Sunsets & Clear Skies

It's funny how a weather pattern can feel so personal and fitting. Late last week, I said goodbye to my grandmother with a sun setting outdoors, staining the sky orange. In the days since, clear skies and bright sunsets have continued. Despite the cold days and nights, when I see the clear sky, I think of that moment, but also the broad challenge of living how I should, how she did, and working to embody the love, inclusion and consistent sweet spirit and kindness she spread.

Nature has a way of allowing us to feel closer to those we love and miss. It's as if the natural surroundings are so beautiful that we believe they must be shared between the two worlds. It feels natural to turn to when there is no clearer answer, it's unexplainable, physically beautiful, and calming. 

Skiing & Skiing

Growing up in New Hampshire brought a healthy taste of every outdoor winter sport.  I feel fortunate for the experiences and instruction and the choice to stay busy and active in the winter certainly speeds up the season.

With the exception of ice skating, I can't say I have any natural ability or strong and loving interest in any of the outdoor winter recreational activities. Usually I get wimpy and chilly and have grown to prefer exercising inside during the winter.

Yet each time I go out to ski or snowshoe, there's always a thankfulness afterwards. For the woods and land and natural beauty that surrounds. And for the ability and knowledge to exercise outdoors, to know how to ski or hike or skate.

I had been meaning to go nordic skiing with the students where I work for the last couple of months and had even had my skis in my car at all times, but the ski team timing was always challenging to my workday or to the daylight left, or I was just super wimpy. Until recently! I threw my wimpiness aside and went out on the trails with one of the students who I had been promising for a long time I would ski with.

As a side note, her skiing talent resembles that of an Olympian. Despite some initial struggles with conquering hills, I found a deep peace and calm while on the trails. The feeling of weightlessness and thrill when steering down each hill brought a freedom I hadn't experienced in a while.

When my eyes began to water because of the cold and the speed I was traveling down the hills, my vision blurred and I remember knowing that all was well. I could only see a sea of white but I knew that there were senses beyond vision to know place and purpose.

The next day, I joined a friend in backcountry skiing. We brought his two large dogs and climbed higher until skiing downhill, just as fast as the previous day, but on much shorter and heavier skis and using a different technique for stopping and turning.

The same experience I had the previous day arrived. I was so happy to be skiing again. I shared both experiences with individuals who were so kindly adamant and willing and interested and committed to showing me the joyous side of winter I had chosen to forget.

More than Marking Genocide

I admire nearly every one of Nicholas Kristof's weekly columns in the New York Times. His column was required reading for a college journalism class I was in a few years ago, and his thought-provoking writing and reporting makes him easily my favorite journalist for exposing issues beyond American borders. He focuses on the plight of women and children around the world while bringing light to issues of poverty and human rights violations in nations seldom covered in mainstream American media.

Over the weekend, the Times published Kristof's latest column, titled "Heroes and Bystanders." Writing of 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the beginning of the Armenian genocide, Kristof wrote of the likely global discussion and remembrance the anniversaries will spark, yet he explored further what the anniversaries should spark:

"...the lesson of history is that the best way to honor past victims of atrocities is to stand up to slaughter today. The most respectful way to honor Jewish, Armenian, or Rwandan victims of genocide is not with a ceremony or a day, but with efforts to reduce mass atrocities currently underway."

Kristof does give credit to humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and more recently in the eastern Congo and for the Yazidi minority in Iraq. All atrocities which have seemingly slowed when pressure was applied by the international community.

Yet that intervention, through awareness, discussion, acknowledgement and an understanding of the truth, will always be needed.

In recent coverage of the decade-long war in the eastern Congo, two quotes have stuck with me:

"Imagine nearly 6 million people dying in the middle of Europe and yet we're silent" (Claver Pashi).

"Millions of Congolese people have lost their life as a result of the crisis and it has warranted almost no sustained and enterprising reporting from the media of the world. It has obtained no great purchase on the popular imagination" (Howard French).

I like Kristof's proposal for 2015. History shouldn't be marked, but knowing today's truth should be.