Cycles and celebrations

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It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. ~ Abraham Lincoln

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[marianthi]

So, dear friends, celebrations of special times are afoot.

Why do most of us do them?  I include myself here.

To-morrow, Winter Solstice in the North, I´ll be with special practices and readings, welcoming the passage from short days to longer.  Then Christmas.  Wahhh.  Then New year.  10,9,..3,2,1  Happy New Year! funny hats, the blow of cardboard trumpets, fireworks and all.  Then there are birthdays, national days, religious event  (aside from Christmas), memorials for the deceased.  What have I missed here?

Now, what would life (and commerce) be if we dropped them?  I wonder.  I have been in clinics where the inmates with dementia lived in an eternal present.  Could not understand even the concept of a birthday. That was NOT too good to behold.  Do we need our past revisited to assure us of a future?  To review what can be improved?  To affirm that cycles will keep on repeating?  What?  My question again: why do we do it?   What do the events hold in their lap for us, you, me?

Any thoughts?
M.
 

[Michael]

As I've mentioned before, and you may recall, I grew up not celebrating any holidays or birthdays, and I divorced most of my family long ago, and at one point, even went so far as to renounce so to speak, my past life connections and sentimental artifacts.  So I find myself to be a rather extreme case I suppose, though reformed as well...     I did all that by the way, to more fully stabilize my presence in the eternal present.  It worked alright, but I've found that the eternal present isn't quite all it's chalked to to be by the likes of Eckhart Tolle et al... the past and future hold their charm as well, and shouldn't be over-discounted.

But solstices, holidays and birthdays tend to hold little or no moment for me, though I do vicariously share some pleasure and sense of occasion via friends and lovers.  But if I lived alone in solitary-mode, which has been my life-estate as often as not, these things would be as empty of value and meaning as a McDonalds happy meal.

I am interested, in a rather detached way about these things, and more often than not enjoy the company of celebrants in the spirit of a participatory anthropologist.  In fact my partner and I just attended a neighborhood solstice/Christmas party a few nights ago which was a lot of fun.  With a very silly and fun gift-giving game, where mock-stealing and mock-covetousness made for a wacky time for all...

[marianthi]

Yes, Michael, the word PARTICIPATORY appears to be a key one here.  We sort of commune with others in the ´celebration´of a cause, so  I´d say it is most natural to forget about these matters when you go solo.

I think that there´s also there what you call the ´charm of the past´.  Just after I started this thread I was thinking back through many of my birthdays and I suddenly realized why the number 8 is my favorite - cause it flashed as a bright gold glyph, just as it had been in my very first birthday card, sent by my dad from England.  It felt so special to get it!   

Using celebrations  for expressing affection kept in a drawer the rest of the time, is for me one reason I DO join many of them.  As a matter of fact we sure look forward to celebrating S´s birthday in that part of the world as a couple of years ago, with some of our favorite folk.

There might be a lot of tribalism in all of it,  but I like tribalism with the right people.

M.

[Nickeson]

Hey,

There is a certain affinity between Michael and me on this matter, fellow anthropologists.

So many Thanksgivings and Christmases, New Years Days where my family and the family friends do tradition so that tradition rules and all these dates are folded into each other and no single one of them is memorable. They were authentic, nothing faked, love and cheer all around and none of the pathologies that the fictionalists and shrinks like to freight them with. The only unpleasant moment ever was once my sister came in with the Christmas news that my mother's shell-shocked cousin on a farm very far away had, the night before, shot his kids and his wife and then himself. The poor man obviously did not have what we had. If he had, he would have been basting a fruit cake with brandy rather than snuffing that which he did have. My mother had not heard that news because she and my father lived so far the other side of Fin du Monde, WY that they did not have a telephone though the year was 1970-something.

Fine and solid memories, though, are in the exceptions and not in the rules of a composite tradition. I recall two times: a Thanksgiving and a Christmas Eve, when I was on the road...one of my all time favorite locations.  Thanksgiving, what...maybe '74? Dinner at 1:30 p.m. in a rural truck stop somewhere west of Tulsa. I recall that I was feeling amused. I sat at the counter and ate dry turkey breast and reconstituted mashed potatoes. The energy all around me was subdued and down as if me and the other few folks present were not supposed to be alone in an Oklahoma truck stop on such an auspicious day. But I felt entirely at home. And a little later I was walking across the lot to my ride, there were cars crossing the overpass on Interstate 40--two in the front, three in the back... "Over the river and through the woods,/To Grandmother's house we go.." These were my kind of people. Some of them had once had cousins who had blitzed the family on the Night Before Christmas on some farm far away.

