The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?

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1. She’s big on Christmas traditions, including our observing Advent these days. I’m still surprised she inherited none of it in her family! Created it like a radical quilt. Makes this array all the more remarkable, from my perspective.
2. Slush on the windshield. Ice underfoot.
3. Winter’s setting in, though I’m already tired of it.
4. The earliest sunsets of the year have plateau’d and are already inching back in my part of the world. The oppressive late-afternoon darkness will soon be obviously relenting. We don’t wait for the solstice.
5. I like the Eastern Orthodox insight of Mary as the Mother of Light.
6. In reality, I hate being the caretaker, responsible one, cleaner-upper, put-awayer. Contrary to my self-image.
7. It’s been a long road to here. Sometimes it feels like a hangover.
8. In working a seasonal job, she has a curious freedom in not having to worry about being fired, losing the mortgage, and so on. Just put the hours in and go home.
9. Whatever happened to my collection of winter scarves? (As if I really need to ask.)
10. Authenticity: something that speaks to the bones.

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Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.

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1. Hard to think Christmas is so near. It’s just not in the air, at least for me, despite the bell ringers and carols around the stores. But then I’m often off on another planet.
2. I always intend to put up our outdoor Christmas lights while it’s still warm. Rather than freezing my fingers.
3. I’ve long said if she would only dance, she’d be perfect. OK, there are few other details I’d add, all these years later. Learning to read music, for one.
4. Another old fear? If you get to know me, you won’t like me. Or maybe: You won’t like what you find. (That muscular reaction when someone gets too physically close in a conversation.
5. I seldom I feel myself fitting in – in a crowd, an audience, a group, a family.
6. NOT THE USUAL … one of my strictures in my desire not to repeat myself in blogging. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not that I usually remember.
7. I miss being able to get the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on local radio. These days I have to listen on my laptop or cell phone. Just ain’t the same.
8. In a depression.: Do I really LIKE anyone? Being with them? Am I having ANY fun?
9. Well, I am drinking Virgin Marys during Advent. (Cheers in the morning!)
10. You were supposed to save me.

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Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.

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1. My wife can’t resist an opportunity to make a holiday feast, and that means planning ahead. (Somehow the menu keeps growing, enough to feed twice as many guests as we have.) I’m impressed by the checklists she makes, too, to keep herself on track. Three days ahead – or more – the work actually begins. And then there’s the last-minute shopping for anything she wants to be fresh.
2. Juncos and jays. Rituals and routines. Manners and mores.
3. No matter my affinity, I never would have been comfortable in the Society of Friends in any of the earlier eras. I always would have chafed at the limitations and discipline. Nor, for that matter, do I see anywhere I would have fit in neatly. (We could start with my interior “fort” surrounding my emotions, despite my public interactions. Or my Aquarian/contrarian nature.) Well, the Mavericks have roots in Boston Harbor. Look ’em up. Doubt I’d fit in there, either.
4. Opening my car door at the Nubble Lighthouse, I’m nearly knocked over by cold wind. Sustained, more than gusting. Barely a mile inland, only a mild breeze. This strange sensation of having my nostrils blown shut (or at least constrained): to breathe, I have to turn my back to the wind, a first in my experience. Make you wonder about sailors at sea?
5. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, Mary is a temple of God that surpasses the one in Jerusalem. Within her, the Light or Logos becomes incarnate. The nuances are quite different from what I’ve heard in Western Christian teaching. How much else have I missed? I’m certainly invigorated by the sharp contrast to our austere Quaker aesthetic. I love the extremes.
6. Launching this blog, as the horoscope said, came in my year to come out of hiding.
7. In contrast to any sense of guilt or some shame or impoverishment: LOOK AT ALL THESE RICHES! Even the matters of what’s unfinished or undone, now turned to opportunity.
8. A sense of progress, too.
9. What do I really want? To be accepted and loved, without feeling pain? Certainly there’s more.
10. What holds your life together?

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Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

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1. Crows – dozens upon dozens – all over town, roosting together somewhere. Rook, as they say.
2. Late afternoon driving: so much glare, not just the low sun, either, but blazing up in reflections. Wet pavement or a waterway I’m crossing.
3. Midnight here now really fits around 10:30, unlike 12 in the summer, calculating midway from sunset to sunrise.
4. Cranberries, so quintessentially New England, remind me of driving to Cape Cod and passing all the bogs where they’re grown.
5. When it comes to Friends, we need new blood.
6. Eastern Orthodox Advent starts on the 28th and continues to the Feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 6 or 7, not our more widespread Christmas Day! Since we’re taking this up voluntarily, rather than under church discipline, we make some adaptations. Thanksgiving, for one, and ending Advent on Dec. 25, for another. Does it make us look like wimps?
7. Poetry as a heroic journey. Holy, my voice. Or gritty.
8. Where am I NOW? Where’s my HEART?
9. Good to be reminded of ACTIVE WAITING, especially through periods when you feel suspended, on hold until others make a decision or act or all the pieces to fall into place. Drawing from James Nayler, Brian Drayton sees a sequence in spiritual response. The waiting prompts a response, which requires prompt obedience. Next is suffering, perhaps as embarrassment or upheaval. And then public witness – telling others, even if only in a small circle. Throughout, small steps count, however tentative.
10. How much of being a public figure is a matter of being a performer, too – someone who needs a circle of fans?

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