Thought for the day

"Instead of death and sorrow, let us bring peace and joy to the world. To do this we must beg God for His gift of peace and learn to accept each other as brothers and sisters, children of God. We know the best place for children to learn how to love and to pray is in the family, by seeing the love and prayer of their mother and father. When families are strongly united, children can see God's special love in the love of their father and mother and can grow to make their country a loving, prayerful place." - Mother Teresa

A blessed, peaceful, and joyous New Year. 

Thank you all for being such a gift to me.

Merry Christmas

A Christmas greeting from Thomas...

Christ is Born!

Glorify Him!

A peaceful and joyous Christmas to you all. And a blessed New Year.

What Jared and I discovered after Thomas finished typing. Who could ask for anything more?

Painting Johnson style

'Twas the eve before the eve of Christmas when all through the house little children were busy baking and painting ornaments. It was Friday and the majority of my Christmas baking was done so why not? I did, however, make a mental note to delay painting with Russell and Elliot until they are a bit older. Please note in the second photo that Russell is chewing, CHEWING, on the paintbrush. Never a dull moment in the Johnson house.

Thought for the day

"At Christmas, we see Jesus as a little babe-helpless and poor. And He came to love and be loved. How can we love Jesus in the world today? By loving Him in my husband, my wife, my children, my brothers and sisters, my parents, my neighbours, and the poor. Let us gather around the poor crib in Bethlehem and make a strong resolution that we will love Jesus in all those we meet every day."

-Mother Teresa

Grandma's first six-pack

When you are a seven-year-old boy and it is your Grandma Swanson's birthday, you bemoan the fact that your mother is not the crafty sort, that she does not have Popsicle sticks carefully tucked away in a cabinet, that she is ruining your dream of building a frame from the said sticks and dressing it with a photo of a handsome boy: yourself. In an effort to rectify the brewing birthday fiasco, you wander into the belly of the beast, otherwise known as your father's workroom, and emerge triumphant, carrying an empty six-pack beer container whose contents your parents heartily consumed the prior weekend. You will locate a very handsome photo of yourself posing next to one humongous Clifford the Red Dog and his companion Emily Elizabeth and will be content to merely tape the photo onto the Fat Tire container. You will demand that your grandmother shut tight her eyes as you stealthily slip her gift that is "helpful for holding things" into her lap. When she opens her eyes, she will be delighted with your gift. Your grandmother will adamantly declare that your gift, your clever creation, is the best birthday present she has ever received. Your mother will laugh knowing that in the 82 years her mother has been alive on this earth, she has certainly never received any kind of beer container, empty or full, for a gift. And you will be one pleasantly gratified seven-year-old boy.

Purified through suffering

For my father

and for the newly

 departed servant of God, Crystal

"We went to the ward. Father was in bed...And when I saw him, I knew at once there was no hope of his living much longer...He looked at me and put forth his hand... and I realized that he could no longer even speak. But at the same time, you could see he knew us, and knew what was going on, and that his mind was clear, and that he understood everything...Of all of us, Father was the only one who really had any kind of a faith. And I do not doubt that he had very much of it, and that behind the walls of his isolation, his intelligence and his will, unimpaired, and not hampered in any essential way by the partial obstruction of some of his senses, were turned to God, and communed with God Who was with him and in him, and Who gave him, as I believe, light to understand and to make use of his suffering for his own good, and to perfect his soul. It was a great soul, large, full of natural charity. He was a man of exceptional intellectual honesty and sincerity and purity of understanding. And this affliction, this terrible and frightening illness which was relentlessly pressing him down even into the jaws of the tomb, was not destroying him after all.

Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity. And my father was in a fight with this tumor, and none of us understood the battle. We thought he was done for, but it was making him great...and his struggle was authentic, and not wasted or lost or thrown away." -from Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain

Russophile in training

Oh yes Thomas did play the word "tsar" in our scrabble-like game. Perhaps less Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich in our school curriculum? Hmm. Probably not.

