A sense of wonder

December 11, 2008 at 2:43 pm | Posted in art, baby, blogging, cats, Christmas, country life, faith, family, gardening, gifts, Holidays, knitting, Life, love, marriage, pets, photography, relationships, romance, snow, Thanksgiving | 23 Comments
Tags: art, Christmas, culture, faith, family, Holidays, home, inspiration, knitting, Life, lifestyle, love, personal, photography, spirituality, thoughts

Where has the time gone; where have the leaves, the sky, the green grasses gone. It is nearly one full month to the day since I have posted.  My intent is to post once per week, to treat this blog as a weekly feature and responsibility that my readers depend upon. Regardless of my best intentions, time has lapsed. Here I am, at last.

We have enjoyed several snowfalls by now, a quiet and loving Thanksgiving has come and gone as winter reaches round our cheeks and necks, up our sleeves and down our collars. Cold, cold chill is in the air and the snow outside brings with it a sense of wonder.

Eight cats and kittens reside on our front porch, which is enclosed on three sides and offers some protection from the elements. Since the arrival of the first magic cat more than one year ago, we no longer hear critters great and small running around inside our old farmhouse walls and rafters. These cats are hunters and survivers, barn cats who roam our fields and the banks of our river.

The cats bring with them love, play, entertainment and … a sense of wonder.

As I write this entry a heavy, wet snow falls steadily and wind blows it hard against tree trunks, branches, sign posts, and window sills.

I think of holiday events coming in the days ahead, of treasures I have recently made in my studio, and of magical events coming in the days and months ahead. I am filled with a sense of wonder.

There is news to share … come spring a child will be born and my husband and I will become grandparents. Is that not something! I think ahead to Christmas times in the future and the fun we will all have creating and participating in that extraordinary magic light that children and childhood bring to Christmas. What plans we all have, what dreams.

This is a time for dreams and love. I am not only referring to this time as for my family, but this time as for you and yours as well. You see, we all need to continue to remind ourselves and each other that we are the creators of our own feelings and attitudes towards life.

It is easy to forget that you are the one who gets to decide how you feel about and what you think about life … and yet, it is true. Sometimes it is a difficult responsibility to accept, and that is also true.

Several years ago I set out on a quest in my own life to resolve inner conflicts I had regarding money and finances and the material side of life. I have lived through and suffered through times of great scarcity. The most painful of those times were when I was raising my children alone and out of both work and money.

During those times, I would wake up each morning wondering how I would pay whichever bill was due that day, or buy a bit of gas to get to someplace I had to go, buy some groceries to last a few more days as I waited for a check to arrive.

One particular Christmas many years ago I had no job and my car broke down a month or two before Christmas. We were so low on money that it hurt inside and out.

I write of these things not to bring sorrow or sadness to my readers, not to gain pity or sympathy. To have experienced adversity and found ways to experience joy and love and cheer in spite of my financial circumstances  gave me strength and inner lights that I would not trade for all the money in the world.

Without a job to go to and without a car to drive, that Christmas season I had much time on my hands.  Luckily I also had the full use of my creative mind and spirit.   I am not saying it wasn’t sad or worrisome to be in that situation but looking back on it I know that situation was an opportunity, not a tragedy.

With just barely enough money coming in to buy food and very basic necessities, but Christmas gifts were out of reach. However, I did have watercolor paper and paints, fabrics, art board, and various other supplies here and there in my home.

Watercolor supplies became portraits of nieces and nephews to give to brothers and sisters and their spouses. Scraps of beautiful red velvet fabric and snow white rope braid stashed away became handsewn Santa costumes and bags for two small bears I had on hand. I even happened to have a bit of actual gold leaf on hand in my art supplies, and my son and I made two magic boxes for the Santa costumed bears to “bear”. My son made the boxes — nice cube shaped boxes and tops. We covered them in wrapping paper and lined them with the gold leaf.

The two teddy bears with costumes, Santa bags, and magic boxes were gifts for my parents and one brother and his family; portraits went to others.

On Christmas Day when we gathered with family my children and I felt all tingly inside about the gifts we were bearing. I think the most wonderful moment that day was when we handed my younger brother’s gift to him.  As he opened his gift he found two portraits, one of each of his boys. They were two of my best children’s portraits ever. He instantly sprang to his feet and came across the room to embrace and thank me, with tears in his eyes. I had no idea the paintings would mean so much to him, and it touched me deeply that I had been able to do something for him that meant so much.

He told me that earlier, when we had arrived he had seen the shape and size of the packages we carried in and he had a feeling there were paintings involved. The thought occurred to him there might be a painting of his boys, and he trembled — literally trembled — in anticipation.  That is a touching Christmas memory.

I had no idea, no idea at all the solution to my Christmas problem would create such a deeply felt response in someone else.

It was a magic Christmas and one of my best Christmas memories. There were several years when we faced similar problems and in each case my children and I used our creativity and love to find and spread the real spirit of the season. Mostly, we found the spirit within ourselves by solving the Christmas problem when it arouse.

A few years ago my mother told my daughter and I about what Christmas was like when she was a child in the rural farmlands of North Carolina. At that time, getting a walnut and a piece of citrus fruit as your special Christmas gift was a huge, magical experience. She shared memories with us of her parents going to their church on Christmas Eve, standing in line to receive nuts and oranges to give to their children.

Wonder of wonders, children receiving the humble gift of a walnut and possibly an orange on Christmas morning were cheerfully grateful and filled with an inner sense of magic and joy.

How do such memories compare with recent stories of stampedes of people “Christmas” shopping the day after Thanksgiving in the lustful glee of getting their hands on one of a limited supply of electronic gadgets or high priced toys at bargain prices.

Is it any wonder the world is in financial turmoil right now? Has mankind not allowed him/herself to become contorted out of shape emotionally and spiritually in thinking that happiness lies in items that can be procured from shelves in stores. Have people not traded their financial souls to the devil by buying far too much  “stuff” on credit , undoing their own future security and happiness in order to get the buzz of the “new” right now? 

In my experience happiness and pleasure and magical moments in life reside in the quiet, humble, simple corners and folds of the lives we live.

Fail to notice those little places and things, fail to value the humble bits in life and you will fail to cash in on the greatest gifts your life holds. Those are the gifts it would be tragic to miss out on, not the things that are found on a store shelf at a discounted price during a sale the day after Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, Christmas … gratitude for God’s gifts, the gifts of life. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. If we instill in ourselves the simple, clear and down-to-earth sense of wonder that this season is truly about we have a chance of instilling that same sense of wonder in our children and grandchildren and leaving traces of the magic we create in the lives of men to come.

This holiday season I celebrate with the anticipate of a grandchild who I will endeavour to inspire with a sense of wonder about every day life.  Of course, we will amp it up to even higher proportions each and every holiday season.

What fun I will have showing her how to gather wild things from the environment, dry them in the oven, and organize them.  Then each and every November I will will teach her how to transform some of nature’s ingredients into magical little Thistleonian characters, miniature wreaths, table decorations, and Christmas tree ornaments.

I will write and tell her stories of both fiction and my actual life … the good stuff, the best stuff that holds all the magic and wonder of the better parts of life.

It is the winter, Christmas season … do you have your sense of wonder on?

Ho, ho, ho and merry times to you and yours. 🙂

~firefly