Advent means to come into being. I really really love Holly Days. My Santa of a dad gave me this deep personal connection to Christmas, but I also really really dislike so much of the other horribly obsolete abrahamic philosophy being dragged into the future by the religious institutions that are so often claimed to be … More Advent

The year, and Holly Days are over. The last two principles, closing out the Days of Awesomeness trinity, are Forgiveness and Redemption. This year, the trump phenomenon has ended up as the subject of most of my Holly Days musings on values and healing the world. I view my duty and purpose, as a thinking being, to be … More Forgiveness and Redemption

These last three are the Days of Awesomeness. Atonement means a bit more than just a sorry, though that is certainly a start. Really taking responsibility for our errors, owning them and trying to make it right, however we can, is the essence of it, and once again, one of the keys to healing. Too often, … More Atonement

Finishing this trinity is Courage. A part of me, and probably of most folks at one time or another, just recoils from the world, imagining a billion dangerous challenges, and making me want to pull the covers over my head and hide in bed. It is so easy to imagine that every other person is a threat, … More Courage

It is almost sacrilegious to co-opt Love as a trope for our little effort at a revisionist ritual. Love is a theme of nearly every pop song and novel, the glue that holds our fractured community of humanity together, and even claimed to be synonymous with god in some quarters. But I generally reject the concept of sacredness in … More Love

Today, over the hump, we shift gears from the sparkle of the Christmas side, and into New Years side. New Year celebrations tend to include reflective restarts. http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-psychological-research-that-helps-explain-the-election Truth is perhaps the most important, and sadly most under siege, value in these times. Our whole nervous system has evolved to serve one function, discover truth. All our … More TRUTH

Finishing the sharing trinity is gratitude. The old saw: count your blessings, is nice, but it’s hard to get it to really take emotionally. We here in the USA, reading webpages, grousing on facebook or reddit, are so extraordinarily lucky to be in this place and time, that it’s hard for us to even grasp the … More Gratitude

Here on the hinge of the holidays, Christmas Day: the big dog, plus scrappy little hanukah this year, both gift-reinforced holidays, we consider Generosity. For me here with my tiny G-Dot and her two smart and sassy cousins, I got to relive the old days of toy extravaganza Gretchen and I so loved when our kids … More Generosity

The first day of the second trinity of Holly Days is Hope. Hard to feel that right now; ironic that it was Obama’s catchword, and that so many of us feel it leaving along with him. But there is always hope, no matter how dark things seem, and they may, in expectation, feel a lot … More Hope

The first Holly Day is Unity. How ironic is that in America at the end of 2016? Our bubbles seem to be drifting further and further apart. As Hannah Arendt and others observed, some of what allowed the Nazis to take over Germany was liberals trying too hard to be accommodating to an ideology they … More Unity