Hey, bright eyes

Night now goes great and mute

Silence rules all things

What is that murmuring

As of angel's wings

There on our threshold 

White robed and shining

Comes she with bread to spare

Our need divining

-from "Santa Lucia" 

Rinsing off the bowls crusty with the remains of minestrone soup, a dinner which had been shared with our lovely friends from across the street, I reflected upon the near perfection of the day and experienced a deep sense of the goodness in ordinary living. This December 13th had been a day full of the delights of Swedish pepperkaker, crunchy and gingery in four tiny mouths; a day full of song as the five of us sang, quite out of tune, the traditional Santa Lucia song to our long-time, cherished friends the Obergs; a day full of rejoicing in the lives of those present with us and those absent from us, those both living and dead (oh, how my father and my Uncle Russ would have loved some coffee and gingerbread cookies - after all, we are Swedes); a day which was made more wonderful, more complete with an early evening phone call from our brother-in-law, Dan, announcing the arrival of his son, our nephew, Magnus Robert.

Our beautiful, Lucia Bride

 

PS - In the icon, Saint Lucia is holding out a dish containing her own eyes, gouged out during her martyrdom. What is it about that little detail that makes me love her even more?

Thought for the day

"If you have a sick or lonely

person at home, be there. Maybe 

just to hold a hand, maybe just to

give a smile, that is the greatest,

the most beautiful work."

-Mother Teresa

A blessed, joyous St. Lucia Day.

And may God grant our own little Light many, many years.

St. Nicholas Day 2011

"Your works of justice showed you to your congregation a canon of faith, the likeness of humility, a teacher of abstinence, O Father, Bishop Nicholas. Wherefore, by humility you achieved exaltation, and by meekness, richness."

According to my eldest son Thomas, Jack Frost is a little sprite who wears a white jacket, white pants, white boots, and a white hat. In his left hand he carries a briefcase full of paints (all white of course) and paint brushes; in his right he holds a pipe. And while in my mind I can only imagine Jack Frost with a long, white beard like Gandalf's or Dumbledoor's, for Thomas Mr. Frost has a black moustache. We were pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. Frost was making an appearance on St. Nicholas Day and that a light snow was casually dusting the ground. The novelty of the snow for the kids, however, became usurped by the gold chocolate coins scattered all around the presents lying beneath their shoes. While, as the picture will testify, I personally did not receive a gift (Jared tried to find a lump of coal to put in his shoe), my gift came later in the form of lingering at the kitchen table with my husband who had taken the day off of work, drinking my second cup of coffee still hot, and listening to the kids nicely playing together in the living room. After all, it is the little things. Peace and goodness to you.

This picture was actually taken on the 5th, but we could not resist including it - mostly because of Elliot. I believe Russell is trying to make "goo-goo goggles," but one never really knows. 

Also on the 5th, Thomas is rolling out the gingerbread cookie dough that will become the neighbors St. Nicholas Day treats.

Our battery went dead soon after this picture was taken, so no pictures of Russell (or Jared) with chocolate smeared all over his face. I know you are disappointed.

Mumma's Tree Farm: The children kept saying, "Thank you, Mr. Mummy."

Thomas thinks he's found acceptable tree.

The boys give the tree a closer examination.

Just a note that Thomas is wearing my Uncle Russ' Iowa Hawkeye scarf.

"Put on some spy music, please." Yes, these undercover agents are deft in their trade and keen masters of disguise. Their weapon of choice: Pant hangers. They also wore boots that you cannot see but truly completed the outfit.

For the record, I have already swept up one shattered ornament while the three "littles" sat on the couch pointing fingers and each denying any part in the glass all over the floor. I have also noticed that the ornaments seem to mysteriously move throughout the day despite my appeals (so nicely stated, of course) to "NOT TOUCH THE TREE!!!!"

And, yes, I am that crazy mom who buys reused wool bird ornaments at the farmer's market for presents. And actually the kids love them (see, not so crazy), though Thomas wishes Lucia's owl was his own.

