Year After Year

The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies
are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over
high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound
of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains
and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless,
the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left
in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible,
the architecture of the soul begins to show through.
God has put off his panoply and is at home with us.
We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty.
We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now.
We make love without rushing and find ourselves
afterward with someone we know well. Time to be
what we are getting ready to be next. This loving,
this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down
roots and comes back again year after year.

~Jack Gilbert “Half the Truth” from Collected Poems.

In the shape of this night, in the still fall
of snow, Father
In all that is cold and tiny, these little birds
and children

Before the bells ring, before this little point in time
has rushed us on
Before this clean moment has gone, before this night
turns to face tomorrow, Father
There is this high singing in the air
Forever this sorrowful human face in eternity’s window
And there are other bells that we would ring, Father
Other bells that we would ring.
~Kenneth Patchen from “At the New Year”

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul…
~G.K.Chesterton from A Chesterton Calendar

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

~Lord Alfred Tennyson from “In Memoriam”

Often when something is ending
we discover within it the spore of new beginning,
and a whole new train of possibility is in motion

before we even realize it.
When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning,
unforeseen things can emerge.
And in a sense, this is exactly what a beginning does.
It is an opening for surprises. 

~John O’Donohue from “To Bless the Space Between Us”

No heralding trumpets –
Just softening shadows,
Timed and tracked.

Fingers of light flaring amber
Over the eastern ridge of foothills,
Caress the slopes of snow capped peaks.

So I bid this past year farewell.

The horizon’s glowing coral palette
Climbs higher, wider, deeper
Painting clouds beyond reach.

Each earthly thing bathed in gold
Glimpsed and grasped without fanfare
Yet wholly miraculous.

Too soon this day, this year, becomes ordinary again
Although it is truth:
we can be born anew, year after year.

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A Christmas Dayspring

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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An Advent Threshold: What Are You Seeking? Come and See What is Possible…

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, 
“What are you seeking?” 
And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”  

He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.  He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, 
“You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).


 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”  Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”  

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”  Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”  Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”  Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”  And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
John 1:35-51

I never knew what was going on.

He would say, “Let’s go,” and we
would follow. “Follow” was his word.

And we would. Fools we were to let that
take us all that way. Why we did to this day

I don’t know. Look how it ended. Look
what it became. But what did we have

to stay for? Nothing. There wasn’t much
work. Nothing much to do. There were no

stories left. Bread. Fish. So we ended up
with more bread and fish. But we did find

stories and stories. Well, what else is there?
I never did much along the way. Look it up…


I will say, though, that it was his words. Words!

Imagine. Words had never done what his did.
I’d listen, and I wasn’t much of a listener. Then

later I would try to make sense of them. I couldn’t.
But I could feel them. And maybe that was it, how

they got inside you and made you wonder and wrinkle.
They got in my brain’s garden and made it seem like

the roots were above ground and all the flowers and
vegetables, all the nourishing, were now below…

See? See how hard it is to
explain this stuff? You just started seeing everything with a

new mind. You began to be drawn to a whole new world,
and it was a world.

You might say, okay, whatever, and yet those words
did become flesh, my flesh. And my flesh, my body, held

the kingdom of God, and if it’s a place that’s a place
for children, then most of what I know really doesn’t matter.

Labor doesn’t, and money, and reason, and, well, you
go make a list. He’d get me so confused. And then we’d

head off worrying about how we would eat and where
we’d sleep. Our feet were filthy. My God, we were always

filthy. We stank. And then he’d go and point at birds or
stalks of grain, even stop and have us kneel before a flower,

and then he’d smile. That haunts me still. That smile.
And then he died. He brought out hate, not love. He had

a terrifying sense of justice. Nothing he said or did
was impossible. Maybe that was it. It was all possible.

~Jack Ridl from “Bartholomew: Disciple”

What are you seeking? What are you looking for in your life?

Jesus asks the new disciples because He needs to know whether they are expecting a wise rabbi/teacher, or a prophesied Messiah come to change the world, or a mighty king who will liberate them from political oppression.

