white at last

We didn't have a white Christmas, but we do have a white Night after Boxing Day. The first snow of the season tonight, very wet, turning to slush. I just went for a sloppy walk under a big umbrella, to take in the profusion of Xmas lights twinkling through the falling snow - very pretty. My own house, with its measly row of LED lights around the eves, looks pretty drab in comparison with some. I'm proud of the wreath on my door, though - a circle of pinecones, decorated with anything I could find to cover the gaps where some cones have fallen off, and a blue Star of David hanging in the middle. A woman asked me yesterday what I celebrate.

"I celebrate everything," I said, "if there's food and music involved."

My daughter went to Ottawa today to visit her grandmother. "I just saw the picture of the baby, and I nearly cried," said Mum over the phone an hour ago. She says she wants to live long enough to hold this child in her arms. And then much longer, says her family.

A very quiet day, not moving much, eating leftovers - how the hell did I end up with that much chocolate? Thank you, my friends. And getting caught up with reading - I have a stack two feet high of magazines, six library books, twelve - yes, count them, twelve - NYT Book Reviews, and much else. My friend Annie gave me a long summary of a conference she organized recently for the Jesuit Forum, entitled "Cry of the Poor, Cry of the Earth: What has spirituality got to do with social justice and ecology?" The conference attempted, really well according to what I've read, to answer that question. One member quoted a priest called Thomas Berry, who described himself as an "ecotheologian or Earth scholar," as saying that we are now living in an age which is the transition from the Technozoic to the Ecozoic era. Love that.

If the planet is to survive, he says, three kinds of "turning" are necessary - cultural or spiritual turning, which means a fundamental transformation of values and priorities; political turning, to an emphasis on 'participation, diversity, sustainability and rational power'; and economic turning, to "an eco-economy which presents new models for extracting resources, producing products and transporting goods and people, with priority on equity and sustainability."

Yes yes yes. If only.

Another friend, hearing about my daughter's pregnancy, said, "I'd hesitate to bring a child into this planet now. We're so @#$#ed." True, we are.

But also, we are not.