift to your environment. You radiate peace and invite the potential to join you in the soothing energy of love. 

It’s an energy thing, first and foremost. 

When you understand that energy is your foundational architecture, you’ll pay more attention to any technique or intent that organizes your energy into a coherent state. All healing is enhanced with coherence. For you, them, and the world. Using the group as a springboard to an organized, calm energy state makes sense. You can remember this.

How did you feel at the end of that yoga class, group meditation, or beautiful religious service?

Your system remembers these events, no matter how distant they may be. I was raised Catholic and had a short stint in Catholic school for a few early years. I remember the prayers, the mass, the ritual.  Some memories are precious as they reflect a felt sense of loving connection. Some memories make me realize I had no awareness of my breath or desire to commune with the Divine. I was just racing through the prayers we were saying.

“Jesus, I’m a doggie.”

I’m not even sure what that prayer was supposed to be. “Jesus, I adore you” would make sense. Somewhere in that third grade experience, we all lost our way. It’s not like we were being smart asses when my fellow classmates would mention the doggie prayer. We hadn’t grown into that skill yet. We were just going through the motions. 

Rote prayers. Rote practice. No felt connection with the Divine. 

Myths and legends across cultures reveal a shared desire among humankind to aspire to the exalted condition of the immortal Gods and Goddesses.

These myths influence aspirations of the human family. Some people extoll living in accordance with religious traditions, a committed spiritual path, or humanitarian ideals of changing the world for good. Others may seek to be the best in business, achieve great wealth, or claim mythic status in athletics or entertainment. Many simply strive to be good, do good, and feel good as they live their days.

One way or another, we’re all on the path of the Hero’s Journey.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell, who built on the work of Carl Jung, proposed that myth serves an important sociological function. Inviting people of all cultures, ages, and life circumstances to explore the human story, where they fit within it, and how things are intrinsically connected.


Epic myths, by design, evoke a sense of awe, support a religious cosmology, empower the social order, and introduce individuals to the spiritual path of enlightenment.


In our global society, myth is a universal language. 


Campbell’s work influenced George Lucas who created the successful Star Wars saga as a “myth for modern man.” As people turn away from traditional religions, mythical stories and movies embody the truths that religion had traditionally conveyed. 



People who would never enter a church love the movies.


Far from frivolous, this entertainment function serves to replace the wisdom keepers and story tellers around the fires of old. Enhanced by technological advances, people worldwide stream these myths into their homes.


The epic movies, like Lord of the Rings and the Marvel movies, offer a map of the Hero’s Journey.


Viewers, and especially diehard fans, share vicariously in the hero’s quest and experience their own subconscious cathartic transformation. The “hero within” follows the hero on the screen or the page as he/she/they make moral choices. Allowing the viewer or reader to decide, often unconsciously, that they too live in a moral and good universe.



Within all myths, we find a striving for perfection so that the human shines bright, beautiful, and powerful.


This perfection also enlists a hidden function of protection, as if such shiny magnificence would protect us from the frailty or miscalculations of our human nature.

Yet, even mythic beings make mistakes or miss the details.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson points out in his Essays (first series, 1941), Aurora asked for immortality for her lover, Tithonus, yet she forgot to mention that essential detail of “youth.” Thus, while he was granted immorality, Tithonus is perpetually old. And when Thetis sought to make Achilles invulnerable, he erred by holding his proverbial heel when dipping him in the sacred water.

A Friday night outdoor wedding with more than a hint of rain. 

This was my thinking as I scanned my schedule last Friday. I had a small time window between work and picking up the “package.” The package being my mother-in-law. I realized I still had to try on my dress, find shoes, get gas in the car, write the card, eat lunch, and run an errand. Kinda wished I had thought this all out earlier in the week. 

I wandered around the house muttering “umbrella” so I wouldn’t forget to bring one. 

I tossed out the suede shoes for another pair that could tolerate wet grass and a heavy downpour. My skirt fit loosely so I packed a big safety pin in case there was wild dancing and it was at risk of falling down. (No one needs to see that.) With amazing efficiency, I was only 15 minutes behind schedule. Which is on time for me.

The package acquired and looking lovely, we hit the open road.

There’s something about heading to the shore that triggers a massive relaxation in my being. I put my bare feet up on the dashboard and enjoyed the ride. Even a threat of rain couldn’t dim my anticipation. I was heading to a big party to celebrate two lovely women who, like many, postponed their wedding a year due to COVID.