Our ingenious Elliot

When you are the kind of boy that will "borrow" a zip lock bag at the party you are attending and then proceed to cram it full of Cheetoes so that it becomes a "to go" bag for home, you may very well express your desire to be a "choo choo train conductor" when you grow up. Your mother will not even bat an eye at your chosen profession but will rather praise you for your decision until you later relate to her that you aspire to be the "choo choo conductor at the zoo." (Isn't that a volunteer position?) And when you are the kind of boy that screws up your face like the above for every photo taken and calls it your best smile and wears a jacket nicer than anything either of your parents own (his was a gift and his mother's from the Goodwill), you will most certainly locate the letter "D" in the book you are reading and announce to your mother, without even batting your eye that, "D is for Darth Vader." But of course.

What carries you

"I began to know my story then. Like everybody’s, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery." Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

Thank you Molly for your beautiful post and the beautiful pictures of our little girls. And thank you again for introducing me to Hannah Coulter.

Another thought for the day

"There should be less talk;

a preaching point is not always

a meeting point. What do you 

do then? Take a broom and clean

someone's house. That says enough.

All of us are but His instruments

who do our little bit and pass by."

-Mother Teresa

Blessed Thanksgiving.

Insensibility

Insensibility
Wilfred Owen

Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers.
But they are troops who fade, not flowers,
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses, who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.

                                   II
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on armies' decimation.

                                   III
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

                                   IV
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.

                                   V
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.

                                   VI
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears.

Thought for this day

"I was asked why I did not give a 

rod with which to fish, in the hands

of the poor, rather than give the

fish itself as this makes them

remain poor. So I told them:

The people whom we pick up are

not able to stand with a rod.

So today I will give them fish and

when they are able to stand,

then I shall send them to you and

you can give them the rod.

That is your job.

Let me do my work today."

-Mother Teresa

Memory eternal to a friend, Bonnie Penner Witherall
martyred November 21, 2002

It is Daddy that we love

There appears to be a change in the wind around our home on Scott Street: The Wonder Twins are truly growing up, which means a lot of things (like my right eye is beginning to twitch less), but for this post, it means hello to little Legos and good-bye to Duplos. And so I spent the majority of my Saturday rearranging and cleaning the basement to reflect this transformation. The Lego table, which Jared built for Thomas's second birthday and which has lived in the gated play/laundry room for the past several years, i.e. since the twins entered our lives, has officially moved to the main area of the basement so that all of our children can play with our ever increasing Legos. Finding a new home in the vacated area is our little kitchen stuff (of course I couldn't resist a table cloth). And there is one little girl who could not be any happier about this new arrangement. As you will see, Daddy was invited to join the ever hospitable and delightful Mary Poppins for a cup of fresh tea (and yes Leslie, this is Jared wearing the hat). And check out our cool new times table board that Jared and Thomas created today. No wonder it is Daddy that we love. Peace and goodness. A blessed Thanksgiving to you all.

Today I am thankful for...

Making the vegan nameday cake. Many years Russell!

Elliot making scrambled eggs.

Russell finding panty hose in the garbage. Who can resist?

And yes, it is Russell donning all those costumes above. Hmm.

I don't mean to bug you

As some of you may know, my friend, Ms. Cheryl, is the housemother at the St. Joseph Worker House, a home for women and children with no place to go. While the home is owned and managed by the sisters of St. Mary's monastery, Ms. Cheryl and her daughter Shakira live in and manage the house on a daily basis. On Saturday Ms. Cheryl approached me to see if our family or if anyone I knew might be interested in sponsoring the house for Christmas and thus providing the women and children with presents on Christmas day. While I have family and friends who have already pledged $100, this amount is only enough to provide a meager gift for those living at St. Joseph's. If you are interested in helping out in anyway with any amount (no amount is too small), please let me know asap. I do not want to commit to Ms. Cheryl unless I have a bare minimum of $300 pledged. Presently I believe there are ten women and children in the house (Ms. Cheryl shared with me that a new family of a mother and four children, which includes an 8 month year old had just moved in; they had been living in their car on Credit Island).  Please forgive me for this; I often feel like I ask too much but Jesus and the church fathers and mothers have much to say about our responsibility to those in need as exemplified in the Gospel reading of the Good Samaritan this Sunday. And please do not feel obligated to do this. I know times are difficult and there are many others to give to as well. Please let me know by email (thehost55@hotmail.com) if this is something you can do and how much you are willing and able to give. Peace and goodness to you. And as Russell reminded us this morning, "Christ is in our midst."

