New Year's Greeting, 2011

Happy New Year, 2011

Dearest Friends,

Early December, 2010. I’ve been living in Mexico City for the better part of Fall, working with the city’s only Quaker community. I’ve been reading, slowly, a Quaker meditation entitled Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity, as well as the poetry of William Blake.

The days are magnificent—warm, sunny, cloudless, and blue. Christmas has been emerging all around since mid-November. It’s a magical time. A couple of times each week I make my way to the city’s largest park, Chapultepec, and then slip into a tiny, hidden corner of the park that I’ve come to call el rincon mas cerca al cielo—the corner closest to heaven.

It’s mid morning and there are only three of us here this warm, December day. The caretaker always plays music; this morning it’s soft, moody and New Age. I lay on my back on a park bench, and look up at the canopy of trees above me. It’s still autumn here and each time there’s a slight rustle of wind, leaves rain down.

The music, the leaves and the brilliant, quiet sunshine have set the mood. It’s very still. For no particular reason, I turn my body and face an elm tree. All of a sudden, I spot a black chameleon sliding down the broad trunk. He spots me, not quite four feet away, and the two of us stare at each other for almost half an hour. Butterflies flutter around the base of the tree. The ground is covered in browns and yellows. This is one of those “easy to live in the moment” moments.

I am face to face with Blake, and one of the meditations I’d read the night before. I realize, in this small moment of time, that I am passing through glory, a glory of which others in the park are probably not aware. Blake’s poem, Auguries of Innocence, runs through my mind:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

This moment is not an accident. In the form of a chameleon, I am witness to the glorious, mysterious world of God’s creation; in the butterflies surrounding the elm, I catch a glimpse of heaven. For this brief moment, I get to hold infinity in the palm of my hand. Had I not been reading Blake, nor read the Quaker meditation the night before, I’d probably not be experiencing this at this level.

This is an enormous gift, and I want to share the meditation with you at this early start to 2011.

“Glory surrounds us from birth. It encircles us as we draw air for our first tentative wail, and unfolds us as we empty our lungs for the last time. And in between those two breaths , we dwell in the midst of this glory: in the joys and struggles of nurturing personal relationships, the wisdom and suffering of aging, the detachment of death, the heartbreak of grief. And through it all we are sustained by keeping our eyes wide open to the wonder that is always around us.

The opportunity before us in every moment is to choose to live awakened lives—as children of awe, truly alive in the midst of the simple grandeur that surrounds our days. The art of plain living is to engage life as a process of opening our hearts and maintaining a vigilant awareness of the streams of glory encircling our lives.”
My wish for you this year is that you see the streams of glory encircling your life, that you live life awakened, and that your heart be open to experience the simple wonder that surrounds our days.

On another note, it’s been four years since my last Christmas form letter.

FOUR YEARS! That letter was written my first year of retirement when I was still struggling with the idea that retirement was little more than the “black hole of nothing.” HAH! That’s not been the case.

Since then I’ve worked as a long term Spanish teacher for more than a full school year, spent two winters living and traveling in South America (Chile top to bottom, a cruise from Santiago to Buenos Aires around Cape Horn, several months living in Buenos Aires, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru), and have made multiple trips to Mexico and am now living, off and on, in Mexico City, working with La Casa de los Amigos (www.casadelosamigos.org), organizing and restructuring their 6,000 volume library. I happily live, off and on, in Coyoacán, a great neighborhood ten Metro stops from the job.

Steve continues to work (I’ll be 70! when he can retire); his parents continue to live near us, and more and more our lives intersect—in good ways. Steve will return to Mexico City with me in February and, together, we’ll take a close look at real estate.

My mother’s death, on April 9th, unleashed, as those of you who’ve gone through this, a torrent of unexpected emotions. Through her final weeks, I was surrounded and supported in an extraordinary circle of love. The blessings, through all this, outweighed the difficulties. I felt blessed to have such a wonderful group of friends, and to see, as Blake later says in the same poem:

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

I am a fortunate man!

It’s easy to see the years as complex and problematic, focusing on what is wrong instead of what is right. I was blessed to read the meditation when I did, and then to experience such gentle glory in the park that day. Since then, I’ve been able to see glory in many of the small things in life. I hope you do, too.

For those of you so inclined, you can follow my life and travels in my blog: http://danladue.blogspot.com.

My warmest greetings for a wonderful new year ahead. May it be full of blessings and all good things.

Happy New Year!

Dan