Let's Make it Beautiful

Oops, I seem to have accidentally taken December off of Substack! I’m back. Blessings on your 2026, friends.

sunrise a few days ago, as seen from the couch

January 6, 2026

1. This morning, after meditation, I came downstairs, made a coffee, and sat on the couch facing east to watch the sunrise, coffee in hand, as I do most mornings. Today, my beloved joined me. After several minutes in silence, I said, “I think of this every morning…” and Carl knew I was referring to Mary’s poem, The Buddha’s Last Instruction, and we sat there watching the sky lightening through dark winter branches, over the dark, hulking bodies of the Wasatch Mountains, marinating in the vibes of the poem we know so well, and thinking silently, as the sky grew gradually lighter, what it means to “make of yourself a light,” which was Mary’s way of repeating the Buddha’s last instruction. And I felt the lightening. And it occurred to me: light doesn’t fix things. Light isn’t aggressive, (at least nice light that is not those awful LEDs or fluorescent lights!) Light warms. Light illuminates what is. As it is. It coaxes growth. And I wonder - what would it be like on this very day to make of ourselves a light?

2. I peeked at the news this morning. Ugh. I find myself wondering how it could be possible that the news is more horrifying every single day, yet for many months now, it is. It doesn’t work for me to stick my head in the sand. I want to pay attention. I fear peace is unraveling. I fear the very unwell people in charge are just getting started with their bull in the China shop rampage. And it’s just so sad. It doesn’t need to be this way. I carry my practice with me from the cushion into my day: Breathing in what is. Breathing out warm-hearted well-wishing to all of it. To my own worried heart. As it is. As Barry Lopez said, to embrace, fearlessly, the burning world. To be honest, something in me takes umbrage with the word fearlessly, because in my heart, it is more accurate to say I’m embracing the fear as well, which I don’t think makes me fearless, but perhaps allows me to be more courageous, as in more wholehearted, including the fear. I love remembering to relax into that vast heart that can include the fear, the hope, the love, the outrage, the wonder, the tenderness, the news, the whole. And as Mary and the Buddha say, endeavoring to be a light, breathing out blessings. I remember Hafiz: Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions. Bringing love and acceptance to the fear shifts the fear.

3. I read a lovely piece by a Substack writer I love to read, all about how the grief of 2025 made her much more creative, pouring into writing and creating with all that angst. I wondered, was I creative? For sure, I poured energy into my garden. More seeds. More bulbs. More plants. Always seeding more beauty for the future. I dried and saved a lot of herbs and seeds. I canned and froze and shared a lot of fresh produce. I poured into making food, from scratch, almost every day. Beautiful, nourishing, delightful food to share with my near and dear ones. I poured creativity into my work, into creating context and culture and community for soulful connection, learning, and practice. I guess this may become an ongoing question for us: What to do with the angst and grief that is here today? Today, as we remember the horrors of January 6th five years ago, and the even more horrifying fact that that guy is the president… A president who just plucked the president of another country from his bed and fancies himself taking over their country. What century are we in? The norms he is breaking will have repercussions that will haunt us all for years. So how do we turn this angst and outrage into life-giving beauty? I’ll be living into that question day by day. I don’t know what to say about the horror that is this administration, but fortunately, Rebecca Solnit does, and damn, she says it so well. Her writing is just so good.

road tripping through beautiful Utah

4. In the midst of the shitshow, I dare to declare that I want to enjoy my life. I want this for you, too. Whatever your identity, income level, skin color, age, gender, location on the planet. We have this precious, temporary life, and it’s passing. I wholeheartedly declare that we get to enjoy it, to the best of our ability, even with whatever else is awful. I want to savor the sounds of my son playing guitar with my beloved, watching my teen so lit up by his own expanding skills as he’s picking and strumming and they’re sounding so good, understanding how harmonies happen. I want to move slowly enough to enter the whole world of pleasure in a sip of hot coffee as I watch the sunrise with my one true. I see how easily this sweet neighborhood I love could be turned to rubble, like many neighborhoods we see in the news, yet today, it is beautiful, intact, full of birdsong and sunshine. And I want to savor the hell out of this temporary truth. I want to sit with my altars, one at a time, and savor the worlds that open inside and around me when I do. I want to be ever more resistant to the loud voices of undeveloped, self-righteous people who discharge their pain by yelling at others on the internet. I swear, in 2026, I will wholeheartedly reject that aggressive, one-right-way thinking and the internet yellers. I’m done listening. I dare to enjoy filling the bird feeder as an act of love in the midst of it all. I dare to pull out the watercolor paints and make mediocre art. I dare to sit still and hold my beloved’s hand as we watch the morning sky turn from dark to light and to say in this moment, this is enough. No one gets to be on my back. I dare to encourage my son, (my hetero, cisgendered, white-skinned son), to not only be kind and to dismantle and confront aggression and domination when he encounters it, (and he is and he does), but to fully delight in his one precious life, right now, today, even with the abundance of bad news. I hope he gets full pleasure in the joy of learning to play guitar. I hope he is all in with his beloved and their young love. I hope he gets to fully delight in the pleasure of shooting hoops in our leaf-littered backyard, in stroking the kitty, in savoring a meal together at our long table. I want this for all of us. In the midst of the mess and the collapse - to savor the plenitude of gifts that are here in this one precious life.

