The Shape of Christmas

Post- Christmas Greetings!


Just now sitting down with my first cup of lovely coffee, "The Shape of Christmas," came into my thoughts, so here I am wondering what that means to me and to each of you.


The shape of my Christmas is round, I realize.  And full and packed tightly with stored memories, some of which are still to be told and recalled one day.  My Christmas, I am grateful to say, is full of family.   Not all of us were able to be together, but celebrating with Mom is the center of our Christmas sphere.  It moves out from there with every other person linked to her, filling the space of Christmas.  She will be 92 in March, so inevitable thoughts bubble to the surface about what our Christmases will be like when she takes the trip to her next adventure.


Victoria Safford, inspiring minister of the U.U. church we attend, recited responses to questions about Christmas recently asked of the congregation.  I nearly lost it when she quoted one person who said this would be her/his last Christmas.  Emotions are close to the surface during this holiday season.  Emotions shape part of my Christmas sphere.


I did not respond to report my Christmas feelings and memories, but my most vivid memory of all Christmases is the one following our father's death in 1955. I was thirteen.
That morning there were many gifts under the tree, given by generous people who worked with Daddy.  I remember very little of those, but at breakfast, in each child's place at the table, there was a gift. The tags said they were from Daddy.


For just a moment, he was alive.  It was a bad dream that he had died some weeks before.  He was alive.  And then, of course, he wasn't, and I was grief-stricken all over again.  Each of the boys received a Swiss Army knife.  Each of us girls, a musical powder box.  
Mine still plays The Anniversary Waltz.


Most of us have poignant memories related to important holidays or anniversaries.  Our lives are shaped, in large part, by our memories.  I am reporting some of mine because memories, while they do shape us, need not control us.  We are Becoming, and in that reshaping we decide what we do with our memories.  


Breathing into a memory and bringing all the emotions to the surface, thus releasing the energy of it, is a healthy exercise.  Unexpressed emotion controls us.  Will we live in the suppressed energy or move out of karmic controls and into the present, with breath?  Joy can grow out of that breath.  Knowing my father now brings new emotion; he is very real and the joy of knowing him now is greater than the grief that once controlled me.  


Joy to each of you and gratitude for our shared consciousness.


Until next time,
Phyllis, Still Becoming