heavy and bright

Voss, Norway, 2024

I spent the last few days of 2024 curled up by the woodstove with a dozen cousins and niecephews here, and so I’m easing into the new year. Before anything else in 2025 — before the inauguration anxiety, before the taxes come due, before facilitating conflicts and teaching systems change and offering strategy and advising — there is the sacred mundane.

I’m unraveling a pile of yarn as my seven-year-old niece learns to knit beside me; I’m whooping at the twelve-year-old’s win in handball; I’m gossiping with my sister and sister-cousin over the daily mountain of dishes produced by fourteen people; I’m marveling at the northern lights streaked heavy and bright across a sliver of moon.

We too are heavy and bright. Perhaps we all are stumbling into this new year a little bleary-eyed, a little struck with grief and wonder, a little astonished at the weight of the world and the delight of the people in ours.