Thank you.  Thank you for being here, for reading and commenting and just generally showing up.  I'm working on just showing up, just getting up and telling, just writing.

I'm looking forward to sharing more and more with you here.  Stories, tips, online workshops, live events...

in the meantime, come visit me.  I'll be in Linden Hills, telling stories at the Farmers Market and at Reindeer Day.  I want to see you.

Somehow, we will hold on, through the gathering dark
of these longer and longer nights, 
to a spark.
And week by week, let the light grow, 
until in the darkest week of the year,
we let our hearts burst into flame
and shower drops of sleigh bell music
and liquid laughter,
and steady, softening rain of kindness
onto the world
to keep us alive through the winter.

I love this journey of daily writing.  Yes, I've missed a couple of days here and there, but I feel like here, 4 weeks in, I am coming around to a new way of looking at this blog, and at my life's trajectory.  And when this month is done, and I let go of the daily compulsion to write, no matter how aching and tired and dull I am, I hope I will retain the habit.  It's become a habit.

There will not be a lot of quiet in the next few weeks.  Farmer's Market, kiddo's birthday, St. Nicholas, Christmas, Reindeer Day, and so on, and so on.  But quiet is what my soul craves at this time of year, what I need to survive.

Perhaps, this can provide it.  Maybe in sitting down to talk with you all, and to let you in on my latest doings and offerings, I can find that moment of quiet.  After all the talking and the work and the storytelling and preparation... maybe then I can just be.

I'm tired, and full, and grateful.  

I hope your day has been gentle and full as well.  That you are safe and warm tonight.  
That you will sleep tonight in a soft bed, and sleep deeply and well.  I hope you will wake tomorrow
to good work, and enough food, and someone to say a kind word to you.  That you will hug someone you love, and that you will have something funny to tell, and someone to tell it to.

I wish you to feel as blessed and grateful as I do tonight.

And if you are missing someone, as I am tonight, I hope that you can feel a little of this:

Our elderly tabby cat, Little, the matriarch of our pride of household lions, passed away last year in the summer after a long decline.  Last month or so, my son came to me one day and said, "Mama! I discovered something!  If you bend down, and close your eyes, and reach out your hand, you can feel Little's fur!  You can try it if you want to, mama."

I did, and while I didn't feel that fur with my my hand, I felt its memory brushing against me, so soft and gentle and warm.

Close your eyes, and reach out your hand.

Bless you all.  Happy Thanksgiving.

**I thought I had made up a new word here.  I love this word.  However, unbeknownst to me, someone else made this word up, and it was for something else really cool.  But I still like this usage.**

Storygiving.

Many of you will be gathering with family and friends tomorrow.  It may be just the usual crew who sit down together tomorrow, or it may be a group too big for the one table, that spills onto couches and ottomans and the floor, plates in hand.  Whatever it is, it's time for a story.

You don't have to turn the TV off if you don't want to.  Halftime is good for a story, too.  The parades have lots of commercial breaks.  Head to the kitchen when one of those happens.  Stand around and pick at the pie left in the dish.  Offer a spray of whipped cream to the waiting, laughing mouths of children around you, and let a story roll off your tongue.

You can start like this, "Oh man.  Remember when Cousin Mike. . . "

Or like this, "Now when your grandpa was a little girl..." my wickedly funny, tee-totalling baptist grandma loved this one.

You could just jump right in, in media res: "So, there we were in the middle of Dresden/Decorah/Donnegal, and I had no idea what to do."

Tell a story.  Tell it to your little cousins, your aunt SueAnn, your sister's new boyfriend -- the one your parents hate, your brother's ex who still comes for holidays.  Tell your son, your mom.  

And then, listen.   Invite their stories.  "Did that ever happen to you?  I'll bet you never saw one like that! Can you even believe it?"

Give a story.

In the quiet of the evening, when sandwiches have been assembled and eaten, and the nice new guy in your department, the one whom you invited offhandedly at the end of a meeting, the one who showed up and handed over a bag of King's Hawaiian rolls or a can of sweet potatoes, when he asks about the weird dessert your family has always had, tell him the story.  Invite him into your secret family club.

