No one has ever regarded the First of January with indifference. ~Charles Lamb from “New Year’s Eve”
Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse… ~T.S. Eliot from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
This New Year’s Day, like so many that have come before, arrived with the ordinary and annoying hour-long revelry of gunshots and fireworks across our rural neighborhood.
Yet this time a new year enters under a cloud: a lingering odor remains from the mess our nation made of 2025.
Like a dog rolling in something stinky simply because it is there, 2026 may look squeaky clean but reeks of what has come before. It can’t be ignored and, even brand spanking new, this year is already badly in need of a bath.
Like a dog, we like what is familiar and comfortable, even if that means we roll about where we shouldn’t, still smelling like yesterday, if not last year.
Time leads irrevocably forward, with us in tow. There is no turning back or staying stubbornly with how things used to be. Perhaps this new year we shower off the mud, stay clear of the stinky stuff in the headlines, and take time to look at all things with new eyes.
Do we dare disturb the universe?
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A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more. Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 31:15
…as you sit beneath your beautifully decorated tree, eat the rich food of celebration, and laugh with your loved ones, you must not let yourself forget the horror and violence at the beginning and end of the Christmas story. The story begins with the horrible slaughter of children and ends with the violent murder of the Son of God. The slaughter depicts how much the earth needs grace. The murder is the moment when that grace is given.
Look into that manger representing a new life and see the One who came to die. Hear the angels’ celebratory song and remember that sad death would be the only way that peace would be given. Look at your tree and remember another tree – one not decorated with shining ornaments, but stained with the blood of God.
As you celebrate, remember that the pathway to your celebration was the death of the One you celebrate, and be thankful. ~Paul Tripp
We think of him as safe beneath the steeple, Or cosy in a crib beside the font, But he is with a million displaced people On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol His family is up and on that road, Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel, Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled, The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power, And death squads spread their curse across the world.
But every Herod dies, and comes alone To stand before the Lamb upon the throne. ~Malcolm Guite “Refugee”
When Christ was born in Bethlehem, Fair peace on earth to bring, In lowly state of love He came To be the children’s King.
And round Him, then, a holy band Of children blest was born, Fair guardians of His throne to stand Attendant night and morn.
And unto them this grace was giv’n A Saviour’s name to own, And die for Him Who out of Heav’n Had found on earth a throne.
O blessèd babes of Bethlehem, Who died to save our King, Ye share the martyrs’ diadem, And in their anthem sing!
Your lips, on earth that never spake, Now sound th’eternal word; And in the courts of love ye make Your children’s voices heard.
Lord Jesus Christ, eternal Child, Make Thou our childhood Thine; That we with Thee the meek and mild May share the love divine. ~Laurence Houseman “The Holy Innocents”
There is no consolation for families of those children lost to death too soon: a rogue king’s slaughter of innocents.
And still today – so much intentional death of the young, to inflict the most pain, lands flooded with blood, across disputed borders and faith.
Arms ache through centuries with the emptiness of grief, beds and pillows lie cold and unused, hugs never to come again.
There is no consolation for loss then or now; only mourning and great weeping, sobbing that wrings dry every human cell,
leaving only dust behind: our beginning and, without salvation, our end.
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What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “Inversnaid”
In my anguish at the chaos in the world, let me remember, when I look closely, through the rain, even the weeds, the unruly, unholy weeds are connected in this wilderness.
There is order here even if I can’t feel it now. Let us weeds be left. We are meant to be.
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I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy, like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap, or grass. I like their lady horse swagger, after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up! But mainly, let’s be honest, I like that they’re ladies. As if this big dangerous animal is also a part of me, that somewhere inside the delicate skin of my body, there pumps an 8-pound female horse heart, giant with power, heavy with blood. Don’t you want to believe it? Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see the huge beating genius machine that thinks, no, it knows, it’s going to come in first. ~Ada Limón “How to Triumph Like a Girl”
Primarily from my college training in animal behavior, I have an appreciation for social cues, both human and non-human: those often nonverbal signals that are communicated through subtle means–in people, perhaps it is a raised eyebrow, a rapid blink, a tensing of the lips, a fidgeting foot.
When I studied captive and wild chimpanzees, they showed very familiar facial expressions and nonverbal communication that could be understood readily by a human primate.
In horses, it can be harder to interpret but their nonverbal language is there for all to see. The herdmates and the human handler, with careful observation and interpretation, should not be surprised about “what is going to happen next.”
It is no mystery.
