How can I feel so warm Here in the dead center of January? I can Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is The only life I have. ~James Wright from “A Winter Daybreak above Vence”
to the northwestto the north
To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before. Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day. ~A.E. Houseman from “How Clear, How Lovely Bright”
to the northeastto the eastto the southeast
It was like a church to me. I entered it on soft foot, Breath held like a cap in the hand. It was quiet. What God there was made himself felt, Not listened to, in clean colours That brought a moistening of the eye, In a movement of the wind over grass. There were no prayers said. But stillness Of the heart’s passions — that was praise Enough; and the mind’s cession Of its kingdom. I walked on, Simple and poor, while the air crumbled And broke on me generously as bread. ~R.S. Thomas “The Moor”
to the southto the southwest
So welcome in the dead center of January: a surround-sunset experience on our farm – 360 degrees of evolving color and patterns, streaks and swirls, gradation and gradual decline.
All is silent. No bird song, no wind, no spoken prayer. Yet communion takes place with the air breaking and feeding me like manna from heaven.
Witnessing the light bleeding out all around me:
I will squander my days no more, treasuring each as sheer gift. I will seek to serve my God, church, family, friends, and community. I will be warmed on this chilly winter day even as it descends to darkness, knowing light and hope will return.
to the westto the westto the west
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The house had gone to bring again To the midnight sky a sunset glow. Now the chimney was all of the house that stood, Like a pistil after the petals go.
The barn opposed across the way, That would have joined the house in flame Had it been the will of the wind, was left To bear forsaken the place’s name.
No more it opened with all one end For teams that came by the stony road To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs And brush the mow with the summer load.
The birds that came to it through the air At broken windows flew out and in, Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh From too much dwelling on what has been.
Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf, And the aged elm, though touched with fire; And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm: And the fence post carried a strand of wire.
For them there was really nothing sad. But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept, One had to be versed in country things Not to believe the phoebes wept. ~Robert Frost “The Need of Being Versed in Country Things”
Photo of Aaron Janicki haying with his Oberlander team in Skagit County – courtesy of Tayler RaeThe field of my childhood farm (1954-59) with the red barn visible on the right. The house was destroyed by fire in the mid-60s but the barn was sparedphoto by Harry Rodenberger
My family sold our first farm in East Stanwood, Washington, when my father took a job working for the state in Olympia, moving to supervising high school agriculture teachers rather than being an ag teacher himself.
It was a difficult transition for us all: we moved to a smaller home and a few acres, selling the large two story house, a huge hay barn and chicken coop as well as fields and a woods where our dairy cows had grazed.
Only a few years later, that old farmhouse burned down but the rest of the buildings were spared. It passed through a few hands and when we had occasion to drive by, we were dismayed to see how nature was taking over the place. The barn still stood but unused it was weathering and withering. Windows were broken, birds flew in and out, the former flower garden had grown wild and unruly.
This was the place I was conceived, where I learned to walk and talk, developing a love for wandering in the fields among the farm animals we depended upon. I remember as a child of four sitting at the kitchen table looking out the window at the sunrise rising over the woods and making the misty fields turn golden.
This land returned to its essence before the ground was ever plowed or buildings were constructed. It no longer belonged to our family (as if it ever did) but it forever belongs to our memories.
I am overly prone to nostalgia, dwelling more on what has been than what is now or what I hope is to come. It is easy to weep over the losses when time and circumstances reap something unrecognizable.
I may weep, but nature does not. The sun continues to rise over the fields, the birds continue to build nests, the lilacs grow taller with outrageous blooms, and each day ends with a promise of another to come.
