SHARING TIME

• I send holiday best wishes to all of you.  Thanks for stopping by this blog.  I hope you find it interesting and learn something now and then.  This blog has become my spiritual practice.  Each day I try to learn something new and share it with others.  The Italians have a tradition that you save a few drops of wine in your glass and pour it on the ground as a way to put something back to the Earth that brought us our bounty.  I love that idea....so I try to share as well what I have - my crazy mind and restless heart.
• I'm not big on the religious aspects of Christmas but at the same time it is one of my favorite times of year.  The cold and snow (back in the pre-climate change days) and the decorated Xmas tree.  I love the smells of the tree, the baking, the food....  I love to close my eyes and squint at the lights on the tree.  You just see the lights and no form.....I try to share this with the little kids that visit the house.  The small pleasures in life......
• We are not big on presents and the commercialization of Christmas.  I have adverse reaction to lots of presents.....especially for kids.  Sometimes they get so many gifts they don't have time to play with them all.  When I was growing up I would get, if I was lucky, one nice gift.  I still have my Marklin train set that I got in 1959.  The best present I ever got.  I've passed it on to my son Julian but it's still in the attic.  It's not really fair for me to expect him to value it the way I did.  The Indians said the best gifts are the hardest ones to give.
• Our favorite neighbor girl came by yesterday with a used guitar slung over her shoulders.  Her father, incapacitated and strung out on pain meds, gave her the instrument for Xmas.  She's often said she wants to be a rock star - the next Lady Gaga maybe - and when she strutted into the house I could see it for a moment.  The guitar needs new strings so that will be our gift to her - along with the fedora she wanted.  Got to start somewhere.
• My sister Joan sent us a smoked turkey.  Each year she sends our intentional community some big food gift item.  So I will make Christmas eve dinner tonight and we will bless Joan for her kindness to us.
• Julian is far away in Taiwan and he is feeling a bit homesick for friends and family.  You want to protect your children from emotional pain and turmoil but some things have to be lived.  I had that same feeling while far away from home during the holidays when I was in the Air Force.  We have to learn though to find peace where we are.....living in the moment is the hardest lesson to learn.
• I could type all day on this subject but will end with this - I constantly think about how lucky I am to be doing the work that I do.  I feel so grateful that I've had to chance to make so many incredible friends all over the country and around the world.  It would be nice that we could all win our many struggles in the coming year but for me there is something even more important.  It is that we are in motion working for things we believe in - we are alive in the best sense of the word - sharing our hearts and life energy so that others may live with peace, justice, and joy.  I celebrate all of you in that memory.

Bruce K. Gagnon
president of the Underdog Club