I don’t consider Haflinger horses particularly subtle in their communication with each other or with humans. They can tend to have a “bull in a china shop” approach to life; this is not a breed that evolved particularly plagued with the existence of many predators in the Austrian Alps, so the need to blend into the background was minimal. Haflingers tend to be “out there”: unafraid, bold, meeting one’s gaze, and curious what the human is thinking.
I’ve found over the years that the best way to interpret a Haflinger’s emotions is by watching their ears, and to a lesser extent, their lips and tails. They usually have “poker face” eyes, deceptive at times in their depth, calmness and serenity. I tend to get lost in the beauty of their eyes and not pay attention to what the rest of the horse is saying.
Watching them interact with each other, almost everything is said with their ears. A horse with a friendly approach has ears forward, receptive, eager. If the horse being approached is welcoming, the ears are relaxed. Two good friends grooming or grazing together have swiveling, loose ears, often pointing toward each other, almost like a unique conversation between the four ears themselves. So when a Haflinger is happy to approach, or be approached by humans, the ears always say so.
Ears that are swiveling back, tensing and tight, or pinning are another story altogether. It is the clear signal of “get outta my way!”, or “you are not sharing this pile of hay with me” or “you may think you are a cute colt, but if you climb on me one more time…”
Ears can signal impatience “you are not getting my grain fast enough”, or “I’ve been standing here tied for too long!” A simple change in ear position can cause a group of horses to part like the Red Sea.
I owned a mare who was orphaned at 3 days of age, and spent her early weeks with intensive handling by people, and then allowed to socialize with a patient older gelding until she was old enough to be among other weanlings. When she came to our farm at 6 months of age, she had not learned all the usual equine social cues of a mare herd, and though very astute at reading human gestures and behavior, took awhile to learn appropriate responses. When turned out with the herd, she was completely clueless–she’d approach the dominant alpha mare incorrectly, without proper submission, get herself bitten and kicked and was the bottom of the social heap for years, a lonesome little filly with few friends and very few social skills.
She had never learned submission with people either, and had to have many remedial lessons on her training path. Once she was a mature working mare, her relationship with people markedly improved as there was structure to her work and predictability for her, and after having her own foals, she picked up cues and signals that helped her keep her foal safe, though she has always been one of our most relaxed “do whatever you need to do” mothers when we handle her foals as she simply never learned that she needed to be concerned.
Over the years, as the herd changed, this mare became the alpha mare, largely by default and seniority, so I don’t believe she really trusted her position as “real”. She tended to bully, and react too quickly out of her own insecurity about her inherited position. She was very skilled with her ears but she is also a master at the tail “whip” and the tensed upper lip–no teeth, just a slight wrinkling of the lip. The herd scattered when they see her face change.
The irony of being on top of the herd hierarchy: she was more lonely than when she was at the bottom. She was a whole lot less happy as she had few grooming partners any more. She craved power more than friends.
I certainly see people like this at times in the world. Some are not at all attuned to social cues, blundering their way into situations without understanding the consequences and “blurting without thinking”. It takes lots of kicks and bites for them to learn how to read other people and behave appropriately. Sometimes they turn to bullying because it is communication that everyone understands and responds to, primarily by “getting out of their way”. Perhaps they are very lonely, insecure, and need friends but their need for power overcomes their need for support.
We see this too frequently in people in our news headlines.
I continue to “watch the ears”–both Haflinger and human. And I continue to refine my own way of communicating so that I’m not a mystery to those around me. Hopefully no one scatters when they see me coming…
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October’s bellowing anger breaks and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown Along the westering furnace flaring red. O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, The burden of your wrongs is on my head. ~Siegfried Sassoon “Autumn”(about his time in the trenches in WWI)
Over more than a century, we have learned little about how to resolve the bellows of outraged men.
The fruitless harvest of battle, counting up each violent death, as warships gather for unsanctioned war games.
Lament the tossing and blowing of lives like October leaves, in a show of force as transient and arbitrary as the wind, merely to make a fruitless point…
to what end are the feuds of angry men?
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The rain falls and falls cool, bottomless, and prehistoric falls like night — not an ablution not a baptism just a small reason to remember all we know of Heaven to remember we are still here with our love songs and our wars…
Here too in the wet grass half a shell of a robin’s egg shimmers blue as a newborn star fragile as a world. ~Maria Popova from “Spell Against Indifference”
…I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.
The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.
The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment, and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern.
But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.
No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.
And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.
The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged.
For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence.
There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing.