I said to everyone, "Y'all do it for me, y'hear? I'm going to stand knee deep in this Oklahoma truck stop parking lot and relish like never before the blessing and all the delicious weight of my solitary soul."

Same thing some years later: 11 p.m., Christmas Eve, motel parking lot in the tail end of a half-assed blizzard, northern Colorado.  The truckers were long gone off I-70, a car headed home for the holidays went by, one every five minutes. Why should I feel so good and so sly like I was getting away with the world? It might have to do with freedom.

So now that there are two of us those parking lots will never be the same.

[feral]

Have been celebrating a rather stripped down version of the holidays for a few years now. This year the main attractions are trying to make eggnog from real fresh farm cream, milk and eggs and then freezing it in the ice cream freezer. Crossing my fingers on that one. There's also a fresh organic farm turkey coming.

There are no decorations up here...but that happily means no decorations to take down. What there is, is a brand new bamboo floor in the living room that makes a great dance floor. Need to throw a party to properly inaugurate it.

What I'm grateful for is a life full of love. Makes any old day a celebration.

[Michael]

We sure do look forward to another S birthday in this part of the world, should we be so lucky again... 

Good stories and better company...and gooseberry or blackberry pie.  Your choice.

I'm reminded by Steven's stories of one of my most memorable Christmases, which took place on a beach way down Baja way.  I'd been spending a great week with some kids I met on the beach there, snorkeling off my boat every day and cooking the day's catch over open fires on the beach in the evenings.  New and friendly people arriving daily and informally joining in.

On that Christmas eve, the energies had managed to spontaneously come together as they seldom do in my experience, to make for a fine, musical and very neighborly beach celebration...  no advance preparation to speak of, just an organic confluence of energies and good cheer.  The way it ought to be I suppose.

Ah, I remember another confluence, only this one was a flash in the pan.  The good 'ole Harmonic Convergence of 1987.  I spent that one at a hike-in lake near the base of Mount Shasta with a formidable psychic, whom I happened to be married to at the time...  Saw pretty lights in the sky, but was ultimately disappointed by the lack of convergences... so it goes. 

Of late, my love and I are creating a new New Years Eve tradition.  It intimately involves a woodstove fire, champagne and Google as our third partner.  In a word, we hook up a laptop to the house speakers and look up all the old songs we can remember from our distant pasts, and have a blast dancing and laughing our way down memory lanes, arm in arm.  The past can be made amazingly charming indeed... 

[marianthi]

Mmm for that fresh farm cream eggnog, feral.  Better than Bristol Cream, I´d suspect.   

I love the images and stories,  Michael and Steven.  The dancing with google as the musician of the room, the wholeness of solitude while standing in patches of truck stops and parking lots.

I don´t know if this will be the last Christmas in this house of mine.  I´d love it if it is, for the right reasons.  After 53 years of calling it mine, my release is long overdue.  With my knight in shining Armour, we´re plotting our escape.  In the fridge there is pink champagne so we can we toast to that, inshallah, at the transition into 2010, after our traditional rune-reading on the soft  rug near the fireplace and the crackling logs.

More wholeness, more freedom, more love.  Good things to share.

[feral]

Tonight we went out to the annual winter solstice "toast to the fish" on Myrtle Creek. Our neighbor and friend Esther is the devoted stream keeper. Although the creek was down to just 19 fish last year, it's one of the last genetically native salmon streams in BC. We (the usual subversive suspects and a half wolf dog) toasted with some high octane mystery brew to the health of the stream and the safe return of the salmon in the coming year.

 

[marianthi]

Sorry about the mega-picture of logs in the fire, folks.  They have to stay that size since modifications now are impossible.  May they make you warm.

