Do you hear what I hear? The silence between one year and another

The space between years is not a time for resolutions. It's a sacred pause, meant for turning within and trusting your questions to the silence

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Before we begin: An invitation
Journey 2024 begins (quietly) the second week of January.

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash

It’s dark out there. It’s cold. All I want to do is curl up under a blanket and read. I have started five blog posts this week - none of them seem important enough to share. Perhaps this one will open onto something worth saying. It begins with an invitation into the silence.

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Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash

Shhhh . . . Let’s just sit here a while. After all the noise, this silence after Christmas is one of the soft (and oh so welcome) miracles.

In my last post, I wrote about waking up in the middle of the night to talk with the darkness.

In this one, we’re going to talk about why I do not set goals or make resolutions at this time of year. I’ll advocate for letting things unfold in their own time. I’ll tell you a story and share a poem. I’ll tell you my Three- Step Ritual for the End (and the Beginning) of the Year. Then, I’ll leave you with your journal and some questions.

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The Story

Yesterday, after packaging and mailing four enormous packages out to my children, I collapsed on the sofa, opened my phone and wrote, on Facebook. The past two days, I am feeling so tired. At the same time, as if my body is filled with bees. Alive inside - buzzing but not feeling like doing anything. So not in the mood for holiday spirit - or celebration. I don’t know what this is. I can’t explain how I feel. Anyone else feeling this? Is it just me?

Many people responded. Yoga teachers, counselors, coaches chiming in.

It’s the in between place. Go for a walk outside. It will settle eventually and maybe some new idea will emerge.

It’s the tension as we move between the dark days and the return of the light… the quiet and deep AND the buzzing of what is being called forward....

Tired and wired. So common this time of year.

My son, a physical therapist, wrote, It’s like mental restless leg syndrome. The feeling of wanting to be more of something.

Sharing this feeling in community helped me feel better. The bees were still there but I wasn’t as startled by them. I was even a little bit curious. What were they?

Photo by Zohre Nemati on Unsplash

The poem

“Last night as I was sleeping” by Anthony Machado

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Photo by Rodrigo Pereira on Unsplash

Like Machado, I have been dreaming that God is here, inside my own heart. Like the renowed 20th century poet, I have a relationship, poetical, symbolic and actual - with bees. Unlike him, however, it is not golden bees making dream honey of my failures. It’s a small hive of my childhood selves.

I see them walking through landscapes, sharing stories as they play a game. They throw colored sticks on the ground. The sticks form a pattern which they lean in and read. This helps them work out some things which, before now, seemed impossible.

I love dreams like this. They feel important and also, so simple.

Also, my mother visited again last night. As I woke, I heard her speaking: “Lie down now, Amy. Lie down, my love.” Clearly, my middle-of-the-night conversations with the darkness are stirring the hive.

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My ever so simple
Three- Step Ritual for the End (and the Beginning) of the Year
Open to what is offering itself to you

1. Get quiet inside.
   I do this by sitting down and simply breathing.
   As the body settles, the first awareness opens: Interior peacefulness is possible for me.

2. Ask a pile of questions.
   Ask for help, for insight, for comfort.
   This opens the second awareness: It’s possible that someone is listening to me.

3. Listen for a response.¹
   Notice I didn’t say, ‘Listen for the answers’. This sort of listening is open to whatever comes - including silence.
   This opens the third awareness: It’s possible that someone is responding to me.

It’s possible.
Cultivating that awareness changes everything.

I do this three-step ritual over and over. I do it as the holidays approach. I do it in the week between Christmas and the new year. On New Year’s Eve, I do it with more deliberate attention. I sit down with my journal and do the work.

If I miss that evening, I do in some time the first week of January. Giving myself permission to do it late (or early) or do it wrong is part of the ritual. It cuts the bindings to perfection that build up inside of me.

It’s possible that things can shift and change.
It’s possible that I can open more, see and feel more.
It’s possible for me to experience joy.

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Sometimes, I kick start my ritual by reading a good poem, like the one above - or asking open ended questions, like the ones below. The best question is the one that makes you feel or think something that ‘wants’ to get down on the paper.

This ritual is really juicy if you stay with one question for a while. Slow way down. Wait. The answers and impressions will start to roll toward you, roll into and through you.

Make up your own Qs or try some of these.