So I must dwell on what lies ahead, not what has perished in the ashes.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
Tell me, where is the road I can call my own That I left, that I lost So long ago? All these years I have wandered Oh, when will I know There’s a way, there’s a road That will lead me home After wind, after rain When the dark is done As I wake from a dream In the gold of day Through the air there’s a calling From far away There’s a voice I can hear That will lead me home Rise up, follow me Come away, is the call With the love in your heart As the only song There is no such beauty As where you belong Rise up, follow me I will lead you home
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Now, newborn, in wide-eyed wonder he gazes up at his creation. His hand that hurled the world holds tight his mother’s finger. Holy light spills across her face and she weeps silent wondering tears to know she holds the One who has so long held her. ~Joan Rae Mills from “Mary”in Light Upon Light
Now burn, new born to the world, Doubled-naturèd name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east… ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
Through the tender mercy of our God, With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us; To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, To guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1:78-79 (Zechariah’s Song)
It never fails to surprise and amaze: a colorful dawn seems to come from nowhere.
There is always bleak dark, then a hint of light over the foothills in a long thin line, followed by the appearance of subtle dawn shadows as if the night needs to cling to the ground a little while longer, not wanting to relent and let us go.
Then color appears, erasing all doubt: the hills begin to glow orange along their crest, as if a flame is ignited and is spreading down a wick. Ultimately the explosion of Light occurs, spreading the orange pink palette unto the clouds above, climbing high to bathe the glaciers of Mount Baker and onto the peaks of the Twin Sisters.
~a Dayspring to our dimness~
From dark to light, ordinary to extraordinary. This gift is from the tender mercy of our God, who has become the Light of a new Day, guiding our feet on the pathway of peace.
We no longer need to stumble about in the shadows. He has come to light our darkness.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. ~John 1:5
Sleeping child, I wonder, have you a dream to share? May I see the things you see as you slumber there? I dream a wind that speaks, like music as it blows As if it were the breath of everything that grows.
I dream a flock of birds flying through the night Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light. I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years, Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears.
I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long, And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song. I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun. A word that waits to be spoken. The promise of a world to come. ~Charles Bennett “Sleeping Child”
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The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light.
Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God… who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.” Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast. ~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
[The Incarnation is like] a wave of the sea which, rushing up on the flat beach, runs out, even thinner and more transparent, and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears. ~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire
Perhaps it is the mystery of the thing that brings us back, again and again, to read the story of how God came down and disappeared into us.
How can this be? God appearing on earth first to animals, then the most humble of humans.
How can He be? Through the will of the Father and the breath of the Spirit, the Son was, and is and yet to be.
O great mystery beyond all understanding.
O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum, ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, jacentem in praesepio! Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum. Alleluia!
O great mystery and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord lying in their Manger! Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
The composer Morten Lauridsen, is a Washington state native who was born only a few miles from where my mother grew up in the wheat fields of the Palouse, and now lives in retirement in the San Juan Islands. He wrote about his inspiration, wanting to compose something that honored the words as much as the Still Life painted by Zurbaran (above) honored the Virgin Mary.
“Zurbarán (1598-1664) is the painter of “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose.” The objects in this work are symbolic offerings to the Virgin Mary. Her love, purity and chastity are signified by the rose and the cup of water. The lemons are an Easter fruit that, along with the oranges with blossoms, indicate renewed life. The table is a symbolic altar. The objects on it are set off in sharp contrast to the dark, blurred backdrop and radiate with clarity and luminosity against the shadows.
In composing music to these inspirational words about Christ’s birth and the veneration of the Virgin Mary, I sought to impart, as Zurbarán did before me, a transforming spiritual experience within what I call “a quiet song of profound inner joy.” I wanted this piece to resonate immediately and deeply into the core of the listener, to illumine through sound.
The most challenging part of this piece for me was the second line of text having to do with the Virgin Mary. She above all was chosen to bear the Christ child and then she endured the horror and sorrow of his death on the cross. How can her significance and suffering be portrayed musically?
After exploring several paths, I decided to depict this by a single note. On the word “Virgo,” the altos sing a dissonant appoggiatura G-sharp. It’s the only tone in the entire work that is foreign to the main key of D. That note stands out against a consonant backdrop as if a sonic light has suddenly been focused upon it, edifying its meaning. It is the most important note in the piece.
A scholarly essay about Lauridsen’s composition is here.
