THE THREAD | A litany of distilled blessings for a new year
From the dregs of my heart, thank you for reading this year.
When I resumed this weekly email in September, I renamed it The Thread. One reason for the name is that I believe there’s so much that connects us, so much that helps hold things together which we simply cannot see, some thread running through it all.
I try to not cling to too many certainties these days, but one thing I know in my bones is that life is one big gift that's been busted up and scattered about us as small blessings amidst the burdens and struggles, everywhere and hourly.
I’ve tried to scatter such blessings into each essay, story, or poem I’ve sent to you each week. For today, I’ve gone back through these letters, culled them for the blessings, and combined them here, one for each week.
I’m hesitant to do this, partly because I think blessings removed from the context of the struggles and burdens is neither accurate nor complete. And yet, my hope is to begin this new year with a distilled sense of all that is still right and good and joyful and possible in our world. So I offer you this . . .
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A LITANY OF DISTILLED BLESSINGS FOR A NEW YEAR
May peace and grace find their skin this coming season.
May you recapture something of yourself, or perhaps be recaptured, captivated by something outside of your own self that you belong to. May you may whisper your way into some better silence, then sing your way back toward this noisy earth.
May you need less. May you learn how to rise daily and dress in garments of petal and feather.
May you know that we are each other’s broken pieces. May we rejoin all that belongs.
May you whisper your own small web of love into being, which becomes part the greater web created by the small whispers of who we are; a web that is not diminished, not at all diminished by all we are not, or have not yet become.
May you know what is possible when one hand joins together in good work alongside others.
May you sigh your heart toward that which you know is never spent.
May you hear a sweet, sweet sound stitching us all together like a trembling constellation.
May you do the hard work of learning and growing and accepting and forgiving.
May you find ways to reach out from this unraveling end of a thread, a thread you can hold and climb and follow back toward whatever it is on the other end that keeps you tethered.
May you find ways to bless whatever the hell it is that’s happening here.
May you feel awe at the gift of it all, so many chances to receive from the abundance and to give thanks, more ways to give than there are stars in the sky.
May you be at a loss for knowing how this story will end.
May you muddle through somehow, and seek the brightest stars, and discover hope sufficient, and find light abundant.
May you find your place in this trembling constellation.
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Image by John Raux
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What I'm currently reading: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Octavia E. Butler's Kindred
What I'm currently listening to: David Gray's Life in Slow Motion, Chris Thile's Bach Trios, Glen Phillips' Winter Pays For Summer, Paul Simon's "American Tune"
What I'm currently watching: The Good Place, Top Gun, Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square
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One final word of thanks for 2020. This weekly letter format has been a great way to keep me writing, and it has also ended up being a helpful nudge to send out my writing for broader publication. Over the past few months my poems and essays have been accepted for upcoming publication in The Sun, North Dakota Quarterly, Commonweal, Zone 3, and Mockingbird -- and early versions of two of these first appeared in this weekly email!
If you want to support my writing through direct patronage, you can do so through PayPal (andrewjohnsonkc@gmail.com) or Venmo (@Andrew-Johnson-45954). Thanks for considering.
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Peace and grace as we lean toward what comes next,
Andrew