I too toast to that fish on Myrtle Creek, feral - and bid them to frolic and multiply.  Solstices seem to be times where shifts have a chance to come through, maybe because of the shift in the duration of sunlight and such.  I remember the emphasis placed in the ashrams where I roamed in my youth upon meditating just before sunrise and sunset.  Apparently the mind is more open to influences at that time of shift.  Later I remembered that these are also the hours in which plants switch from releasing Oxygen and absorbing Carbon and then the reverse. 

What solid reason could there be for birthday celebrations?  The celestial bodies at that time approximate the same position as when we were born.  Does that gives us a cosmically-supported chance for a solid shift in our lives?  I have not examined this matter but maybe some of you have.  Do tell.

M.

[jimtzu]

i'm not much of a holiday (any of them really) kind of guy, or go in for celebrations. i'm well aware of cycles in this spiral of life but find it hard to get to excited about social or personal points along the way. all i know is at this time of year the sun shines on me through the south window when i'm on the floor stretching. it's the little things.......

[feral]

Unexpected pleasures!

I'm sitting here basking in the warmth of a crackling fire, listening to Jimtzu's very fine new album, "Bluest Moon" and poring over the most amazing Christmas present I've ever recieved!

The most beautiful man in the world (at least in my world) bought me a copy of CG Jung's Red Book for Christmas.

I am in awe.

[Nickeson]

Ah, I remember another confluence, only this one was a flash in the pan.  The good 'ole Harmonic Convergence of 1987.  I spent that one at a hike-in lake near the base of Mount Shasta with a formidable psychic, whom I happened to be married to at the time...  Saw pretty lights in the sky, but was ultimately disappointed by the lack of convergences... so it goes. 

So while you were at that awesome lay line convergence point at the base of Shasta in August of '87, I was celebrating the coming alternative new world order, meditating in the Great Kiva of North America's first dedicated shrine to the polymath mind and vision...Chaco Canyon. This was a formidable celebration...they figured 10,000 pilgrims of light would show, dedicated saviors of the species and the planet would swarm like beatific sand flies into Chaco, radiating positivity into the cosmos, but I doubt if 1,000 made it...you don't go to Chaco in the summer! (I am re-posting here a little thing I wrote on a celebrations thread at the Gaia Integral Pod a year ago tomorrow.)

Vignettes from the Days of Redemption
Harmonica Virgins
Chaco Canyon
August, 1987

Everything started to fit together about the time I was wrangled into The Harmonic Convergence, Summer '87. There was Stuart, a friend of mine, a hard core Rainbow Family organizer. He was working as a consultant to the little Santa Fe crowd who were staging the July 16, 17 event at Chaco Canyon, NM, USA, and he was always impressed because I often times went off to work with a pistol in my back pocket and he kept inveigling me with the need for such personnel as I as part of the security force at the Base Camp…they expected 10,000…some even thought 20K would flock in because Chaco is to the World what Stonehenge is to southern England…Chaco can beat the pyramids senseless with half its ruins tied up behind the butte. But I wanted nothing to do with it because I had read Jose's book during several stand-up sessions at the Ark Book Store and I had thought…but then I don't need to get started on that. However Stuart didn't believe a word of it either, he just loved to help organize and get all up into GIGANTIC MEGA-CAMP OUTS. Still I said no. But my girl friend then was a former volunteer for the U.S. Park Service in the Canyon and she was called back to active duty to help handle the crowds a couple of days ahead of the event and after she split for Chaco, I decided that if I was left to sleep alone, I'd better do it for a good cause and so I packed up my tent and gear and drove at night for ever over what has to be the worst road in the western U.S. and pulled into camp a ways outside the Chaco boundary and signed up to provide security along with some footloose tourist kid from California who had just happened to be passing through. For this I got a lavender tee shirt printed with “Harmonica Virgins” (HQ staff)  and one of those round, metal stick pin badges with the Harmonica Virgins symbol that somebody had channeled and it was lavender color coded also to single us out as part of the upper echelon even when we weren't wearing the tee.  Stuart was overjoyed. He worked out of the medical complex, so not far from there I pitched my tent in the headlights of my pickup.

And then nothing happened for the longest while. Daytime, the sun at noon was scorching and dry and the wind blew a lot of dust. Some kid stopped by the medical complex with a slightly suppurating ingrown toenail and they taught him how to cut a notch in the nail as a preventative, the only work ever for the two Doctors Of Oriental Medicine (DOM) and the allopathic MD who worked the complex.