5. “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” - Audre Lorde

6. The inner alarm bells are so numerous and going off with such volume in my body about AI. I sincerely wish we could have the choice to opt in (or opt out of it at the very least!), rather than having it suddenly run rampant everywhere, while it consumes so much energy and water, and creates so much pollution and heat. Could we at least opt out occasionally?! The speed of this unhinged “progress?” It leaves me breathless. And no one is asking me. Is this a good idea? Hell no, in a million billion cases, it’s not. So let’s just keep speeding toward the cliff edge as quickly as possible, shall we!!? says modern civilization. My whole soul protests. I listened to a public radio program that said basically, there’s no way to tell anymore if what we see online is real. The photos, the videos. No way to know. Perhaps the most alarming thing to me is that we have no ethics as a foundation underneath any of this. And wouldn’t it be different if we did? A basic set of agreed-upon principles, decencies, manners, ethics, norms, restraints, that could make the existence of such a thing more likely to tip the scales toward benefit rather than harm? Instead, we have people with immature egos who are not dedicated to any well-being beyond their own greed. Where is the commitment to honesty, truth, beauty, or respect for life? Toward future generations? Carl and I talked about it recently, and I shook my head and said, “Old Poets of China, baby. Old Poets of China.” And he nodded. And in case you don’t know that poem, here it is, so you too can say to yourself, “Old Poets of China, baby,” and shake your head along with me. Maybe we can meet up after we disappear into the mist.

7. What would we do without humor? I just enjoyed rereading a piece I wrote a few years back on just this topic. Because hot damn, we better laugh so we don’t collapse under the weight of it all. Thank all the gods for humor.

8. Here, in northern Utah, we’re in a winter that hasn’t really started being winter yet, though the light is already stretching a wee bit earlier into the morning, and a wee bit later into the evening. We have rain instead of snow. Spring blooms came in November. Under the twinkle-lighted trees on South Temple Street, hundreds of white pansies are in bloom instead of drifts of snow. It’s weird. It’s pleasant walking weather. It’s giving us cleaner air than we often have in the winter, without the inversion. However, it’s not right, and my body knows it. So do the trees, so do the strawberry plants blooming out of season, so do the birds and the insects. I’m over here just making room on the vast lap of compassion for it all – the enjoyment of the pleasant weather, the missing of the snow, and the existential concern about weather patterns and their implications, and the simple truth of this beautiful day. I’m sending care to all of these layers, as they are. As it is.

9. Praise the poets. Praise my teachers. Praise the roses from Trader Joe’s that give me so much joy for less than ten bucks. Praise winter oranges and the aromatherapeutic spray when I peel one. Praise pasta. Praise friends who stay in touch. Praise everyone who cares about future generations on planet Earth, and not only the humans. Praise the seeds, sitting in their little packets, full of big dreams for the future. Praise my gorgeous cat who truly knows how to lounge. Praise good books. Praise a simple roast chicken, an ultimate comfort food. Praise good salt, and green tea, and good oily coffee beans. Praise feather pillows and clean sheets and grief shared honestly. Praise the capacity to shed skins again and again and again, growing more and more real, like the velveteen rabbit. Praise mountains. Praise fireplaces and fire pits and praise staring into flickering emberglow, and praise the kinds of conversations that emerge by a sacred fire. Praise the plenitude of good news happening every day, in so many places worldwide, that will never be reported but it no less true or essential. Praise the many griefling people walking around with their hearts as open wounds, and yet they somehow carry on, with kindness. Praise.

a sacred New Year’s Eve fire in Boulder, Utah, with beloved Soul Family

10. A little rant on basic manners: Could we all just please take joy and delight in honoring our sources? And if we quote someone, or use their photo, or say words that come out of their mouth, verbatim, could we please name them, with gratitude? There’s a not infrequent occurance of heartbreak for me to see my words and my work put out in the world in such a way that I feel stepped over, deleted, ignored. Perhaps in part it’s because I personally take such delight in honoring my teachers and the excellent writers and sharing words that have been said so well by someone else. Of course I want to give them credit! You never know the work behind and underneath something - even a sentence. The decades that go into someone’s capacity to turn a phrase! It doesn’t come from nowhere. Except when someone picks it up, repeats it, reposts it, and acts like it just emerged spontaenously. “The river that forgets its source will soon dry up,” is a potent African proverb, and though I know it’s true, it hurts me no less when I see work and words going unattributed. These basic manners are not hard. It can be quite joyful to say, “I learned this from this person, and I’m grateful.” Ok. Rant over. Heart still achey.

11. I loved reading this piece so much. I’ve been reading him for decades and though he writes as an astrologer, he’s also just an excellent writer and human being.

And this poem by dear friend, Lebanese-American poet Moudi Sbeity, is a balm. As is all of his work.

Here’s an excerpt from a gorgeous new book I’m loving.

12. Right now there are elephants delighted as they spray water on their hot backs. Right now there are whales singing in the deep waters. Right now there are bees dancing in their hives. Right now there are children with senses wide open, taking in this world with wonder. Right now there are people falling in love. Right now there are raptors riding air currents and soaring above everything. Right now there are underground bulbs dreaming of the flowers they’ll send up above ground in a few months. Right now there are trees invisibly growing new rings. Right now there are people knitting, people weaving, people singing, people sharing, people helping others, people keeping the world going. Right now there are stars shining their light through unfathomable light years of distance to reach us when we look up in the dark. Right now there are so many things that are not wrong. May we remember to notice, to participate with them, and to praise. Right now there are so many beautiful beings and sacred lands and good books and invisible energies and benevolent spirits and supportive communities we can collaborate with, no matter what else is going on. How miraculous. What a strange and wondrous time to be alive!

Cheers to making room for it all: The heartbreak. The exhaustion. The hope. The joy. The beauty. The little things. The rising up (and laying down) in all the ways that feel right to your soul. Cheers to not forcing or expecting others to be how and where we are, but honoring their own journey. Cheers to the emerging, the changing, the skin shedding, and the (as my dear friend Alexandre says) moving as quickly as possible in the direction soul is calling us. May it be so.

I’m sending rose petal confetti, big courage, and all blessings for an auspicious 2026. Let’s make it beautiful.