No matter what our expectation is, Jesus asks that we come to see what he is doing, following him to witness what will happen as he speaks, allowing his words to become our new flesh and skin.

He takes us to the threshold of heaven and throws the gate wide open. Nothing he says or does is impossible.

He shows us what is possible simply by asking us what we hope for.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year or so. Each week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

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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An Advent Threshold: Taking You Where You Did Not Think To Go

First let us say

a blessing
upon all who have
entered here before
us.

You can see the sign
of their passage
by the worn place
on the doorframe
as they walked through,
the smooth sill
of the threshold
where they crossed.

On the other side
these ones who wait –
for you,
if you do not
know by now –
understand what
a blessing can do

how it appears like
nothing you expected

how it arrives as
visitor,
outrageous invitation,
child;

how it takes the form
of angel
or dream;

how it comes
in words like
How can this be?
and
lifted up the lowly:

how it sounds like
in the wilderness
prepare the way.

Those who wait
for you know
how the mark of
a true blessing
is that it will take you
where you did not
think to go.

Once through this door
there will be more:
more doors
more blessings
more who watch and
wait for you

but here
at this door of
beginning
the blessings cannot
be said without you

Say the thing that
you most need
and the door will
open wide.

And by this word
the door is blessed
and by this word
the blessing is begun
from which
door by door
all the rest
will come.

~Jan Richardson, from “Blessing the Door” from  Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas.

And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping

That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches.
~Annie Dillard (in response to the Graham’s quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

There is a second or two each day
(and some days I must watch hard for it)
when there is a moment of illumination
like a multitude of flashing torches,
when I can see just beyond what is here and now
to heaven’s open door.

It is a liminal promise pointing me to where I didn’t think to go.

If I miss it,
this opened door that is not a door~
too busy to notice-
too blinded to see-
having turned my face away,
nevertheless it still happens –
just without my witness.

It gladdens my heart to know that
God always offers up the open door again and again,
until I see.

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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Watch with Awe as it Unfolds…

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 Rogers
from 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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Harboring Joy

You recall how winter
colored your love, left it


overly delicate, like a flower
skimmed of all fragrance.


You hear in the long last notes
of the nightingale’s song


how to harbor what’s left
of joy, how spring clutches


the green shoot of life and holds
on and on through summer, prepares


for no end that is sure in coming,
the fall ever endlessly repeating.
~Maureen Doallas “Recounting Seasons”, from Neruda’s Memoirs 

Like in old cans of paint the last green hue,
these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected
behind the blossom clusters in which blue
is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;

They do reflect it imprecise and teary,
as though they’d rather have it go away,
and just like faded, once blue stationery,
they’re tinged with yellow, violet and gray;

As in an often laundered children’s smock,
cast off, its usefulness now all but over,
one senses running down a small life’s clock.

Yet suddenly the blue revives, it seems,
and in among these clusters one discovers
a tender blue rejoicing in the green.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Blue Hydrangea” Translation by Bernhard Frank

One of my greatest joys is watching our farm’s plants as days become weeks, then months, and as years flow by, the seasons’ palettes repeat endlessly.

In the “olden” days, many farmers kept daily hand-written diaries to track the events of the seasons: when the soil was warm enough to sow, when the harvest was ready, the highs and lows of temperature fluctuations, how many inches in the rain gauge, how deep the snow.

Now we follow the years with a swift scroll in our photo collection in our phones: the tulips bloomed two weeks later this year, or the tomatoes ripened early or the pears were larger two years ago.

I am comforted things tend to repeat predictably year after year, yet I can spot subtle differences. Our hydrangea bushes are a harbinger of soil conditions and seasonal change: they bloomed a darker burgundy color this year, with fewer blue tones. Their blooms always fade eventually into blended earth tones, then blanche, finally losing color altogether and becoming skeletal.

And so it is with me. I collect joy by noticing each change, knowing the repetition of the seasons and the cycle of blooming will continue as I too fade.

I am only a recorder of fact, documenting as long as I’m able.