Another version by a different composer:
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Bethlehem in Germany, Glitter on the sloping roofs, Breadcrumbs on the windowsills, Candles in the Christmas trees, Hearths with pairs of empty shoes: Panels of Nativity Open paper scenes where doors Open into other scenes, Some recounted, some foretold. Blizzard-sprinkled flakes of gold Gleam from small interiors, Picture-boxes in the stars Open up like cupboard doors In a cabinet Jesus built.
Leaning from the cliff of heaven, Indicating whom he weeps for, Joseph lifts his lamp above The infant like a candle-crown. Let my fingers touch the silence Where the infant’s father cries. Give me entrance to the village From my childhood where the doorways Open pictures in the skies. But when all the doors are open, No one sees that I’ve returned. When I cry to be admitted, No one answers, no one comes. Clinging to my fingers only Pain, like glitter bits adhering, When I touch the shining crumbs. ~Gjertrud Schnackenberg,from “Advent Calendar” from Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-1992.
He will come like last leaf’s fall. One night when the November wind has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth wakes choking on the mould, the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost. One morning when the shrinking earth opens on mist, to find itself arrested in the net of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark. One evening when the bursting red December sun draws up the sheet and penny-masks its eye to yield the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come, will come like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking, as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like child. ~Rowan Williams “Advent Calendar”
Who has not considered Mary And who her praise would dim, But what of humble Joseph Is there no song for him?
If Joseph had not driven Straight nails through honest wood If Joseph had not cherished His Mary as he should;
If Joseph had not proved him A sire both kind and wise Would he have drawn with favor The Child’s all-probing eyes?
Would Christ have prayed, ‘Our Father’ Or cried that name in death Unless he first had honored Joseph of Nazareth ? ~Luci Shaw “Joseph The Carpenter”
The hero of the story this season is the man in the background of each creche, the old master Nativity paintings, and the Advent Calendar doors that open each day.
He is the adoptive father who does the right thing rather than what he has legal right to do, who listens to his dreams and believes, who leads the way over dusty roads to be counted, who searches valiantly for a suitable place to stay, who does whatever he can to assist her labor, who stands tall over a vulnerable mother and infant while the poor and curious pour out of the hills, the wise and foreign appear bringing gifts, who takes his family to safety when the innocents are slaughtered.
He is only a carpenter, not born for heroics, but strong and obedient, stepping up when called.
He is a humble man teaching his son a living, until his son leaves to save the dying.
This man Joseph is the Chosen father, the best Abba a God could possibly hope for.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
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Like Mary, we have no way of knowing… We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there. ~Kathleen Norrisfrom God With Us
Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes. ~Denise Levertov from “Annunciation”
This is the irrational season When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There’d have been no room for the child. ~Madeleine L’Engle “After Annunciation” from A Cry Like A Bell
Dawn again and the birds of oblivion sing of all hungers
Each day I wake to a pillar of light kindling the room into being once more
A crease in the rug, someone’s future stumble
The pale melt of bedclothes at my thighs
Mine is not the face of peace but of the found-out
The lamp’s diminutive thorn of light sharpens at my bedside— a whole world waiting
The Annunciation by Henry Tanner, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Mary’s response to this overwhelming event is a model for us all when God is leading us over a threshold into the unexpected and unknown.
Even though she is prepared, having studied God’s Word and His promise to His people — she doesn’t understand: “How can this be?”
Articulating it in the song she sings as a response, she gives up her so-carefully-planned-out life to give life to God within her.
Her resilience reverberates through the ages and to each one of us in our own multi-faceted and overwhelming troubles: May it be to me as you say.
May it be. Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise – all embodied within me.
Let it be, even if I don’t understand how it can be.
Even if it pierces my soul as with a sword so that I leak out to empty; you are there to heal the bleeding wound by filling it with infinite light.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
The angel Gabriel from heaven came His wings as drifted snow his eyes as flame “All hail” said he “thou lowly maiden Mary, Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!
“For known a blessed mother thou shalt be, All generations laud and honor thee, Thy Son shall be Emanuel, by seers foretold Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!
Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head “To me be as it pleaseth God,” she said, “My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name.” Most highly favored lady. Gloria!
Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ was born In Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn And Christian folk throughout the world will ever say: “Most highly favored lady,” Gloria
And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.”