My friend Lisa Law stopped by my tent and took my picture sitting there on my milk crate, looking like a cattle truck driver, a sleeveless flannel and a cowboy hat, and holding her 10-year-old son's horny toad in my outstretched hand. The kid had granted her custody of the thing when he'd scored some 'shrooms and disappeared. (I gave my mother a copy of that photo as a gift…Lisa even autographed it and I had it mounted professionally…but for some reason it never made it up to Mother's mantle piece.)

And then nothing more happened for awhile because only one person showed for every 10 expected and the concessionaires who had been talked into high hopes got pissed and left and this splendid, beamish and thoughtful young woman who was the nominal head of the headless organizing team bought all the food they had brought in so they wouldn't sue her for that much and more and she put it on her credit cards and even though she probably had a little trust fund it just couldn't keep up and after the world was redeemed it was difficult to raise more money for that effort so she was forced into bankruptcy a few months down the line.

Then nothing happened some more.

But late in the afternoon before the Big Night a couple of High Druid Priestesses, a witch or two and a well known female shaman emerged from their matriarchal sweat lodge and came down to the open public facility by the medical complex for showers or a ritual bath or something along that order. One of them was very leery about a public display of their now ritually sanctified bodies but it was the only place where there was any water to speak of and she realized everyone else was pointedly paying no attention so it was OK. I don't think I have ever been in the presence of such a polite ethereal and doofus-reverential chastity as what dominated that camp…everyone turned away so as not to stare. I didn't stare either…I just didn't turn away. Among all these folk living in the dreamiest, dreariest latitudes of the newage, I figured the real world needed some representation too and I guess it was the presence of the real world that kept me from being struck blind for my sacrilege.  And then nothing more happened again for awhile.

At sundown they held the big Everyone Gather Together to Redeem the Planet Ceremony, but it all seemed sort of anemic. A truly solid ceremony has to have boundaries like big rocks, or huge trees or tall rock walls and colored windows or close ordered banners in the wind. But the only one of those elements on the high plateau above Chaco is the wind. Otherwise its dust and a few scrub junipers and highland horizons 100 miles away. The crowd could have been 10 times its size and the setting would still have it looking washed out and sounding squeaky.

And then a little before midnight The Ones of the Lavender Tees boarded a bus and headed for the invite only ceremony in the classy grand kiva at the Casa Rinconada ruins. It was a failure too, as if no one had thought about it much because they had all expected someone else who never showed up to do the heavy spiritual lifting. The only thing I recall was the group meditation that featured the ritual coughing epidemic about five minutes in, something that always makes the NLP fans grin a little despite themselves and puts them off their focus.  We meditated through midnight but we could have buttoned up the kiva and gone home early because by then the redemption was a done deal. It happened just after we got off the bus and were trooping up the path to Casa Rinconada in the pitch dark and one of the DOM's began to hum The Minstrel Boy. And then I started too, and others picked it up and soon all those of The Lavender Tee who knew the tune were brazenly humming too for no one seemed to know the lyrics.

And that's what did it. That tetra-toning of the greatest marching song ever tipped the scales of the other 144,000 stalwart efforts and dialed in a dozen or so, maybe more, “really powerful” vortices that began to intermesh like a slush-box transmission and the machinery began to move and grind away and heave and haul at the architecture until the Blessed Light Paradigm dropped into place like a megalithic tumbler in the Universal Lock. We were all instrumental in the final drive to redemption and none of us had to get crucified or nothing. Channeled communiques world over reported that up on the Mother Ship, Ashtar himself was swept away and said, “Now I can finally see how it all fits together.”

And he added, “Its even more seamless than AQAL!”

“What's AQAL?” Melchizedek asked.

“Oh you know…New Age.”

So pack up those cares and woes, Campers, and have a good holiday!

[Michael]

LOL, thanks for that Steven!  Delightful.

[feral]

The egg nog ice cream was an unqualified success. The meringue that was supposed to be the top of a key lime pie was a disaster though. Off to watch Casablanca for the very first time. Cheers to all.

[henry]

here's lookin' at you kid