Category: New Year’s

Sudden Ends of Time

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These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time.
~Richard Wilbur from “Year’s End”

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.  They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.
~Frederick Buechner

I’m not paying close enough attention if  I’m too busy looking for kleenex.  It seems the last couple weeks I have had more than ample opportunity to find out the secret of who I am, where I have come from and where I am to be next, and I’m loading my pockets with kleenex, just in case.

It mostly has to do with welcoming our children, their spouses and their friends back home for the holidays to become a full out noisy messy chaotic household again, with lots of music and laughter and laundry and meal preparation.  It is about singing grace together before a meal and choking on precious words of gratitude.  It certainly has to do with bidding farewell again, as we begin to do a few hours from now and, to gather them in for the hug and then unclasping and letting go, urging and encouraging them to go where their hearts are telling them they are needed and called to be.  I too was let go once and though I would try to look back, too often in tears, I knew to set my face toward the future.  It led me here, to this farm, this marriage, this family, this work, to more tears, to more letting go, as it will continue if I live long enough to weep again and again with gusto and grace.

This is where I should go next: to love so much and so deeply that letting go is so hard that tears are no longer unexpected or a mystery to me.   They release the fullness that can no longer be contained: God’s still small voice spilling down my cheeks drop by drop like wax from a burning candle.  No kleenex needed.  Let it flow.

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Roots of Grace

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I have a small grain of hope–
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace.
~Denise Levertov “For the New Year, 1981”

For the New Year, 2015:

Several years ago my sister-in-law brought us three paper bags full of iris roots resting dormant in clumps of dirt – dry misshaped feet and crippled fingers pregnant with potential. We were late getting them into the ground in the fall but their grace was forgiving. They took hold and transformed our little courtyard into a Van Gogh landscape. They will continue to gladden our hearts as we divide them someday to pass on their gift of beauty to another garden. This act– “by division, will hope increase”–feels radical.  Yet that is exactly what God did in sending His Son to become dust-bound and earth-covered.

God broke off part of Himself to put down roots, grow, thrive and thereby be divided, over and over and over again to increase beauty and grace for those of us made of and limited to this soil.

Our garden will continue to bloom next spring so all can see and know: hope lives here —  in the few hours left to this year, and transitioning into the next.

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Van Gogh “Irises”

Blossoming for Him

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He who has come to men
dwells where we cannot tell
nor sight reveal him,
until the hour has struck
when the small heart does break
with hunger for him;

those who do merit least,
those whom no tongue does praise
the first to know him,
and on the face of the earth
the poorest village street
blossoming for him.
~Jane Tyson Clement “With Hunger for Him”

In the somber dark of a new year’s winter morning,
when there seems no hope for sun or warmth,
I hunger for the comfort
only He can bring.
He calls me forth from where I have hidden,
buried face down in my troubles,
committed only to complain.

If I grab hold, He lifts me
from the frozen ground
into the light,
breaking through to
burst with gratitude
into blossom.

A New Year Born

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All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.
~Helen Hunt Jackson from “New Year’s Morning”

 

We awake glad,
breathe deeply of the sacred around us
glistening in the light of a soft sunrise.
Each day is a fresh start,
a gift from beyond,
content to renew covenant
with God and one another.

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Walking Toward the Dawn

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dusk1173

All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened,
this blessing has been gathering itself,
making ready, preparing for this night.

It has practiced walking in the dark,
traveling with its eyes closed,
feeling its way
by memory
by touch
by the pull of the moon
even as it wanes.

So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you
even if you have not light enough to read it;
it will find you even though you cannot see it coming.

You will know the moment of its arriving
by your release of the breath you have held so long;
a loosening of the clenching in your hands,
of the clutch around your heart;
a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you.

This blessing does not mean to take the night away
but it knows its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots along the path,
knows what it means to travel
in the company of a friend.

So when this blessing comes, take its hand.
Get up.
Set out on the road you cannot see.

This is the night when you can trust
that any direction you go,
you will be walking toward the dawn.
~ Jan Richardson from “Through the Advent Door”

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Another Voyage Starts

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morningmist

new year’s eve-
in the echo of fog horns
another voyage starts
–  Keiko Izawa

I grew up on a small farm located about two miles from a bay in Puget Sound.  When I awoke, I knew it was a foggy morning outside even before looking out my bedroom window.  The fog horns located on coastal buildings and bobbing buoys scattered throughout the inlet would echo mournful moans and groans to warn freighter ships away from the rocky or muddy shallows.   The resonant lowing of the horns carried miles over the surrounding landscape due to countless water particles in the fog transmitting sound waves so effectively.  The louder the foghorn moan heard on our farm, the thicker the mist in the air.  The horn voices would make me unspeakably sad for reasons I could never articulate.

Embarking on a voyage in blinding foggy conditions, just like starting a new year,  portends both adventure and risk.  Of course I’d prefer to see exactly where I am headed, carefully navigating with precise knowledge,  eventually winding up exactly at my intended destination.  The reality is that the future can be a murky mess.  We cannot see what lies ahead: we navigate by our wits, by our best guess, but particularly by listening for the low-throated warnings coming from the rocky shores and shallows of those who have gone ahead of us.

