Jan 10, 2025

Hi friends,

In my winter solstice newsletter, I praised the value of an occasional long and deep rest, as well as a short period of silence each day, to connect to yourself.

I’m happy to report that this year I successfully lived this prescription, taking two 2-hour naps in the afternoon of the darkest day of the year, and a 3 hour nap on the next day too.

It was delicious, tucking in, in the middle of a winter afternoon, and just sinking into it. It was deep. It was quiet.

And you know what happened? The day after that, I had an epic positive dream that had me springing out of bed in the morning, full of energy and just about running to my writing chair to scribble down a streak of insights.

At the time they felt profound! Amazing! However, in re-reading my dream writing later, I see it was describing an old thought on a new page:

Hmmm. I knew this once, from some time before this,

but maybe I forgot.

Now, somehow after my deep pause for rest at Solstice, I knew this same thing again, only it had a shimmer of light all over it –

it is a good thought, newly alive. 

My mind felt clean and empty, and my back had stopped hurting. I was ready! I was ready for … what?

That in-between holiday time was full of all kinds of space, and I felt a prescient enthusiasm for the something new that is coming, and the sense of awaiting a call that will come, catalyzing a welcome new chapter. All this, now simmering happily inside me. It seemed like a place to create from …

I almost ruined it completely by watching about 9 minutes of news on my favorite news station, the one for Disappointed Democrats. I’d turned away from those news shows since the day after the Heartbreaking Election.

Oh. My. God. The horrors that are being predicted by some people for American Society and the rest of the world, in the near future!

Once again, I lost it and just about shrieked to my husband,

“What are we all going to do, if these things come down??!!”

He looked at me patiently, and said, “Keep resting.” Yeah, Wise Guy? 

“No, seriously.” He continued, “You may be called to do some things, old and new, for our society in these times,

but unless you are deeply centered, you won’t recognize them or be ready to step up, when it’s time. 

You have to keep doing YOU, day by day, and see what your heart is calling you to do right now.

If everybody does that, a whole lot of good will be happening soon, independent of the politics.”

So, I turned off the news again. I took a few hours to flush the toilet of my mind, til I found myself back in this exact present moment, where once again I felt a strange glow of optimism inside me, and a readiness to join in a larger space of creating something that I don’t have data about yet.  

I was the strong oldest sister in a lively dysfunctional family, I was a hippie imagining a world without war, I was a feminist taking back the night, I was a storekeeper and leader in the local food co-op movement, bringing healthy foods to everyone, and saving beautiful black soil with my organic purchases. 

For thirty years I was a mother in two small vibrant communities of people raising kids in alternative schools, The Friends School and the Waldorf school.

For 35 years I trained people in a potent method of forgiveness. That work seems to have become dormant or has been taking a nap since the beginning of the pandemic.

For a while this fall, I breathlessly watched every night of the DNC and I couldn’t turn away because suddenly I saw a whole lot of people belonging to something again, together: a movement fueled by hope, joy, inclusiveness, respect for women, and practical solutions to make things better for everyone, and for the planet.

Post election, my fear is that this movement has become deflated and scattered and sadly beheaded. What is a values-driven woman to do with herself now? What indeed, is “coming down” soon, in 2025?

Oh, God help me. I can’t enter the New Year, and the next turn of the wheel with such a small and defeated attitude.

I have to re-boot my vision now of “what I belong to,” and stick with it, even though I feel small and foolish.

I don’t know a lot right now about what’s really unfolding in my world, but it is my hope that possibly I belong to a vast, if nearly invisible, movement of humans who are willing -

to see the good,

say the good,

and do some good

for

 people and situations

that are right in front of us.

Recently when I spent some time in Florida and at my place in Wisconsin, I shook off my impulse to look squint-eyed at people I met, and wonder if they were part of voting for “the other side.”

Instead, I waved and smiled at all the strangers I passed on a neighboring boat in the Gulf, and playfully joshed with another customer in the checkout line at Menards.

As a result I’ve enjoyed a number of warm encounters with strangers lately, and a steady bath of good will and well wishing that puts a spring in my step. 

It seems small and foolish, but my recent guidance from a Higher Power reminds me that there is no size to the goodness we generate in our humble travels in our injured collective.

Perhaps there is no better thing to be than God’s Fool and a daily emissary of unconditional love.

I think that there is one thing we always have the power to do, and that is to choose our attitude, and to groom our own state of consciousness, despite circumstances.   

In the book, A New Earth, Eckart Tolle concludes this (otherwise challenging and erudite) work with a really helpful guideline. (Pgs 295-309.)

Tolle defines “the three modalities of ‘awakened doing,’ ” which are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. He declares, with great assurance, that if we are in one of these states, we are also in a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness, and we are solidly connected to the force of creative goodness in the whole Universe.

He believes that if we are coming from any of these modalities – acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm - our actions will deliver a certain amount of Light to our world.

According to Tolle, any other attitude (worry, fear, “other-ing, paralysis, egotism, materialistic grasping, efforts at controlling outcomes, etc.) will keep us stuck, and we will be contributing to the human world’s stuck-ness.

So. I decided I will not go back to watching the news shows of any “side” – nor will I entertain fearful thoughts and try to guess what is going to happen, before it actually happens.

Therefore the local public school jazz station is my new best friend in the car. Jazz, weather, and traffic reports I can handle safely.

Because when the other news stations tempt me to plead,

“Who ARE these people???? What’s going to HAPPEN in 2025???” 

my ego’s answer does not invite me to be trusting or nice.

Instead I will take a note from a favorite writer, Annie Dillard:

What do I belong to now? Always, humanity.

How do I lift myself to a more holy awareness, and to that lost sense of “we,” and belonging? 

I think I’ll sign up for participating fully in something I’ll name The Benevolent Universe, and hope that my own “awakened doing” will contribute Light to someone or something each day. 

I will belong to that. Small? Big? I will stop judging its size.

And maybe apply a little faith again that this belonging I seek is something real and something bigger than I know.

At the end of A New Earth, which is chock full of dire and daunting prognostications for humanity, even Eckhart Tolle dares to hope,

“A new species is arising on the planet.

It is arising now,

and you are it!”

At the very least, I will attempt to be “fully alive in 2025.” 

And you?

All the best to you and yours!

Mary Hayes Grieco