Well, it’s Christmas Eve!
Whether you celebrate or not, I hope this day finds you in a grounded place of peace and reflection, though if you’re frayed and utterly exhausted right now, I see you. It’s all allowed. As much as I love the traditions and reflections and cookies (so many cookies) that this season brings, I’m always relieved when we’re on the other side of it. Both, both.
Last week, I posted a note about something my daughter said to me that, at the time of this publication, has over sixteen thousand likes (!!), and has brought in heaps of new subscribers. If you’re one of them, I’m so happy to have you here (and I’m a little gob-smacked, to be honest).
Here’s the infamous little blurb itself, which I tapped out on my phone while eating grapenuts at the counter with one sock on:
This morning, I asked my six-year-old how she slept, and she said, “Like an uninterrupted river, mama.”
So anyway, I’m just going to hand over my Substack to her. You’re in good hands.
The reason that I mention this is because I would like you all to feel very envious of this accomplishment. I’m a notes genius, obviously. ;)
The OTHER reason that I bring it up is because I’m endlessly fascinated by what feels true to us, and why, and how universal that spark of recognition is. This metaphor, straight from the sleepy, tangled head of my magical wonder-kid, came right through her, effortlessly, which surprised me and also, somehow, did not. Isn’t that what we’re after, as writers, as students, as humans on this planet— the profound channeling of a truth that rushes in, lighting up our inner cosmos? The thing that bubbles up and makes us feel like we’re riding a wave in the sweet spot? It’s a little bit of magic, really, but we also need to paddle out there and be ready for it, our attention fixed on the swell and the wind and the current. I think kids catch this proverbial wave with such ease because they’re not overthinking it— they ride with intuition over logic, their minds bowing to their hearts. If our complex brain is akin to a waterwheel, this magic juice is the brook beyond it, making it spin. And most kids I know have brooks that flow far more freely than ours do. We have so much to learn from them. We have so much to remember.
Also, I think this metaphor resonated with so many people because we are all so bone weary, and we’re longing for the kind of rest that just flows. Most of us have to contend with boulders and dams and rapids and hairpin turns when we sleep— we can’t even remember a night where we opened our eyes and found ourselves looking at the same view we fell asleep to, one now bathed in light instead of shadow, wondering how the sun could have possibly risen when the moon was just winking at us. Oh, how I wish that for every one of us, especially right now, in this deeply tumultuous world we’re living in.
Anyway, you’ll undoubtedly notice that I used her metaphor (albeit in a slightly different context) in the poem I’m sharing this week, just for fun. Full credit goes to one Finley Aurora Lamb, poet laurate of my heart. ❤
If you’re following along, this is the second Festivus poem I shared at the reading I participated in earlier this month— here is the other one if you missed it.
Christmas is a complicated season for a lot of us— I know it is for me, as I sort through what is real and what is not, what to hold onto and what to release— but my heart is ever open to the miraculous, and I’m so grateful for that. And for those of you who do not celebrate this particular holiday, I hope there is still something universal to be tapped into, something that feels true to your good heart.
Merry Everything,
Kendall
Undivided
The Christmas story is such
a strange and marvelous tale:
a virgin,
a manger,
a bright star guiding
mages from the east, bearing gifts.
Probably most of it is a myth—
factually untrue, that is—
but also, the truest thing that we can know:
incarnation,
birth pains,
a light in the darkness
guiding us, emptyhanded, through the night.
In the Gospel of Thomas,
(a work deemed too dangerous
by small and fearful men
to be sealed into the Biblical canon)
Christ says, “I am the one,
who comes from what is undivided.”1
Perhaps this, then, is the Christmas story:
the telling of a boy who knew
exactly where he came from,
who returned to remind our small
and fearful hearts,
of the uninterrupted river
between here and there.
Perhaps we scream at birth
because we’re homesick,
and this story reassures us
that we never really left,
we’re only dreaming in this fleeting flesh
to briefly cast our light and shadow
upon this hallowed land.
Perhaps we remember
every time we take our cleaved hearts
and press them to the pulse
of that which is undivided—
born into this world
to stitch it back together again,
one shimmering thread at a time.
This quote is a translation of Thomas 61 from Elaine Pagel’s book titled, “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.” I’ve long been a fan of Elaine Pagel’s work, and I came across this line in an essay by Meggan Watterson called What is Undivided. Meggan is a brilliant feminist theologian who I have just recently been introduced to, and her essay inspired this poem. Definitely go check her out if you’re so inclined— I’ve been devouring her work lately, and it’s been lighting me up.
I am always amazed at how children teach us so much about life, and remembering who we are. “We have so much to learn from them. We have so much to remember. … Perhaps we scream at birth because we’re homesick.” I’ve been sitting with thoughts this season of how we must go back to our roots - to our core - like the trees in winter. To remember our source, our truth. May we all be like babes as one season closes and another opens, shouting out until we find our way back home. Thank you for your beautiful reflections, as always, Kendall. I imagine your substack is in the best hands with you 💖.
Kendall, here is what rises in me as I sit with your poem and the way your words land inside my day. I follow the threads you open, and I move through each layer with my own life humming underneath it. I already knew your river-note from last week, and I watched how people gathered around it. Something in us leans toward that kind of ease, the way water leans toward gravity. I felt this ache for rest, and at the same time a recognition of how much turbulence lives inside me this season. Christmas carries a long sediment of memory for me, and this year everything stirs at once.I move through these rooms and feel the endings in their corners. This is my final Christmas in a place that shaped me for decades, and I feel the echo of that truth in my chest. I keep sensing the threshold. I sense my body remembering a lifetime of loneliness, and the ways I tried to run from it earlier in my life. Your poem touches that memory gently. It reminds me of my canyon explorations and this slow rewilding I began in 2021, a return to something unconditioned inside me. Light entered the room as I am writing this. Actual light. The clouds thinned for a moment, and the living room shifted from its winter dimness into a kind of soft radiance. It arrived as if the day wanted to underline what your poem evokes: everything alive moves in currents, everything breathes in cycles. Shadows appear because something shines. Light appears because something deep and fertile surrounds it. I experience myself exactly in that in-between right now. Darkness carries my memories, and light carries my hope for the year ahead. I sense how impermanent the whole thing is, every hour a small rearrangement of weather and emotion. Water in all its forms keeps teaching me something: the flow shifts, the ground moves, the next shape arrives when it is ready.
Your poem nudges me toward an older truth I had not touched for a while. The undivided source you write about echoes through my own story. It reminds me that every fracture I lived through grew from a longing for belonging, and every experience of exclusion shaped my understanding of dignity. I felt that very clearly while reading your lines about birth and remembering.
Christmas arrives as a solitary experience for me this year. A chosen presence, not an illness-imposed one. I still feel the desire for company. I sense how much I would have cherished one last familiar Christmas before these rooms become guest rooms for me, before the house becomes a place I visit rather than inhabit. This is a gentle grief, and it moves freely.
Your poem opened a doorway into all of this. And I cherish you for offering it with such clarity and curiosity. Thank you for the river, and for the way your words allowed everything in me to rise at once.
Love and Merry Everything to you and your loved ones Kendall, xo Jay