They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death. ~Loren Eiseley from The Star Thrower
Each of us at times are as vulnerable as a nestling, just hatched. The world is full of those who would eat us for lunch and do.
The world is also full of those who grieve and lament the violence that surrounds us, the tragedy of lives lost, the unending wars, the bullies and the bullied.
But the bird of death does not have the final word. He will soon be forgotten, forever sidelined as we reject what he and others like him represent.
Our cries of lament, our protests of violence transform into a celebration of life – we do not abandon all we have lost, but no longer allow any more to be stolen from us.
Only then may grief’s shadow be overwhelmed by joy.
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A curious Cloud surprised the Sky, ‘Twas like a sheet with Horns; The sheet was Blue — The Antlers Gray — It almost touched the Lawns.
So low it leaned — then statelier drew — And trailed like robes away, A Queen adown a satin aisle Had not the majesty. ~Emily Dickinson
The sky is full of clouds to-day, And idly, to and fro, Like sheep across the pasture, they Across the heavens go. I hear the wind with merry noise Around the housetops sweep, And dream it is the shepherd boys,— They’re driving home their sheep.
The clouds move faster now; and see! The west is red and gold. Each sheep seems hastening to be The first within the fold. I watch them hurry on until The blue is clear and deep, And dream that far beyond the hill The shepherds fold their sheep.
Then in the sky the trembling stars Like little flowers shine out, While Night puts up the shadow bars, And darkness falls about. ~Frank Dempster Sherman “Clouds”
White sheep, white sheep, On a blue hill, When the wind stops, You all stand still. When the wind blows, You walk away slow. White sheep, white sheep, Where do you go? ~Christina Rossetti “Clouds”
The afternoon sky becomes a chenille bedspread, covering over a dying autumn landscape.
If only we could throw such a comforter over our messy human lives.
We all might sleep a bit better…
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When I saw the figure on the crown of the hill, high above the city, standing perfectly still
against a sky so saturated with the late- afternoon, late-summer Pacific light
that granules of it seemed to have come out of solution, like a fine precipitate
of crystals hanging in the brightened air, I thought whoever it was standing up there
must be experiencing some heightened state of being, or thinking—or its opposite,
thoughtlessly enraptured by the view. Or maybe, looking again, it was a statue
of Jesus or a saint, placed there to bestow a ceaseless blessing on the city below.
Only after a good five minutes did I see that the figure was actually a tree—
some kind of cypress, probably, or cedar. I was both amused and let down by my error. Not only had I made the tree a person, but I’d also given it a vision,
which seemed to linger in the light-charged air around the tree’s green flame, then disappear. ~Jeffrey Harrison “The Figure on the Hill” from Into Daylight
Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war Is not so much peace as civilisation? He knew Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister, And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem Is the twenty-one flavours children have by heart. Our cobbler mends shoes for everybody; our butcher Blends into his best sausages leeks, garlic, honey; Our cornershop sells everything from bread to kindling. Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised? All of these people, alive or dead, are civilised. ~Michael Longley “All of These People” from Collected Poems
Who among us appear in the light-charged air, visible on the crown of the hill of life – who might be mistaken for a martyr or a saint or a visionary, when each one of us is merely a person responsible to a family, committed to help friends, dedicated to serve a community, placed in this world to steady a broken civilization.
There is the simple truth that we need a person with roots deep in the ground, branches that reach up and out, bearing fruit to share with those around us.
But surely not this misery, not this blight, not this trouble, certainly not these murders, which only bears and shares a heart-rending, horrible grief.
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After another school/church massacre; how can there be nothing new to say?
We’ve learned nothing about keeping weapons out of the hands of people bent on destruction – taking themselves out after taking others with them.
To our children and grandchildren: as a society, we have failed to keep you out of harm’s way by failing to control the harm of modern weapons in the wrong hands.
How can we be forgiven over and over as shootings happen again and again. Maybe we didn’t pull the trigger, but we allowed someone else to.
Together, we share the responsibility for each and every death that has happened, and more bound to happen on our watch.
And that is a heavy burden to bear.
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The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo: she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away…. Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed. ~Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll Illustration
photo by Chris Duppenthaler
What a difficult game we find ourselves playing.
Does anyone understand the rules anymore?
Handed an uncooperative gangly mallet, our aim is hopelessly thwarted.
The furry round target takes one look, sees no point, so wanders off, seeking a friendlier game to play somewhere else.
These are absurd times for humans and hedgehogs.
photo by Chris Duppenthaler
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