A while back The Smithsonian had a Christmas issue that highlighted thirty people that matter. As part of my scatter-shot method for letting people know that I was in the world, I decided to send out Christmas cards to them every year for a few years. This was the message in one of them, and is my best attempt to explain what it will be like to live through the process that we are navigating.

The Eve

Standing in the twilight at the end of day,
Fears and wants surround us, searching our lost way.
Circle we the borders, shutting reality out,
Or open now our hearts, bringing rest to doubt?

EMBRACE the tortured land, the dark, abandoned waters,
Fauna’s angry sons, Flora’s timid daughters.
Conceiving in our minds patterns just and true,
Guide the subtle elements into balances anew.

This has been our calling, since consciousness begot.
The gates of time will open, racing through our thought.
The Eternal formed in instant, joining women and men:
Wisdom that was given, WE shall give again.

So rest your burdensome body. Dawn is evening turned!
Love moves with, in, through us: grace our destiny earns.

That word “grace” is often seen as something given to us by God, but here it suggests an end to our resistance to the love that is tendered to us. In other words, it means “lack of drama.”