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The Intricate Texture of Things

silentweb
morningweb7

Here is a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world…: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling — not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land.
~Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

fogdrops3

The weather is getting brisker so the outdoor critters, some invited, some not,  are starting to move inside.  The cats scoot between our legs as we open the front door, heading straight for the fireplace to bask in the warmth rather than a cold wind. The pup comes in from the yard for a nightly snack and chew bone, and stretches out on the rug, acting every bit like a piece of furry furniture. And today there was another mouse in the trap under the sink. I almost thought we were mouse-free with three weeks of none sighted and none trapped, but there he was waiting for me in the morning, well fed and quite dead.  He became an opportune meal for a cat too lazy to go get himself a living breathing mouse.

From nibbling to nibbled.  It is a tough world, inside and out.

Our most numerous and ambitious visitors from outside are the spiders, appearing miraculously crawling futilely up the sides in the bathtub, or scurrying across the kitchen floor, or webbing themselves into a corner of the ceiling with little hope of catching anything but a stray house moth or two this time of year. Arachnids are certainly determined yet stationary predators, rebuilding their sticky traps as needed to ensure their victims won’t rip away, thereby destroying the web.

I don’t really mind sharing living quarters with another of God’s creatures, but I do prefer the ones that are officially invited into our space and not surprise guests. The rest are interlopers that I tolerate with grudging admiration for their instinctive ingenuity. I admit I’m much too large, inept, and bumbling to find my way into someone else’s abode through a barely perceptible crack, and I’m certainly incapable of weaving the intricate beauty of a symmetrical web placed just so in a high corner.

After all, I am just another creature in the same boat. There is something quite humbling about being actually invited into this frayed and beautiful, complex and broken world, “pitted and scarred” as I am. I’m grateful I’ve so far escaped capture in the various insidious traps of life,  not just the spring-loaded kind and the sticky filament kind.

So it is okay that I’m settled in, cozy in front of the fireplace, just a piece of the furniture. Just so long as I don’t startle anyone or nibble too much of what I shouldn’t, I just might be invited to stay awhile.

josecat
josehomer
homer3

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A Wordless Song

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away. . . O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless;

the singing will never be done. 
~Siegried Sassoon “Everyone Sang”

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

~Emily Dickinson “Hope is the thing with feathers”

When it feels like the world is rent in two,
and the gulf into which we topple
too wide and dark to climb without help,
we can look to the sky
and see the birds’ stitching and hear their wordless singing,
the careful caring line of connection
pulling us out of a hopeless hole,
startled and grateful
to be made whole.
Hope borne on feathered wings:
may we fly threaded and knitted to one another, singing.

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The Shadow of Joy

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon 
poisons the air like fallout, 
I come again to see 
the serene great picture that I love

Here space and time exist in light  the eye like the eye of faith believes. 
The seen, the known 
dissolve in iridescence, become 
illusive flesh of light 
that was not, was, forever is. 

O light beheld as through refracting tears. 
Here is the aura of that world 
each of us has lost. 
Here is the shadow of its joy. 

~Robert Hayden “Monet’s Waterlilies”

…The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~Lisel Mueller, “Monet Refuses the Operation” from Second Language

Monet’s Waterlilies, Art Institute of Chicago

“Heaven pulls earth into its arms…”

We see things differently, don’t we?
What seems ordinary to one person is extraordinary to another.

How might I learn to adjust my focus to see things as you do?
How might I help others to see the world as I do?

The world is flux; my delight and dismay flows from moment to moment, from object to absence, from light to darkness, from color to gray. Perhaps the blur from the figurative (or real) cataract impeding my vision creates a deeper understanding, as I use my imagination to fill in what I can’t discern.

My heart and mind expands to claim this world and all that beauty has to offer, while heaven – all this while – is pulling me into its arms.

In heaven, my focus will be clear. It will all be extraordinarily holy.

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Time to Say Grace

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
~G.K. Chesterton

Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace

Chesterton has it right.  No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first.  Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.

Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times. 

Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.

As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:

He is worthy. Amen and Amen.

Even more so.  Ever more now.

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Your contribution is appreciated.

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