Dec. 22nd Content in Our Gifts

As the great pause slowly turns, we sense that soon the Winter Solstice Season will end. There are just two days left—today and tomorrow in our annual 5 days of reflection. Today we take stock and prepare. In so many ways, we are living in an era of uncertainty and distress. Conflict, worry, and upheaval are all around us, unsettling us and giving rise to great doubts about the future.

So we hold steady for one more day, and rather than turn our eyes to the future, we continue to look inward and consider the strengths we have. Before Solstice Day, we recognized how Elders in our lives nurtured us, gave instruction, and encouraged us to be our best selves. We also celebrated the friends and family who make our daily lives rich and endearing. All of these people call us to our better selves, so today we must ask, “What is my better self? What do I bring to our everyday encounters?”

Carmen Barsody and Ade Kroll celebrate Robert Chambers' and his Fools Mural 2025

Each of us has inner resources—a vision, a patience, moments of insight—that bring calm and connection to our relationships. We also have talents. Some of us sing and make music. Some make art, pottery and pictures, weavings and sculptures. There are people who are talented at making a home and a welcome wherever they are. Wisdom teaches us to know ourselves in these gifts and talents and be content. Each of us is a unique blend of learned skills and natural gifts.

This day of reflection is not a day for false modesty or for boastfulness, rather it is the day to enjoy the gifts we are given. We know adversity is bound to come along, but with this inner strength, born of self-knowledge, we will face our trials with grace.

On this day, we remember that the Sabbath quality of the Five Days of Solstice means that we are not required to produce anything. We are only required to reflect and lightly open our inner doors to creativity. Should the desire to create arise and we do in fact make something, it will arise in the form of authentic agency and the result will not be a product, but rather a gift born of our gifts.

Our work lives teach us that we have little or no value if we are not sought after for our competence, speed, or authority. This Fourth Day of Solstice holds us in Sabbath grace, within the mood of deep creativity.

Knowing our own gifts, we can rest a little more confidently in the work we do and how that work shapes who we are and who we can be. Before focusing energy on learning more, doing more, or achieving more, it is a joy and necessity to know the fullness of your gifts today--the Fourth Day of Winter Solstice, 2025.

In 2012, Artist and Kitsch collector, Kori Lane gave many Fools a bit of Kitsch and a camera. We wandered the neighborhood and created portraits of our Kitsch Companion. We were not asked to make art or produce anything in particular, only to go forth with our Kitsch and see what we discovered. Here, Rubber BirdieDuck discovers her inner birdwatcher at the library. We all have inner talents, great and small.