I participated in a livestream yoga class the other night that was run by a local Methodist church, and that incorporated the Christmas story into the session. There were breaks for carols and readings from the bible, and various poses were reimagined as part of the story – Extended Mountain was “bringing Christ’s light into the world” and Spinal Twists were “the animals in the barn taking a look at the new baby Jesus.” That sort of thing. It was sweet, if maybe a little childish, but I still got a good workout and an interesting experience. I blew out my “Silent Night” candle at the end and thought that was that… but I keep thinking about it.

Now, to be clear, I don’t consider myself a Christian, but I freakin’ LOVE Christmas. And not just for secular reasons like all the gifting and silliness and songs, but for this very Christian birth story. I love to imagine this tiny baby, so humble he was born in a literal barn to this poor young couple fleeing oppression, being seen as the sign of a new era of peace and love and hope so potent and transformative that mighty kings came from all around to greet him, and even the actual stars above responded. That this small beginning of this one person could have such an impact, and be felt with such immense and immediate joy all over the world. Imagine what that would be like, if you really believed this about this one little baby at that time, that he was going to change everything? Everything! All the terrible desperation and atrocities you’d seen in your lifetime. Like a COVID-19 vaccine personified, but who would also cure things like HIV and cancer and heart disease, not to mention racism and hunger and war and climate change and all the other things that keep us up at night. All solved by a squirming little baby! I’d be on my knees too, crying with happiness. Pretty sure you would be too.

And I really don’t need this story to be true, or to even believe that Jesus was a real life person, much less the son of God, to imagine this and appreciate its symbolic significance. I can hold that sense of wonder and joy in my heart alongside the knowledge that he’s likely just one of many savior archetypes that humans have created over the millennia – and still, that wonder and joy are just as potent for me, and why I love this holiday. I still cry while singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” every year – come, let us adore him! – even though I’m not “faithful” in that sense.

But I am, in my sense. And that’s the part about that yoga class that I keep thinking about.

It was led by a priest who lay her mat down right on the altar of this church, fully visible in the background in all its elaborately carved wooden glory. The carols were led by another woman at a fancy organ, and advent candles were lit at the beginning of the service. I knew all these carols and sang along from my living room floor (no need for subtitles, which weren’t provided), and even though we didn’t really do the advent candle thing in my household growing up, I knew what they symbolized. Nobody had to explain to me who Jesus was for me to understand all this, and I even heard the voice of Linus van Pelt in my head as they got to the part about the angel saying “fear not!” We all know this story, these rites, these symbols, no matter what our spiritual beliefs and backgrounds are. The idea that there’s some kind of “war on Christmas” in this country is absolutely absurd – Christmas and Christianity are so deeply entrenched in our culture, they’re practically in our DNA. Do a quick Google search of churches in your town – here in Columbus, Ohio I can’t even count past the As in an alphabetical list, there are so many. And nobody questions these. Nobody pickets outside of them (especially if they’re predominantly white) nor harasses them for celebrating Christmas or the many other holidays throughout the year. These buildings are paid for by vast congregations (and tax deductions) who have no reason to fear retaliation or oppression for their support, who walk around their whole lives fearlessly wearing necklaces with crosses on them or ashes on their foreheads in February, who are so influential that all of us get certain days off work every year for their holidays, whether we spend those days in their midst or not.

And yet, I’ve spent my whole life in these kinds of situations making mental substitutions for certain words that don’t resonate for me. Even as I rose into my Extended Mountain, I heard “Christ’s light” and substituted “the light of joy and peace.” I hear “God” and I mentally fill in “spirit” or “the Universe.” There are no animated holiday specials on tv for the equinoxes or solstices – even Samhain is reduced to horror movies and trick or treating (which of course I also love, let’s be real.) And the most significant astrological event of our lifetimes, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius on yesterday’s Winter Solstice, considered to be ushering in a new era of communication, ideas, and connectedness not seen in 800 years? They’re calling it the Christmas Star. Seriously.

It’s not just about representation though. You have to work to learn the symbols and rites of paganism. Many are hidden within Christianity, sure – wonder why we color eggs at Easter? or decorate Christmas trees? – but that’s just it: they’re hidden. Most of us didn’t grow up learning about the Wheel of the Year or the uses of different herbs or crystals or how to do a Celtic cross (!) tarot spread – we had to intentionally seek out resources on these things. So thorough is our cultural witch burning that most don’t even bother to question this, much less investigate and learn about it. Or if they do, it’s with fear and condemnation, associated with Satanism (which is vastly misunderstood as well) or simply, unabashedly mocked. Ask any group of people what their sun signs are and I guarantee you’ll get at least one or all of them to quickly say something like “not that I believe in that stuff” – and then watch those same people send you a glittery holiday card in December. We have no buildings, no carols, no public tellings of our stories so many times that even those of other faiths are even passingly familiar with them. Our tools have all been taken from us, and we’ve had to reinvent them, look for where they were hidden, or even just keep them in our own minds and hearts.

