Quips, Quotes and Quantum Leaps
DECEMBER
Hello again, friends, and welcome to Winter in America 2020!
If I remember correctly, “Tiz the season to be Jolly,” but that is especially difficult in these days of crisis after crisis, when the world seems to be spinning out of control (usually in the wrong direction), and it appears that Santa Claus’ home is melting.
This month our newsletter is about gratitude. As a balm for the ongoing pandemic of despair, I suggest that you practice the Gratitude Game. My daughter and I play it when one of us is feeling out of sorts. It involves simply thinking of all the reasons you have to be grateful. For instance:
- Let’s all give thanks for gravity – because right now we are hurtling through space on this tiny rock, spinning around on the earth’s axis at a thousand miles an hour, and orbiting the sun at 66 thousand miles an hour. And thanks to gravity, you don’t even have to hold on. Can’t you feel that space wind on your face! What a ride!
- We might give thanks for living in an interglacial period. Getting caught in an Ice Age could ruin your whole day.
- You can give thanks that so far today you have not been hit by any falling “space-junk.”
- Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says we should regularly give thanks for our toes.
- And we certainly can give thanks for having an opposable thumb! Without it, just think how difficult it would be to button your pants or give a thumb’s up.
You can make up your own list, but feel free to borrow some of ours. The extended list can be found in this month’s featured article (originally a radio piece transcribed from my KPFA days), The Attitude of Gratitude. And we invite you to share with us some of your own reasons to be grateful! You can email us or post them to our Facebook page. Next month, we’ll share our collective gratitude with readers of the January newsletter and start the new year with a gratitude bonanza!
At this time of year many people are also feeling gratitude for our sun and our place in the universe. Every year right around December 21st the sun starts shining stronger and the days grow longer – at least the pagans have always prayed that this will happen. And maybe that’s why it does.
Just in case we need more prayers I encourage you to celebrate the solstice, the rebirth of the sun – the s-u-n – our father who art in orbit, hallowed be thy rays. If we celebrate the solstice we might be reminded of our interconnection with all of nature and the great cycle of seasons and planets, and we just might end up giving our sun its proper respect – by cooling down our overheated civilization. For more on the winter solstice, check out the article Worship the Sun.
Finally, we are offering you some crazy wisdom gifts for you to share with your friends and family.
So friends, stay in touch with any requests, complaints or revelations. Stay awake, stay connected, stay amazed, and now, more than ever, if you don’t like the news go out and make some of your own.
Wes
* * * THE DHARMA OF GRATITUDE * * *
“Be Here Wow Again!” – Listen to the Talk
Wes gave this talk while teaching the 2007 Thanksgiving Retreat at Spirit Rock.
“We usually go through life taking everything for granted. As if it’s the most ordinary thing to be alive…I‘m very grateful to my dharma practice for bringing me into a state of wonder and mystery.”
Gifts of Crazy Wisdom: Two New Winter Offerings
Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again Video: A Gift of Gab from Scoop to you, the full show is available to watch now through the end of the year. Pop some corn and watch with your friends and family as we bid a relieved adieu to 2020. We hope you enjoy it. Click here to watch.
Essential Crazy Wisdom Audio Book (MP3): Listen below, or get the book for you and your friends. To buy the book, send us a donation, and we will send you the MP3 file. Suggested donation is: $5.00. Click here to get your book. All donations help support this newsletter and the spread of crazy wisdom throughout the world.
LISTEN: Essential Crazy Wisdom: The Audio Book
POETRY CORNER
THE DARK
The dark, oh the dark!
It’s not really so stark, the dark.
Just a time without light, a bark without bite.
A time to rest from the glare of the sun,
A time to get something done, or undone.
Inside your mother you could not see.
The womb of the world is a black hole in space.
The dark is the place of fertility.
In the dark you can see your original face.
Without the dark we would not know there was light.
We would never see day without seeing the night.
And there’s nothing to fear, really nothing to fear,
This darkness keeps turning our way every year.
So the season of darkness is here once again,
And sometimes it feels like it never will end.
But the sun is reborn every year at this time,
And out of the dark will be born the sublime,
And maybe even a new paradigm
That will light up the world and continue to shine.
So just keep the faith, and have little doubt
That soon the sun will decide to come out.
It will shine much longer and stronger each day,
And the dark will retreat and the cold go away.
So friends, when the winter has truly begun,
know that you soon will arise like the sun.
Wes Reads “The Dark”
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Worship the Sun! (Not just the Son)
Huffington Post, 12/19/2011
Happy holy days, everyone! I hope you are all shopping like crazy, and consuming far more than your share of the world’s wealth, because if you aren’t then you could be accused of disloyalty to the United States Amalgamated Universal Corporation Inc. Your name could even be turned over to the “consumption squad,” a new division of Homeland Security. And is it not true, friends, that Jesus was a shopper of souls?
But let us remember that the source of all our mid-winter shopping, partying and praying is the sun, El Sol, our father who art in orbit, hallowed be thy rays. Every year around this time the northern hemisphere of earth becomes tilted away from the sun in a bow of respectful submission, passing through the winter solstice, and calling on us to reflect on our cosmic dance. Again we become aware of how gracefully the sun and earth waltz with each other through the ballroom of space-time, eliciting awes and hallelujahs.
Just think, friends, we are all riding on this little rock through space, spinning madly around the earth’s axis at about a thousand miles an hour and in our orbit around the sun at over 60 thousand miles an hour — and you don’t even have to hold on! What a ride! Can’t you feel that space-wind on your face? READ MORE…
PLAY THE GRATITUDE GAME!
WE INVITE YOU TO SHARE WHAT YOU’RE GRATEFUL FOR AS WE HEAD INTO 2021
You can email us or offer your comments to our Facebook page. We’ll share our collective gratitude with readers of the January newsletter and start the new year with a gratitude bonanza! Thanks for being part of this.