Greetings on the Winter Solstice. I encourage you to welcome the light into every aspect of your life. It is only through light that darkness will be kept in check and balanced properly.

I wish you all love and lightness of heart. i wish you safety in the material world and curiosity and openness in your spirit. Be glad that you are alive at such a rare time of the human experience.
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More later. Enjoy your company this holiday season or your solitude. Light a candle for your soul and for us all.

This year, I share with you one of my perennial favorites. Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose.
Light a candle or a fire. Alone or with your family or a friend, click here to listen to the incomparable original recording.

Click and listen. I swear that it's worth every second of your (and your family and friends' time.)

With a special holiday hello from Miss Tallulah, ​and lots of love...

Life. It's a series of experiences. Scenes of intentions and accidents.

What, exactly, is going on during any of our experiences is wildly complex no matter what measuring devices we bring. We may have objective material evidence to empirically prove that a certain thing happened in a certain way but there are energies and histories and momentums of objects well out of sight and forces beyond our comprehension that are playing out within and without us all through this wonderful life.

A fact is a fact. The sky is blue. At least the part that I'm looking at now from where I'm sitting right now.

Truth is a matter of perspective and changes depending not on where you may have been standing in the midst of an experience but more often on where you're standing right at this very moment. Our perspective can change with time and distance.

It's interesting though that our understanding of the truth can be changed by facts and by our growth as humans being.

If our minds are open to the truth we have to be able to hold, at least temporarily, an opposing point of view from the one we're convinced by. At least several times a week while growing up I heard my mother say, "Now, just let me play the Devil's Advocate for a minute." Every time I heard that, a little part of my brain went into courtroom mode, examining a case from another perspective. She was probably speaking to my father but, still, it was good mental training for me.

Learning to play the Devil's Advocate has it's drawbacks but not too many. It is not training for simple judgement and definitely eliminates the possibility of herd mentality. Moo. It is always helpful to at least try to see anything from another's viewpoint.

In a few of my art history practicum classes, we examine artists' changing viewpoints on particular subjects. As you might imagine, except to explain where, when and why it arose, gabbing about one-point perspective drives me almost over the edge. It's is a construct designed to create an illusion. So is having a hard grip on one point of view about the truth. 

On the road to self-realization we're forced to confront certain truths that we hold about ourselves. Some of these truths can be painful, shameful, destructive, worth disowning. In the process of self-examination, playing the Devil's Advocate can be a healing exercise. This is true about myself but that equal and opposite thing is also true.

Lifting up that paradox to the light with love and wonder is a way to develop true compassion. If we can develop compassion for the most challenging parts of ourselves we may begin to feel compassion for others who seem so shameful, destructive, opposite. It wouldn't hurt. Mmm... maybe it could at first. Opening our hearts can be scary and painful but just think of the potential.
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Truth is a many-layered thing. Dense yet filled with light. Just like these leaves.

Truth does not belong to a particular team. Truth does not stand still and neither do we as we grow, change, and maybe acquire some wisdom and compassion along the way.