So my “church” is a forest or open field, and the sky above me – all things always available to you too, yet I don’t expect you to call them the same names. I do expect you to hold them with at least some semblance of reverence, however. When I stretch into a Crescent Lunge in yoga class, I think about whether I’m waxing or waning and send a mental “namaste” up to the moon, but I don’t expect my fellow yogis to do this. And yes, even yoga itself as I practice it is a western appropriation of another religion – asking forgiveness for that is part of my “light of joy and peace.” I wonder, is it part of the story of Christ for Christians anymore?

I’ll be celebrating a tiny baby symbolizing this on Friday too. Deliveries willing, my own child will have presents under a tree and candy in her stocking. We’ll make special food, play games, and have a zoom call with extended family which will probably include some carols and storytelling. Like I said, I love this holiday. But as I look up at the Great Conjunction, and feel the wonder and joy of this mysterious and tumultuous era in which we’re living, I’ll also be religiously welcoming back the light of the lengthening days and the opportunities for healing and connection to come. I invite you to do the same, and to call it what is most meaningful to you. But consider taking in a couple words from this heathen with the utmost respect and wish for the happiest of holidays:

Blessed Be.

they crawled in
and wrote stories on your walls
flicking by firelight
etching deep grooves
so they’d be told over and over again

there’s the warrior in this one
your epic journey along this sharp plane here
that point there
where the chalk broke and you tripped
forever broken with it

or the lover over here
where you folded into that once wet moss
thinking you’d be healed
’til it withered and dried
and you became its brown dust
forever floating

you listened to these tales
as they told them, echoed them
in your wide chambers
let them bounce all around you
become you

but my darling, don’t you see?
you’ve always been
more than these stories
of battle wounds and wanderings

look again –

your walls are still here
behind those words
smooth and strong, damp
with your own nectar

you’ve got a taste of your own
a temperature, a smell

the old dust settled, the fires burned down
into your pillowy floor
that now cradles this bear and precious cub
who already knows what you’re still learning,
remembering:

your warmth, your safety
your sweet, steady breath
your heartbeat
have been glowing and dancing
all along.

so write your own stories now
you vast, abundant heart
let your whispers become songs
carried by the bees in your delicious flower crown
come spring

I can’t wait to hear them.

sometimes the thing
is just to sit
on your porch steps
and watch the sunset
listen to the cicada cacophony
as the streetlights nervously flicker
and your anxious dog sniffs the air
for more storms

let your own storms pause for the moment
as the green turns to gloom
again

Every new year, I pick a theme for the kind of books I want to read that year. I guess I’m a perpetual English major, I can’t help myself. Often life throws me for a loop and this theme soon feels bitterly ironic – like the time I picked “love” and then was broken up with the very next day. But as the years unfold, I see the themes change shape and stay relevant in different ways – the shoulder I cried on during that particular breakup was attached to someone I’m still dating now. So I keep picking themes and have learned to be patient with them, and see where they take me.

This year I picked “community.” And again, when the virus hit, this felt ironic. Brutal. I don’t need to explain why, we’re all feeling it. What does community even mean when you’re afraid to talk to your own neighbor? What does partnership mean when you’re separated by multiple time zones and can’t travel? What is family when you can’t see your own children, siblings, or parents, when weddings and graduations and funerals happen that you can’t attend? When all your meals are eaten alone, when you sleep every night alone, spend your days looking at the same four walls around you alone, alone, alone?

How about when your children and grandparents are being sacrificed on the cold altar of what has never been more obviously meaningless, “the economy”? Or when you overcome the very real fear of death to gather as a community to speak out against injustice, only to be called a felon and arrested, beaten, tear gassed?

We’re seven months into my “community” year and I’m still struggling to find answers to these questions. Honestly, it’s really getting to me. Every single day now I reach a breaking point and either fly into a rage that scares my pets or I just break down and cry. Or both. I think today’s shaping up to be a crying day. But I think I know one thing: community matters more now than ever. We’ve got to get this shit together, people. It’s not just a fluffy, abstract concept, and it’s not just another zoom call. It’s literally life or death. What are you doing today, right now, to build community? What kind of community do you want tomorrow? A year from now? Ten, twenty, fifty years? Who are we really, and what can we be?