And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know,even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing. John 1:19-28
We grow accustomed to the Dark — When Light is put away — As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Good bye —
A Moment — We Uncertain step For newness of the night — Then — fit our Vision to the Dark — And meet the Road — erect —
And so of larger — Darknesses — Those Evenings of the Brain — When not a Moon disclose a sign — Or Star — come out — within —
The Bravest — grope a little — And sometimes hit a Tree Directly in the Forehead — But as they learn to see —
Either the Darkness alters — Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight — And Life steps almost straight. ~Emily Dickinson
I admit that I’ve been stumbling about in the dark, bearing the bruises and scrapes of random collisions with objects hidden in the night.
My eyes must slowly adjust to such bare illumination, as the Lamp sometimes is carried away. I must feel my way along the road of life.
I know there are fellow darkness travelers who also have lost their way and their Light, giving what they can and sometimes more.
And so, blinded as we each are, we run forehead-first into the Tree which has always been there and always will be.
Because of who we are and Who loves us, we, now free and forgiven, follow a darkened road guaranteed straight, all the way Home.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Each week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds. ~Carl Rogersfrom A Way of Being
Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors [and then] retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper. ~Adriaan Krotlandt, Dutch ethologist in Scientific American (1962)
There is much about this life we cannot control. We like to think we can. We even try.
We are mere witness to changes wrought by the Creator, how He reaches deep in a person or how He paints in the skies.
Watch in awe.
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When you go home tell them of us and say – “For your tomorrow we gave our today” ~John Maxwell Edmonds from “The Kohima Epitaph”
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. ~Lawrence Binyon from “For the Fallen” (1914)
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. ~LtCol (Dr.) John McCrae from “In Flanders Fields”
We who are left, how shall we look again Happily on the sun, or feel the rain, Without remembering how they who went Ungrudgingly, and spent Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?
A bird upon the rain-wet lilac sings — But we, how shall we turn to little things And listen to the birds and winds and streams Made holy by their dreams, Nor feel the heartbreak in the heart of things? ~Wilfred Wilson Gibson “A Lament”
November pierces with its bleak remembrance Of all the bitterness and waste of war. Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for. Our silence seethes instead with wraiths and whispers, And all the restless rumour of new wars, The shells are falling all around our vespers, No moment is unscarred, there is no pause, In every instant bloodied innocence Falls to the weary earth ,and whilst we stand Quiescence ends again in acquiescence, And Abel’s blood still cries in every land One silence only might redeem that blood Only the silence of a dying God. ~Malcolm Guite “Silence: a Sonnet for Remembrance Day”
To our military veterans here and abroad – in deep appreciation and gratitude– for the freedoms you have defended on behalf of us all:
No one is left untouched and unscarred in the bitterness of war.
My father was one of the fortunate ones who came home, returning to a quiet farm life after three years serving in the Pacific with the Marines Corp from 1942 to 1945. Hundreds of thousands of his colleagues didn’t come home, dying on beaches and battlefields. Tens of thousands more came home forever marked, through physical or psychological injury, by the experience of war and witness of death and mayhem all around them.
No matter how one views wars our nation has fought and may be obligated to fight in the future, we must support and care for the men and women who have made, on our behalf, the commitment and sacrifice to be on the front line for freedom’s sake.
Even our God died so we could stop fighting each other (and Him). What a waste we have not stopped to listen and understand His sacrifice enough to finally lay down our weapons against one another forever.
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. ~Henry David Thoreaufrom Walden
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1
Painting the indescribable with words necessitates subtlety, sound and rhythm.
The best word color portraits I know are by Gerard Manley Hopkins who created pictures through startling word combinations:
I understand how difficult it is to harvest daily life using ordinary words. Like grasping ephemeral star trails or the transient rainbow that moves away as I approach, what I hold on the page is intangible — yet nevertheless very real.
I keep reaching for understanding, searching for the best words to share here: those that are ephemeral color yet eternal, and very very real.
After all, in the beginning was the Word, and there is no better place to start with its promise.
I’ll be reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore the promise together.
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