Resilience under the Solstice tree

Pumpkin Ridge Home fires buring - image by arie farnam

It took me a while to settle on what to write this full moon. There are certainly things happening that merit contemplation, but I’m mainly thinking of everyone out there, especially those who have followed my writing journey for years. We’ve all been struggling to find hope and any useful thing to do in a world gone crazy.

And as much as I want to tell you about the insight I gained into fiction genres and human morality by reading a very irritating gothic novel in my MFA program or discuss why white, rural Americans might feel rootless and overlooked—both of which topics might become future installments, I get the feeling that what we need right now is a bit of comfort and resilience.

We need to get through the holidays, which are fraught in the best of times. We need to regroup and reground ourselves in our values and our communities. We need to conserve energy and gather inner strength—because while I can’t possibly predict what the next year may hold, it is safe to bet that it is going to take a toll on our inner resources and resilience.

I drew some Tarot cards this morning, as I do every morning, and this time I got an interesting concept that I had never really encountered before, the call to treat my creative writing as a lover, or at least, to focus on love in my creative work. Aside from close family, the thing that fills my heart the most are those of you who keep reading my work and sometimes write back, though I am a completely obscure author. That is one way in which love is a natural part of my writing. But writing is also my comfort and solace on a cold winter’s night, much as a lover can be.

And so, I want to offer something that is more appropriate to the holidays, something that will not further tax your energy or make you ponder the genre of gothic literature a week before the Solstice.

While I was walking across the top of Pumpkin Ridge in a mini blizzard last weekend, I remembered the words of Fuji Kreider, spoken to my mother back in the 1980s when we were protesting unsafe nuclear facilities in the Pacific Northwest. My mother was in despair, she says, because no matter what we did, it seemed like it would not make much difference. Fuji said, “We have to do it because of how much worse things would be if we didn’t.”

That stayed with my mother and she’s told it to me more than once. I was a child at the time. It isn’t always enough of an answer for the hopelessness of the world, but it is still true. We are all going to have to do hard things over the next few years because of how much worse things would be if we didn’t act. And in that, we’ll keep our eyes and minds focused on that which we most need to keep safe—our children, grandchildren, land, water, air, our homes, our communities and our inner selves.

As I was walking and looking out at the Blue Mountains and the native plant preserve, crusted with cobalt-silver frost, I started humming Good King Wenceslas, which is—against my better judgement—one of my favorite holiday songs, given that it is actually referencing a murderous Christian monarch who killed the last Pagan king of Bohemia in order to seize power. Yet, it is a song about the Czech nation, which is dear to my heart, and its core messages of courage, hope and compassion thoroughly overwhelm the negative reference from and emotional standpoint.

I have made up alternative lyrics to this song before, but this time, I decided to follow the story structure of the original in which someone frightened and losing hope finds resilience and courage through wise counsel. In the original, the wise counselor is a patriarch, a king, and in conclusion, the song implies that if you follow directly in the footsteps of patriarchal power, you’ll make it through. But we’ve progressed beyond that.

So what I wondered is our current analog of a good king? What should we look to for courage, strength and hope in the midst of the storm? That line from Fuji is still a guiding light in the hardest of times. We come together and do what needs to be done. And so, for me it is community that is the good king, especially the community of progressive-minded, open-hearted people, wherever they may be.

I’ve been asked before, usually by people who vote Republican, why I care what happens to immigrant children or LGBTQ+ people or native people living near oil pipelines or people in Syria or Gaza or people in areas most quickly threatened by climate change. They aren’t me. They aren’t “our people,” I’m told. Why can’t I just put “America first”?

And that is the crux of it. They are my people. Simply put, I’ve had enough experience in my life to know and love people in every group I mentioned and in many many others. When I see people suffering somewhere far away or close to home, I don’t just see someone I don’t know. I see “my people,” a community of open-hearted people, who I have found all around the world. And that sense of unity and solidarity. That’s my “good king” in the new story.

Here then is a new holiday song for you. Feel free to sing it to the tune of Good King Wenceslas. My dad says not everyone knows the tune or how to fit new lyrics to it. So, I’ll try to sing it, though I am far from a good singer and you should not sing any false notes that I might sing, if you can help it. (Lyrics are below the video.)

Walk Between Us

(to the tune of Good King Wenceslas)

On November 6, a child looked out on the times we live in, 

As a nation renounced the rights that they had been given. 

Oh, the flags waved high that day, 

through the words were cruel. 

“Your body, my choice,” so they say,

“Long live fossil fuels.”  

Daddy, will you still love me if I am transgendered?

My friends deported, can’t you see, my future is endangered?

Darling, girl, I do love you, 

for me you are perfection.

If books they ban and people too. 

We'll fight for their protection.

Bring me cardboard and bring me more, bring me markers hither. 

You and I march at the fore when the people gather.

So forth they went parents and child, 

forth they went together

through winds of greed, brazen and wild 

and the bitter weather.

Mama, it's hopeless, I know not how, I can go no longer, 

whatever we do here now, hate grows ever stronger. 

Take our hands my little one, 

And walk between us knowing, 

As the longest night returns the sun,

Our movement still is growing.

So, young and old we come again to raise the cry of justice

They’ll tell us to blame someone, in order to divide us.

But we are family one and all,

Black, brown and white too,

Loving people heed the call,

The future depends upon you.

And now, joyous holidays, blessed Solstice, merry Christmas and happy Hanukah to you all in every corner of the world!