If you are interested in reading an older posts about St. Joseph's, you can find it here.

Almsdeeds and compassion filled your life with their splendors

Irish Rune of Hospitality

I saw a stranger yestreen;

I put food in the eating place,

Drink in the drinking place,

Music in the listening place

And in the name of the Triune

He blessed myself and my house,

My cattle and my dear ones, and the lark said in her song

Often, often, often,

Goes the Christ in the stranger's guise,

Often, often, often,

Goes the Christ in the stranger's guise.

"St. Martin of Tours was born in Pannonia (Hungary today), the son of a pagan soldier in the Roman army. Martin joined the army, and also became a catechumen. While in the army in France, one bitter cold night Martin shared his military cloak with a naked beggar, and that night Martin had a dream: he saw Christ wearing the halved cloak he had given to the beggar. Soon after, Martin was baptized and left the army, determined to be a 'soldier of Christ.'

He became a hermit, and founded a hermitage at Liguge in France. He was elected bishop of Tours because of his reputation for holiness-and because he was already famous for his miracles: he is said to have raised a dead man to life, to have cured a leper with a kiss, to have conversed frequently with angels and with saints. At his episcopal ordination, some complained that he was not a nobleman, and he had 'dirty clothes and unkempt hair.' (He was forever giving his nice things away to the poor.) Be that is it may, Martin's holiness was universally recognized, and when he died in 397, he became one of the first non-martyrs to be venerated as a saint."  from Evelyn Birges Vitz's, A Continual Feast: A cookbook to celebrate the joys of family and faith through the Christian year

In Blackwater Woods

It is a chill, blustery, gray November day here in Davenport, Iowa. Upstairs the children are munching on their before breakfast sack, an Aldi knock-off of Kashi's Go Lean Crunch cereal (because I am that ridiculous) and creating with Legos. Thomas has constructed the archangel Michael and Death and brought down the dragon he shaped out of beeswax yesterday; a big fight out is imminent. Today I am deeply grateful for these little ones, my precious children, with their tiny jammies, their sticking up in the back hair, their silly jokes, their curiosity, and the beauty of their imagination. Today I am content, thankful for the first sip of the coffee my husband made just for me like he does every morning while I am huddled up asleep in our bed (because he is that kind), for the oversized, blue, fluffy robe enveloping my body- the robe that was my father's briefly and now is mine-, for the potato soup and loaf of molasses bread that we will offer thanks for this evening and then consume. Today I am thankful anew to be alive, to be exactly where I have been placed, to be given a new day, a new chance to love. May God help me. Peace and goodness to you all on this Wednesday.

In Blackwater Woods

Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning 

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able 

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Halloween 2011

So nothing terribly original like last year's costumes of Dr. Omar and Johnny Cash (though Russell was initially planning on dressing up as Joan of Arc until he was wooed by the bright colors of the clown costume our neighbor Leah gave us). Although Thomas did don a Grandma Johnson original.

Boo at the Zoo

Halloween Eve trick or treat

Elliot as The Pirate

So I totally know why people are terrified by clowns. Russell's make-up artist, aka Jared, in retrospect decided that covering up the eyebrows was not a good idea. 

Lucia, of course, insisted upon being Mary Poppins but also wanted to wear the princess dress our neighbor gave to us. Leslie, this is the Mary Poppin's hat that Jared would wear for the reading of the book.

For the record (because there was some confusion), Thomas is Robin Hood, not Peter Pan.