BriarCroft in Winter


There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons– That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes– Emily Dickinson


She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.
― Sarah Addison Allen


It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting. Annie Dillard




There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.
― D.E. Stevenson


I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. ~Andrew Wyeth


Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. ~Edith Sitwell


In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus


In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago. Christina Rossetti


Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
― Sinclair Lewis


Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people’s legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.
― Sarah Addison Allen


When there’s snow on the ground, I like to pretend I’m walking on clouds.
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata


The color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination. ~Terri Guillemets


Wild clouds lower and touch the thin evening
Fast snow dances in swirling wind.
…With one finger I write my sorrows in the air.
Du Fu


No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.
“How often already you’ve had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard, good-by and keep cold.”
Robert Frost


Snow has fallen on the pine-woods,
and every bough has blossomed.
I should like to pluck a branch
and send it to where my lord is.
After he has looked at it,
what matter if the snow-flowers melt?

Chong Ch’ol


Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o’clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
― Thomas de Quincey


When the cold comes it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.
― Alice Hoffman


The wind is keen coming over the ice;
it carries the sound of breaking glass.
And the sun, bright but not warm,
has gone behind the hill. Chill, or the fear
of chill, sends me hurrying home.
from Walking Alone in Late Winter
Jane Kenyon


Descending the steps into that dark root cellar brought apprehension as well as anticipation. I was uncertain what critter may unexpectedly surprise me on the inside–bullfrog? snake? but the blast of cool air on a hot summer day was always a welcome relief. There was one hanging light bulb in the middle with a pull chain, and once the insides of the cellar were illuminated, a colorful trove appeared from the shadows, lined up on shelves like the ghostly discoveries in King Tut’s tomb.

These were not gilded treasures, but the kind that were lovingly and carefully harvested, washed, boiled and preserved in the midst of a sweaty summer, to be savored during dinners served on the coldest of winter days. The potatoes lay in the cool darkness, not tempted to turn green or sprout, and the “keeper” apples and pears remained firm and tasty. Even in the coldest of winter blasts, the root cellar contents never froze or rotted. It was the best refrigeration system imaginable and didn’t cost a thing to maintain.
Emily Gibson


I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood. ~Bill Watterson

BriarCroft in Spring

BriarCroft in Summer

BriarCroft in Autumn

BriarCroft at Year’s End

A Farm in Snow

This poem by one of my favorite poets, Jane Kenyon, echoes the history of our farm in winter:

This Morning by Jane Kenyon

The barn bears the weight
of the first heavy snow
without complaint.

White breath of cows
rises in the tie-up, a man
wearing a frayed winter jacket
reaches for his milking stool
in the dark.

The cows have gone into the ground,
and the man,
his wife beside him now.

A nuthatch drops
to the ground, feeding
on sunflower seed and bits of bread
I scattered on the snow.

The cats doze near the stove.
They lift their heads
as the plow goes down the road,
making the house
tremble as it passes.

An Advent Tapestry–Infinity Walled in a Womb

“infinity walled in a womb…”
from “Made flesh,” in Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation by Luci Shaw

Elizabeth knew without being told as soon as she heard Mary’s voice.  Or rather the baby in old Elizabeth’s womb knew, as he leaped for joy as she was filled with the spirit.  Two intrauterine mysteries meeting each other for the first time, belly to belly.   There is nothing more finite than the space in the womb–it gets crowded in there quickly over a scant few months.  Yet there infinity dwelled within the finite.

As I am no theologian, I’m not capable of discussing the intricacy of the reformational argument of finitum capax infiniti (the finite is capable of the infinite) vs finitum non capax infiniti (the finite is not capable of the infinite) which has to do with Christ’s bodily presence in the Eucharist.  As a mother, I know that finite Mary carried the infinite–“inside her the mind of Christ”…

“…inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.”
from “Mosaic of the Nativity” by Jane Kenyon

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
from Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

An Advent Tapestry–Mercy Clothed in Light

Adoration of the Child by Gerrit van Honthorst

 

God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

from “Notes from the Other Side” by Jane Kenyon

It is the fact of the promise that is most astonishing.  The covenant extends beyond the chosen children of God to include all people, everywhere, with an enveloping invitation that can not be resisted:  Peace on Earth!  Good will to all men!

So mercy is found wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger where only dirty and smelly shepherds could find it.  It is right where it belongs, among the poor, the tired, the meek, the unwanted, the lonely, the ill, and the discouraged.

Let the light shine forth, welcoming us all to be bathed clean in the fountain of mercy.


Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon

written by Jane Kenyon as she was fighting terminal cancer

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.




Lenten Meditation: The Hem of His Mother’s Robe

“Looking at Stars” by Jane Kenyon from Let Evening Come

The God of curved space, the dry
God, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood splattered
the hem of his mother’s robe.

Jane Kenyon, whose work I’ve only recently discovered, wrote much of her spiritual poetry in her forties while dying of leukemia.   This brief poem illustrates her (and humanity’s) need for a bleeding God who lived and died among us, splattering beyond his mother’s robe.  Our help, our only comfort, our desperate need is for God who understands our suffering by dwelling on earth, not just in the heavens.

His blood, shed and shared so graciously and willingly, is on our hands, and pumps everlasting within our hearts.

The Piet by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Called Baccicio)