I hadn’t seen this extended family in almost a year. Not in person, that is. 

Arriving at a beautiful vineyard, I was transfixed by the lovely gardens and neat rows of vines. The day was warm and the sun was peeking through the clouds. Weather nerds were on their phones predicting the downpour had shifted course. We were not to be blessed by the holy water from the heavens. 

I imagined there were other blessings in store. 

As we claimed three rows together, I delighted in seeing everyone. It warms my heart even now, this pleasure of face to face contact, kisses, and hugs. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed all of them until I was in their presence. I’m moved by weddings, funerals, warmhearted stories, and hallmark commercials. Often to tears. So, I was already primed to flow a drips with the joy of settling in with these lovely people.

Here’s the thing about two brides. 

I knew these lovely ladies. I knew they each would walk down the aisle and profess their love and commitment for each other. I anticipated that wonder. I took that for granted. 

I had not considered, perhaps, how different such a union is from the prevailing societal expectations for weddings and marriage. 

Since high school, my friends, colleagues, and extended circles have always included people who favor same sex relationships. That was normative in my experience. And I’ve had plenty of conversations of their experience in the world, different from mine, which opened my mind and heart more fully.

These conversations weren’t only about sexual preference and the courage to live true to oneself.

As friends, the conversations were about everything.

 I wonder now if perhaps my comfort level actually left me insensitive to how deeply the dominant view of weddings as heterosexual was buried within my psyche. And our societal psyche.

The entrance of the bridal party took my breath away. 

Two by two, beautiful ladies in dresses of their own choosing walked down the grassy aisle. Alternating to reveal themselves as friends of this bride or that bride. There were a lot of bridesmaids and they just kept coming. Two by two.

Making a visual statement that resonated deeply within my body. All ladies with the exception of two brothers. All walking together as women. Together as men. Making a point. Priming us for the entrance of one gorgeous bride. And then another. 

This was a blessed union of two women. 

I saw that. Really saw that. And how different this was from just about every wedding I had witnessed with the expected male and female pairs leading a single bride down the aisle. I recognized that the last wedding of friends, who were a long time couple, had walked in by themselves. Just as I was used to seeing them walk into many gatherings over the years.

It was a welcome shaking of my stored inner photo of what weddings looked like.  

Here, I was greeted by a solidarity that boldly and beautifully stated the truth of the day.

A seemingly long time ago, a pandemic arrived in our towns. We entered quarantine a bit shell shocked but hopeful for a temporary respite. When the date for “normal” was pushed back, we engineered creative solutions to our circumstances.

Outdoor visits, neighborhood singing, zoom game night, food drives, and even old fashion letter writing.

Along the way, as the summer’s warmth faded and quiet holidays passed, the gray cold winter zapped more than our vitamin D. We became less likely to reach out to friends and our social circles shrunk.

We turned further inward. Seeking comfort in the known.

By week’s end, our brains were fried by screen time and colleagues voices in our air pods. The kids were tired and parents’ nerves were frayed. Play dates, travel, dinners out, and de-stressing at the gym became dim memories.

Eventually it became easier to shrink to the confines of our restricted lives.

Perhaps the Scottish writer, Donna Ashworth, captured the zeitgeist of these lonely winter months.

We are spent.
We have nothing left to say.
We are tired of saying “I miss you” and “I cant wait for this to end.”
So we mostly say nothing, put our heads down and get through each day.

And then the light returned. A promise of Spring. A bit of warmth.

Still, so many remain tired. Feeling tumbled about like a seashell in the surf. The grief of personal and shared losses dampens our capacity for optimism. Our social recovery has been slow. We seek to define the unknown. To package it in terminology we can stomach.

As if the “new normal” is in anyway palatable.

We share a longing for contact with our species, yet a pervading discomfort remains. Leaving us hesitant. Tentatively peeking out the proverbial front door, we wave to our neighbors but don’t yet invite them to dinner on the deck.

It’s no longer just a fear of contracting COVID or placing others at risk.

A general malaise with a side of withdrawal is lingering in our population. From mild uneasiness to full blown experiences of depression and anxiety, the withdrawal from social contact becomes self protective.

We’re tired of talking about the pandemic and its effects.

But what is left to say? As the world closed down and our lives grew smaller, our social world contracted. And even while the light returns and outdoors beckon, many are feeling less than interesting or perhaps downright antisocial. Loneliness, insecurity, or a vague sense of dis-ease has taken root within us.