1. What am I curious about?
   What might I enjoy learning? What little factoid would I like to track down and obsess over for a while?
   I’m super curious about astrology right now - and human design. I’m coming off of a deep dive into Carl Jung’s Red Book. I’m always interested in nutrition.

2. What would nourish my heart?
   My own heart is nourished by beauty, music, color, fragrance. I’ve been craving a walk through an art museum - and conversation over a good meal and a glass of rich red wine. A phone call with my sister. A walk with a friend. A movie with my Kabbalah teacher. What nourishes yours?

3. What feels expansive?
   What’s pulling me forward, outward, into the world? What teachers, films, spaces or places? What (who) am I dreaming about?

4. What feels contracted?
   What’s pulling me away from the world? What hurts? What feels stuck, achey, wrong? What’s drawing my attention to the interior? Can I bring these things to the silence? Am I willing to hear what it has to tell me?

5. Who/What am I concerned about? The world? Climate change? Politics?

   Is there a specific person who’s going through something hard?
   How might I reach out? (I love this question because, almost always, I am guided to send a text or a personal note to someone I love.)

6. What is my body asking for?
   (For this one, close your eyes and scan: How are my bones? How is my blood? How are my eyes, my ears, my fingers and toes? These questions may sound fanciful - but they elicit a different response than asking: ‘how’s my blood pressure’ or ‘did I eat the right thing today’. We are not reaching for medical issues here. Rather, we are listening for the ‘voice’ of the body, which probably won’t speak in words but in sensations and/or symptoms.

7. How are my exterior landscapes?
   What does your home want? What does your office need? Giving voice to these spaces can be surpising and delightful.

   
   Over here, my home and work environment, are very quiet but we’re about to rebuild a staircase. It’s too steep for me and my husband, an architect got worried when he watched me pulling myself up along the banister one slow step at a time.

   
   He has taped a blue staircase on the wall. The workmen are coming on Wednesday. I am imagining sprinting up the steps - flying, to the second floor, ease in my knees and hips.

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I leave you with all of this - which feels, at the moment, like a jumble of words and big love. I send it to you with a blessing and a prayer that you experience the silence. Inside and all around you.

May you enter the spaciousness of this miracle time of year. May you ask a big pile of questions. May you cross over to the other side, listening for and receiving all kinds of answers.

xxoo
Amy

Finally, I adore the new Substack tradition that’s making itself where people share posts from other writers. It’s just the sort of thing writers crave as we send our messages out into the world. Here are three that feel related to this one:

I love this little life by Hannah Pasquinzo
. . . like many things, this desire for more, more, more can be a slippery slope, because it can also come with an ever-present feeling of discontent. Disappointment that things aren’t exactly how I envision their potential, right now. A feeling of being too confined by my life. Just a hunch, but I bet you know exactly what I mean. 😉

Choosing Less by Ronna Detrick
. . . The holidays notwithstanding, “choosing less” is what I feel more and more drawn to, called by, and hungry for (at least in my most idealistic moments). Less work. Less social media. Less saying yes. Less internal pressure to do more, produce more, be more. Less feeling like I’m not doing enough.

On the flip side of these is “more.” More time. More groundedness. More saying no. More space to do things often relegated to “if I have time” (e.g. reading, whatever/whenever I want, knitting, or this crazy, recurring idea that I learn to play the cello). More confidence that I am doing more than enough; that I am more than enough.

Doing the Wish by Sophie Strand
“You have put an extraordinary amount of energy out into the world,” my friend Greta observed the other night. “Writing, teaching, speaking, relating, giving. What would it look like to briefly turn that energy back towards your own body? What if you don’t need to write another book? What if you need to create and write and energize your own body?”

What if? The question isn’t trivial. It’s urgent. This creative output has launched me into community and into the work I most love – but it is an output. Energy going out. And this expenditure is showing up on blood tests and scans as if my current case of serious vitamin deficiencies and failing bone marrow was somehow directly related to the words I’ve physically extracted from my blood.

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Footnote

1. Listen with presence. Arrive without agenda, ready to listen, to meet what arises before you. This is one of the reasons that I don’t make resolutions or choose a word of the year. I don’t want to get in the way of the natural flow of things. I want to see what comes. Resolutions close my energy, making me focus on what I’m trying to fix or change or get.

Asking questions has the opposite effect. It opens me, calling life to offer itself to me - and the offer is always much more than I would ever have resolved to fix or change or get with my resolutions.