Gifts of Story and Experience
Standing under a magnificent ceiling made of Dale Chihuly’s blown glass, I feel reverence rivaling what I once felt in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. The presence of spirit is expressed so vibrantly through glass that I’m awed into silence.
My reverence isn’t only for the artistic beauty, nor for any particular path of spirit informing it. It’s for layers upon layers of story and experience within and beyond the brilliant glass, which have melted like hot sand to become all we create and are.
Within the wild colors, I see the life stories of generations of glassblowers who pioneered the techniques Chihuly has advanced, to take glass mastery into new realms. I see the stories of his contemporaries who’ve joined him in daring creative advance. I sense all the inspiration and hard discipline that coalesced into their collective choice to pursue an artistic path, without guarantee of reward. I feel all of our connection to the creative spirit rippling out through artists, musicians, writers, and creative souls within every walk of life—including disciplines of service and business not often considered creative. I feel the miracles of sand and glass themselves; the layers of nature that have made life possible.
The winter holidays offer a traditional time to slow down and share our stories. In earlier eras, the harvest was in, no electric light existed to dispel the darkness, no urgent survival work need interrupt our most vital task of all: to finally slow down, gather around the fire to trade our tales, and celebrate the simple miracle of being alive.
Sharing fireside stories is a tradition beyond religion. It’s symbiotic with traditional holidays; in conflict with none. We always have an opportunity to appreciate and celebrate the shared miracle of being alive.
Gratitude can be a path as challenging to follow as art, especially in tough times. Yet many of us have lived the miracle that gratitude can grow out of grief. We’ve experienced how celebration can not only follow difficulty, but deepen because of it. We learn our familial closeness to the lotus blooming out of the mud.
As the leading edge of this new winter arrives, Chihuly’s brilliant glass reflects to me how little has changed. The most precious gifts we give each other at the holidays can still be gifts of story and experience. In a cluttered and hurried time, the best love we can give often comes in the form of slow presence. What gift could be more precious in a world that claims to lack time, despite its eternal abundance?
That is why my beloved and I are standing under this ceiling of glass, having chosen to forsake buying holiday gifts for experiencing them. To find and appreciate beauty, to explore another small corner of the vast world together: this is what she and I have chosen to give and receive. Our giving seamlessly becomes receiving.
Home again, we now stand with you in a community of celebration around a digital fire. I listen for your stories. How have you found or become that lotus, transformed your grief into gratitude? What simple miracles have you found to celebrate, when the wider world’s turbulence has felt the most threatening? If you care to share, I’m here to listen.
My silent soundtrack as I write is from the cellist playing in Sarajevo’s public square during the war there. I feel the urgency of being some parallel version of that wartime cellist. Of insistently adding peaceful beauty to this time, to better balance its violence. There’s an orchestra we need to become and remain.
We’ll never tell next year’s stories if we don’t live them first. Daily life is the story we’ll tell again for another year ahead. First it is time to pause, to listen, to gather around the fire and celebrate that we are still here, in a moment as beautiful and fragile as glass.