I am still too easily lost in the fog of my fears–disconnected, afloat and circling aimlessly, searching for a touch point of purpose and direction.  The isolation I sometimes feel may simply be my own self-absorbed state of mind, sucking me in deep until I’m soaked, dripping and shivering from the smothering gray.   If only I might trust the fog horn voices, I could charge into the future undaunted, knowing there are others out there in the pea soup prepared to come alongside me as together we await the sun’s dissipation of the fog.

Now I know, almost sixty years into the voyage,  fog does eventually clear so the journey continues on.

Even so, I will keep listening for the resonant voices of wisdom from shore, and now raise my voice to join in.

Instead of echoing the moans and groans of my childhood mornings, I will sing an anthem of hope and promise.

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

A Common Nativity

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.
It is the nativity of our common Adam.
–  Charles Lamb  

We come to this new year
naked as dormant branches
in the freezing night.

Mere potential is barely budded,
nothing covered up,
no hiding in shame.

A shared and common birthday,
a still life nativity in a winter garden,
another chance to make it right.

The Object of a New Year

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

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

We hoped for some timely snow for a white Christmas but had to be content with a brief flurry that didn’t stick.  Then there was more hope yesterday on New Year’s Eve with more flurries and a few little skiffs left behind here and there, but nothing much.  Instead of snow that stuck, we were stuck with the same old muddy bare ground and dead grass and weary frost-bitten plants.

It is natural to desire an easy transformation of the old and dirty to something new and beautiful:  an all clean pristine white cottony sheet covering thrown over everything, making it look completely different than before.  Similarly, at the tick of the clock past midnight on New Years’ Eve, we hope for just such an inner transformation as well, a fresh start, a leaving behind of the not-so-good from the past and moving ahead to the surely-it’ll-be-better in the future.

But it doesn’t stick, even if there is a flurry of good intentions and a skiff of newness plopped down here and there.  Even if we find ourselves in the midst of blizzard conditions, unable to see six inches ahead and immobilized by the furious storms of life,  that accumulation eventually will melt, leaving behind even more mud and raw mess.

It isn’t how flawless, how clean, or how new this year will be, but rather how to ensure our soul transformation sticks tight, unmelting from within, even when the heat is turned up and the sweat drips.  This is not about a covering thrown over the old and dirty but a full blown overhaul in order to never to be the same again.

I lift my eyes to the hills where the snow stays year round: sometimes more,  with a few hundred new inches over several weeks, or sometimes less,  on the hottest days of summer.  Our new souls this new year must be built of that same resiliency, withstanding what each day may bring, cold or hot.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…within my soul.

The Name of the Room

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” 
~Frederick Buechner 

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Taking Down Christmas

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What went up must come down.  It isn’t just a law of physics.  It is a reality of Christmas.

True,  some houses have multicolored lights strung along their gutters year round, just not illuminated.  And I’ve known some people’s artificial trees to stay up until Valentine’s Day or longer.   But most of us dismantle what we so lovingly strung up, trimmed and decorated only a month or so ago.  It is a sad day taking down Christmas.

As a child I was so reluctant to see the tree come down that I’d cut a sprig of evergreen branch,  complete with tinsel, and would put it in a vase of water in my bedroom in order for a small part of Christmas to linger a little longer.  By April it would be crispy dry and forgotten and my mother would sneak in and toss it out, without my even missing it.

All the anticipation is spent and our energy wanes.  Winter has only begun and now we’re boxing up the twinkling lights and putting away the ribbons and bows.  All the fun stuff is tucked away for another year in the garage and attic.   Maybe we have the timing of this celebration all wrong.  Instead of the Twelve Days of Christmas it should be the Twelve Weeks–the lights should stay up until St. Patrick’s Day at least, just to keep us out of the shadows and doldrums of winter.

Today, as I swept up the last of the grand fir needles that had dropped to the floor, I knew, like the tree that I watered faithfully in the house for two weeks, I too had been drying up and parts of me were being left behind for others to sweep up.    There had been the excitement of family brought together from all ends of the earth,  friends gathering for meals and games,  special church services, but now, some quiet time is sorely needed.   The party simply can’t be sustained.  The lights have to go off, and the eyes have to close.

So we will now walk into a winter replete with the startling splash of orange red that paints the skies in the evenings, the stark and gorgeous snow covered peaks surrounding us during the day,  the grace of bald eagles and trumpeter swans flying overhead,  the heavenly lights that twinkle every night,  the shining globe that circles full above us, and the loving support of the Hand that rocks us to sleep when we need it.

We don’t need full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a music-synced blinking star on the top of the tree to know the comfort of His care and the astounding beauty of His creation, available for us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.

Instead of us taking down Christmas, Christmas picks us up.

Every day.

Year round.

January 1 sunset from our hill, taken by Nate Gibson
Self portrait by Nate. Sunset by God.