Wednesday

Touching the Earth Collective—December 2020 Newsletter

Wild Rice Stuffing and Children’s Day

By Irene Woodard

There are certain things that happen this time of year… A big family gathering with the wild rice stuffing that doesn’t go in the bird. The New Yorker has a turkey cartoon. The Children’s Day King and Queen dolls appear on my shrine. The seasons change, and that feels reliable… change.

A month ago in the United States, we were still in waiting mode, for an election and its results. Amongst friends, we wondered how we would be feeling come Thanksgiving, come the holiday season. But we knew one thing: we would pause, no matter the outcome, and celebrate Children’s Day.

Some of us recently received a letter from Wendy Friedman of the Office of Culture and Decorum, regarding this year’s Children’s Day…  “Our major holidays in Shambhala are tied to these seasonal shifts to remind us of our undeniable link to the natural world as human beings living on this planet.” In my thick manila folder labeled Children’s Day, I found a 1988 letter from The Office of Health and Well-Being’s Lamen Kyi Khyap, Mitchell Levy, providing details about what the day is, why we celebrate. Good information.

And this got me thinking…How did we know that we would be celebrating Children’s Day this year, despite all the uncertainty? Here is the good news, because it has become part of the culture of Shambhala. We understand that, come what may, Children’s Day is important. Whether we had a Republican or Democratic elected President in the US, whether there was a vaccine or not for Covid, whatever the cosmic weather pattern, whose pictures were on the shrine… we are a community with a culture.