BY: MARY SOJOURNER

Algorithim: a finite sequence of well-defined steps for solving a problem. Mary Sojourner offers sage advice for the tired and stressed this holiday season: SLOW DOWN.

Algorithim: a finite sequence of well-defined steps for solving a problem.

After al Khwarizmi (the [man] of Khwarizm), a nickname of the 9th century Persian astronomer and mathematician Abu Jafar Muhammand ibn Musa, who authored many texts on arithmetic and algebra....in Baghdad.

"There is no mystery waiting for the asking.
No one can bring in the harvest alone.
The hour is late and it demands hard questions.
It's gonna take a fierce love
To get us home before the sun goes down."
- Fierce Love, song by Charlie Murphy

We tilt fiercely toward Winter Solstice. December 21st is the shortest day and longest night. It is not a mystery. It is the late hour filled with hard questions.

The longest night of the year, and we humans are hovering on the edge of a night longer than any we have known. A night marked not so much by darkness, as by absence. Bees, frogs, birds. Kansas without sunflowers. Vermont without maple trees. Polar bears without ice.

Humans without a finite sequence of well-defined steps for solving the problem.

“What can we do?”

I hear that question at every reading I give, in the writing circles I teach. A woman in our class at the Hassayampa Institute for Creative Writing in Prescott last July spoke for many of us: “I tried to sit in the town square this afternoon and I had to leave. Even in the shade, the heat was unbearable. It wasn’t this way five years ago.” She looked at me. I stayed quiet. “I know, I know,” she said, “we can’t go on living the way we are. My friends and I talk about it all the time. But I don’t see all but a few of us making big changes in our consumer habits. What are we going to do?”

The room was quiet. Our circle was made up of bright, passionate women and men who believe in the power of the written word.  Not one of us said, “We have to write to educate people.” Not one of us said, “We need to write to break our own hearts.” Not one of us said, “Let’s all take an hour and write about this, then commit to giving up something we know we don’t need.” We didn’t rush into anything that would have briefly relieved the harshness of our hard questions. We were NOT ALONE in the ten minutes of silence that seemed to last forever.

Finally, a young guy spoke. “I wanted to say something, fill the space, figure out something we could do NOW to help. But, while I was quiet with all of you, I realized I almost never slow down. Almost never.”

Algorithim: Clearly defined. First Step: SLOW DOWN.

Light shrinks. Earth’s rhythm slows. Wise animals go to ground. And, everywhere you look, there are messages to get busy, busier, busiest. The perfect X-mas tree. The perfect menorah. The perfect holiday dinners, parties, snacks, cookiesboozeediblegifts - the perfect plan to not gain weight over the holidays. The perfect hand-made gifts. The perfect hand-made decorations.  $50,000 worth of X-mas lights on a Scottsdale real estate office; six people taking five days to decorate the armory-sized building.

Slow down. Sit in a mall and watch your neighbors race in to shop. Watch for laughter. Watch for tenderness. Watch for joy. Join the crowd, but walk slower than the others. Slow your breath. Wait in line and watch. When the frazzled sales clerk apologizes for keeping you waiting, say, “It’s o.k.” Mean it.

Find the places where your local artists offer their gifts. As you watch light play on a delicate silver bracelet or a porcelain bowl, know that you are in the presence of slow work, the gift that is, indeed perfect, the gift that is a cairn on the long way to our greater home.

Mary Sojourner writes. She is the author of the memoir Solace: rituals of loss and desire; Delicate (short stories); the essay collection Bonelight: ruin and grace in the New Southwest - and more. The last few years have left her with the skeleton and carapace of who she thought she was. It is a good place to begin, though she hated every second of the abrasion that brought her to this future. Ask a high-heeled boy. You can find her at her new blog, Wordsmithing, and her serialized novel Scylla can be found at Mary Sojourner.