Winter Newsletter 2025

Winter Newsletter

January, 2025

Dear friend,

Happy New Year.

Winter is here and in Chinese Medicine it is the time of the Water Element. It is a time of hibernation, rest and renewal before the arrival of Spring.

Although there’s so much darkness at home and around the world as we greet the new year and despair can set in, I find hope once again in the following words from Howard Zinn. I may resend this quote regularly.‍

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“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”   ‍

-Center for Compassionate Living

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These thoughts give me strength and hope.

The light is returning as the days will surely get longer and brighter. We need to keep turning towards it.

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