Because we’re not going to be in this chrysalis forever. We either rot in here or we come out, changed. And so far, if I’m honest, it’s looking a lot like rot.

You just
need a day to feel what you feel
because the world has grown hard
and your fingernails are dirty
not just because you’ve worked
tending this fire
burning these things of your past
and cried
so much
because this shit is hard
and your kid comes
out of the dark blue
to tend to you
and you’re proud of her
as she drives you home
in silence
knowing you’ve taught her this
as you weep
quietly
not wanting to burden her
with this pain that you’ve carried
from your own mother and you
but
goddamn
someday
sometime
it’s got to break
this pain
it’s just too much
sometimes

First, start with your hands.

They’re right in front of you, following you everywhere you go. They’re touching everything! They could be the reason this is happening. Wash them. Twenty seconds or more. Sing the alphabet song. Sanitize. Wash again. And again.

Don’t touch doorknobs, don’t touch buttons. Don’t touch your face. Whatever you do, don’t touch each other!

Stand six feet apart. Draw a mental six foot radius around yourself like yellow police tape. That is your safe zone. What’s inside? Clean everything inside with your hands. Wear gloves. Clean again. Clean the gloves.

Wash your hands again. Twenty seconds or more. Try the Star Trek intro this time: space, the final frontier. Six feet of space. Turn off the water with your elbow. Sanitize.

Have you cleaned that black rectangle in your hands? Clean it. It’s only six inches of your six feet, but there’s a universe inside of it. Are the beings inside drawing their safe zones? Are they wide enough? Remind them to wash their hands, their universes inside your universe inside your hands.

Wash again. Twenty seconds or more. See if you can remember the preamble to the constitution: a more perfect union, domestic tranquility. Sanitize.

You can let pets inside your safe zone. Hold out your clean hands, and they will come to you. Feel their warmth, their little noggins yearning for your touch. Your hands can do this. Pull them close, cry on the couch.

Your hands are so hard against their soft fur. See how dry and red they’ve become in mere days, wrinkles forming like desert valleys stretching over centuries. They look like your mother’s hands, methodically knitting Christmas gifts in July, knowing the gatherings will come. Eventually.

Wash again. Twenty seconds or more. Sing “as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll be alive.” You’ve got all your life to live. Moisturize.

The beings in your rectangle universe are clamoring for attention again. They’re scared. They’re restless. Some of them are sick, some are dying. Hold them close in your clean hands. Sing to them. Find new ways to whisper encouragement to them as they fall asleep, greet them as they wake. Click with the fingers of your hands on this flat void. You are each other’s sun and moon in these six inch universes. Keep the light on.

Wash again. Twenty seconds or more. Try to remember the parody version of Bohemian Rhapsody you just read in that meme. Is this the real life? Clean the light switch while you’re here.

You can touch your face if you’re washing it. Feel the contours you used to cover with makeup, back when you used to go out, when people saw you. Trace the length of your nose with a soapy finger – the sloping sides, the curve of the nostrils. Your ancestors made that nose. Imagine them breathing through you: in, out, in, out. It was safe for them to breathe.

Cover your nose now and go outside. You can do this. Take your dog, wear gloves, go for a walk. Your six foot circle follows you like a delicate bubble you need to blow again and again. You’re a child now with a plastic wand in your hands. See it make tiny rainbows in the sunlight. See your bubble pop and splash on the sidewalk, beside the emerging crocuses. Blow it again.

Look around. The other children are doing the same thing. Wave at them from inside your bubble, far away. Exchange brave smiles under your masks. Remember how you always wanted to make bubbles inside of bubbles. You’ve finally done it, and so have they.

Go home and wash again. Twenty seconds or more. It’s ok if you’re too tired to be creative – just sing “Happy Birthday” this time.

Something in you is being born, though still in the dark. Your clean hands have been digging deep, planting seeds. Your rectangle universe is expanding. With every new and terrifying statistic, there is a new virtual dance party, someone reading aloud, someone offering a hand. Turn the soil with your hands. There is always a new normal.

Wash again. Twenty seconds or more. Pledge allegiance to this life, this liberty, this pursuit of happiness.

Close your eyes and put your clean hand on your heart. Breathe in, breathe out. Feel your heartbeat slowing, your rhythm steadying. It is gently rocking the cradle holding us all.

Start with your hands. Twenty seconds or more.