And here we are again, in the festive season, the one filled with songs like “Silent Night/War is over,” “Do they know it’s Christmas after all,” and others filled with arias of hope and lightness and desire for togetherness – while all around us, the world is rumbling.

It is physically rumbling, as with the earthquakes in China and the Philippines and Iceland, and with volcanoes in similar locations…and it is politically rumbling, with fascism on the rise and the increasing lack of cooperative functioning. And wars, everywhere wars.

It all seems a bit harsh to celebrate the coming of the light when so many people have been denied electricity or food or safety. We shuffle off to Christmas, Hanukkah or Solstice services, feeling all warm and cozy in our middle class “I gave to the Red Cross” smugness, then come home and see on the news intolerable hardship, poverty, and violence. Or step over it on our way home…

Hey, I’m one of those smug safe ones, having donated where I could afford to. I understand the utter feeling of helplessness when looking at the larger problems we are facing. But I am feeling a growing sense of rage, as one after another, our politicians are shown to be corrupt (and yet, get reelected?), as corporations take over the world to enrich one at the expense of millions (and never get stopped), as the environment gets toastier and toastier and yet we don’t want to let those people who will be burned out by our greed move to someplace where they might be able to survive.

There’s got to be a way to stop some of this, slow it down, turn some of the madness back, I shout. Think about the future…or even the present, for vast numbers of us.

I’ve tried, over my life, to protest, write letters, get involved in causes that matter to me, but I always feel as if I am pushing the line only a tiny bit. I don’t have enough money to push things far enough to make a difference in the big scale of things. Violent attacks are frowned upon, and besides I’m too small and unfit to make an impact that way. And it’s not the example I want to make.

So instead I try to focus on the small, good, things. Try to help one or two people, offer my volunteer services where I can, donate to causes in my small way. Use less. Smile more. Be pleasant. Stay out of things that I don’t know enough about to converse intelligently. I do have opinions, increasingly crotchety ones as I get older, but I hope I am learning that I don’t need to share ALL of them with everyone. And hey, I might be wrong about some of them. I can always learn.

I’m trying to err on the side of adding grace to the world.

It’s the only thing that gives me hope, in this rumbling world we are all living in. And we need hope and grace. They are both pretty thin on the ground these days.

So ho, ho, ho, everyone. Light those candles and shut out the night. Bring joy. Laugh. In amongst it all, pray to whoever/whatever you believe in that we will smarten up as a species and stop killing one another, stop trying to crush one another, open our hearts. And then, get to work. We have a lot to do, even if our contribution is only a small flicker. It’s still progress, and together…