That's what stories do; they tie us together.  They give us passwords and codes to share.  

And if you are the new guy, if you are the guest?  Bring a story.  Offer it like a shiny hostess gift.  Lasts longer than flowers, and it makes you more human to one another.  Tell your story, and listen to the stories that come crowding in, hanging on your story's shirttails like tagalong kid brothers.

At bedtime, pull your little ones, or your loved one, close to you, and whisper, "Once upon a time..."  Don't worry about what story it will be.  Let the story come to you and be told.

Storygiving. It's part of the meaning of these feasts.  Feast one another with words; regale one another.  

Happy Storygiving.  Happy Thanksgiving.  Thanks for reading.  Thanks for telling.

I wish I were surprised.  I wish I could trust that justice has really been served.  I wish my faith in the system were justifiably intact.  

I wish for peace.
I wish for my country to open its eyes.  I wish for honest conversations and acknowledgement.

I wish I knew what to do.

or what to say.  

stop caring what others think.  
stop listening to the voices in your head that whisper half-truths and full lies.
stop checking your stats, likes, follows, retweets, comments.
stop checking the phone.
stop yelling.
stop feeling like a failure. 
stop trying to fix it.  all of it.
stop numbing.
stop asking for permission.
stop staying up too late.
stop trying to live on rice cakes, candy, and coffee.

start caring what you think.
start letting your heart lead.
start taking a risk.
start writing.
start walking.
start singing.
start being playful.
start opening your close clutching hands.
start earlier.
start planning.
start preparing.
start dedicating.
start being kind.
start enjoying the magic.
start loving.
start speaking to yourself with honest kindness.

continue to breathe.
continue to question.
continue to tell.
continue to reach out.
continue to look in.
continue praying, dancing, cooking, offering. speaking.
continue being gentle.  
continue being brave.

stop.  start.  continue.
be.

Joining soulemama: {this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

I have nothing to say tonight.

I keep trying to come up with something.  Something sharp-edged and lovely, or something warm and wise.  Nope.  Nada.  The muse isn't interested in singing tonight.

So, instead, you get poetry!!!
First, a beautiful poem from Mari Ness, based on the Seven Swans.  It's at Goblin Fruit.  Go read it and come back for more snow and November cold.

Snow-flakes
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Out of the bosom of the Air,
      Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
      Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
            Silent, and soft, and slow
            Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
      Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
      In the white countenance confession,
            The troubled sky reveals
            The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
      Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
      Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
            Now whispered and revealed
            To wood and field.


Falling Leaves and Early Snow
BY KENNETH REXROTH

In the years to come they will say,
“They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.
 
In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

Kenneth Rexroth, "Falling Leaves and Early Snow" from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1940 by Kenneth Rexroth.  Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.


November for Beginners
BY RITA DOVE
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.

So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing

a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!


November 1981

Source: Poetry (June 2012).

So, I wrote this post.  And then I accidentally erased it.  Blame it on tiredness or something.  I do.

HERE! a list of some stuff that is making me really happy this week.

• This gorgeous face lotion.  It's local, and made from stuff I'd eat.  

• These awesome books by Seanan McGuire.  Love me a gritty faery tale.  

• This post by Glennon at Momastery.  You may already be living the life you've dreamed of.

• This book of fairy tales by Kathleen Ragan.  I think we have a long friendship ahead of us.  Can't wait to read her other collection.  

• This yummy place.   I left home on a piece of toast and a cup of coffee this morning.  I needed to get some actual nutrients into my body in order to tell stories at Heartfelt's Preschool Class, so I stopped here.  Totally fit the bill, and it's gorgeous.

• My beautiful pen from Edison Pen Company.  It was a gift -- well, a gift certificate.  And it's totally me.  

• This song keeps coming up on the Loreena McKennitt station on Pandora.  I love it.

• I've gotten a great response on this post.  Starting to see yourself as a storyteller can be hard. Maybe this could help?


• I had to add this wonderfully sweet and funny dog video, of a golden retriever who fails at obedience but still totally wins.

So, a little peek into my world this week.  May it bring you joy.