I had an extraordinary day, I think if I’m not mistaken (and if memory serves) it was the most peaceful and meaningful day of my life, and that would be a wonderful Christmas gift for anyone.

For the very first time in my adult life – maybe my entire life – I did not  get dressed today, we did not leave the farmhouse once, not to see people, do chores, go to a move, go out to eat, have visitors, do art.

We cleaned up after the snow storm and hung around.

We got up early in the midst of a raging snowstorm, I left my nightshirt on, put on my slouch beanie hat and a beautiful red scarf, but on some sweatpants and my mud boots, and Maria and I both went out with shovels and brushes and cleaned up after the storm, which continued almost until noon.

We dug out the cars, shoveled paths, gave the animals extra hay and grain, I raked the snow off of the roof tops, shoveled for more than two hours. Maria and I worked steadily together and we got the place in shape.

I was about to get dressed and shower, and Maria and I looked at one another and we both had the same thought at the same time – why get dressed at all? Why not just have a peaceful and loving day with one another, reading, listening to music.

I was exhausted from all that shoveling and grateful my heart gave me no trouble. We exchanged gifts, I gave Maria a beautiful Georgia O’Keefe collection of her watercolors, and she gave me six alpaca socks to keep my feet warm. They are grateful. I got her a new pair of wild leggings, and a couple of things are still coming.

We sat together and looked through the O’Keefe book. I wanted to pinch myself on being able to have a day like this, it was never possible for me before, not once in my life.

I worked at relaxing. We talked and had lunch and sipped tea. Early this morning, I found a piece online about “walking up to the gift of aliveness,” and I had this revelation that this was exactly what has happened to me in the past few years.

Aliveness is whatever is lacking when the monotony of the routine forces itself to the fore, wrote Sean Stone in an essay in the New York Times. This is what i experienced today.

“But can we say something positive about what aliveness is,?” he asks.”A complete definition of the phenomenon is no doubt beyond our grasp. But there are two distinctive features of its elusiveness that I believe we can identify. The first is that every apparent source of aliveness disappears upon the inspection of it — the ground of aliveness recedes from view. Consider a simple example: the love you feel gazing at your lover’s face. When you are in love, you are alive; the whole world vibrates with significance. It is natural to want to hold onto that aliveness, to make it last forever, to find its source. And where else could it be but in your lover’s face? So you look…”

Love is one path to aliveness, I believe, but not the only one. Creativity is another. So is compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings. So is being authentic and truthful.

Think of the way that life really can become lifeless, Stone writes. I have thought about it.

I lived that way for years. Get up, work, work some more, exercise, watch TV, go to sleep. The days are often indistinguishable from one another. I drifted into routine, ennui and often, despair.  And eventually I was withering away, vanishing into myself.

My life was not just devoid of meaning but determined to stay that way. The life I was living practically shouted that I was no longer alive.

Today, I felt this sense of aliveness, and it brought me to a new place, a place I had never been able to reach. Aliveness is the absence of life, it is the very opposite of a life marked by argument and grievance, money and greed, fear and confusion.

After we had lunch,I put on my new Beats earphones (they are wirelessly connected to my phone) and listened to Bon Iver, Bonnie Raitt, Gillian Welch and Patti Smith (Horses.). I sat in my comfortable chair, dogs on either side of me snoring. I put a blanket over my legs.

I took a nap, we had lunch and then went outside again to finish the work. It is going to be frigid for the next two weeks and the snow would soon turn hard and icy.  I read and I slept, I listened to music and slept some more. Once in awhile, I leaned over and rubbed Maria’s feet, they were also sore from all the shoveling.

I called my daughter in New York and talked for a while, we are coming to see her and my granddaughter Robin the first week in January. I’m bringing a sack of books to read to  her. In the evening, my friend Scott Called to check on me. I call him grandma, he always thinks I’m about to drop dead, or be struck down by disease, and one day, he will be right. My grandmother worried about every hungry child on the earth.

It is good that someone cares if you are alive or dead.

We had to get the snow  work done today before the ground froze, and we did. We work well together, quietly and purposefully.

My gerrymandered snow suit worked well enough, although the clothes were soaked when I came in and I had to change the sweatpants and nightshirt and put them by the fire. I’d be going out again, an again. We had to feed the animals and shovel some more.

I took turns reading two books – “Priestdaddy,”a hilarious memoir about life and its darker passages by Patricia Lockwood, one of the best writers I have encountered in a long time, and “God: A Human History” by Reza Aslan, a meditation on our sometimes self-defeating and destructive need to make God human, like us.

I have to be honest, I think it is Maria who made such a day possible, when you know love life has a different cast to it, things are possible that are not possible before, I think this is a part of “aliveness.” No day is routine when you are in love.

So I had my wonderful wife on the sofa right next to me, also tired, also mellow, also absorbed in a book (Willa Cather, “Death Comes To The Archbishop”).

We were both exhausted from all that digging (I am sore all over) and it is always hard for us to relax, we are both work-obsessed and driven. We turned it all off today, it was a beautifully, even spiritually peaceful day.

I can tell you that I never recall having a day like this, so perfect, so meaningful, so quiet. Fear is a poison, it will not share life with anything.

No news, no e-mail, no distractions. I did take some photos and blog, of course, that is not work for me, but my very life, like breathing.

I felt good about myself. Me and a bunch of other people have joined together to do a lot of good in 2017, and 2018 will be better. I know more, understand the people I am helping better and wish to see the Army Of Good continue in its extraordinary work.

My writing workshop is entering its fifth year (it was supposed to be four weeks) and my quite wonderful students are bringing forth wonderful work – poems, books, paintings, essays. I have to tell people the class is full up, and has been for awhile.

Lots of people are writing me asking how to join the Army Of Good. There are no membership requirements, no fee or paperwork or admissions process. Anyone who wants in is in, anyone who wants out is out. It’s as simple as that. You help when you can, in any way that you can.  Many good things are free.

We do the best we can for as long as we can.

We do not argue about what it means to be good, we just do good. I am so grateful for this day, I have not ever been able to o this, and it was so worth it and meaningful. A truly wonderful Christmas for me, and for Maria.

I appreciate the gift of “aliveness.”