Learning to be astonished

I know I have life only insofar as I have love.

I have no love except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind. 

-from Leavings, Wendell Berry

I awoke this morning to discover these beautiful flowers as the centerpiece of our kitchen table; a gift from my kind and generous friend of 37 years. There were pancakes that tasted like doughnuts (Jared could not find the whole wheat flour) awaiting my arrival and a table full of giddy children who could not wait to belt out "Happy Birthday" and hand me my presents. There was a promise by one of my sick children, Russell, (yes, the twins have been vomiting) to later draw me a card and there was the reception of the gifts: a lovely wooden basket from our local fair trade store stashed full with a package of Ethiopian coffee; icons of two of my favorite saints, St. Maria of Paris and St. Xenia of Petersburg; a copy of Wendell Berry's work Leavings, as well as a copy of his prose, The Unsettling of America, which I hold with holy fear, sensing that the fleshing out of his words in my life to be transformational; and the promise of one of my favorite movies, Babbette's Feast to be soon arriving. Soon I will leave for the cemetery to visit my father and later there will be a dinner of pizza and buttercream frosted birthday cake with my mother.  I have been terribly spoiled on this day with gifts and cards and phone calls and messages and singing from near and far. As my husband said, "You only turn 40 once." And on this first day of my fortieth year, I am thankful for the amazing gift of life with all its robustness and fragility, its beauty and ugliness, its peace and chaos, its hope and despair. I am deeply grateful for you all, for your constant love, your forgiveness, your friendship. Unquestionably, my life is richer, fuller, and more filled with the divine because of you. Peace and goodness and love, dear ones. 

Messenger

Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird-

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here.

which is gratitude, to be give a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever. 

Rachel weeping

I was standing in a throng of people gathered at the Christkindlmarket in Chicago's Daley plaza on Friday afternoon when I looked up at a gargantuan TV screen on the side of a neighboring building and realized something horrific had happened. O my God.

Every Tuesday the children and I stand in our icon corner for our morning prayers and remember by name those family members, friends, and strangers who have departed this life before us. At the beginning of this month, we added the name of the infant James, our friend's son whose life ended in his mother's womb. Last Monday, we added the name of Michael, my dear friend's father whose life was cut short after a three-year battle with cancer. Yesterday afternoon with much fear I finally allowed myself to read one article about Friday's murders and I wrote the names of Newtown, Connecticut's holy innocents on a blank sheet of paper and wept and mourned anew. Tomorrow my children and I will stand with the saints. I will stare at the icon of Christ harrowing hell and do the only thing I know to do, pray. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.

Memory eternal

Charlotte

Daniel

Rachel

Olivia

Josephine

Ana

Dylan

Dawn

Madeline

Catherine

Chase

Jesse

James

Grace

Anne Marie

Emilie

Jack

Noah

Caroline

Jessica

Avielle

Lauren

Mary

Victoria

Benjamin

Allison

Nancy

O Christmas tree

Vision

Wendell Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

here, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides...

The river will run

clear, as we will never know it...

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields...

Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its reality.

The annual trip to Mumma's, except this year it was 70 degrees on December 4th.

The light is everything

The early darkness has caught me off-guard, leaving me bewildered that the sun is disappearing behind the neighbor's homes as I climb up the stairs to our second storey and dumbstruck by the fleeting  fragments of pink and orange piercing the sky. The darkness startles me with the lavishness of its blackness, its depth like a cavernous hole. A sense of disequilibrium threatens as what seems to be 8:30 in the evening is really only 5:00. Then I catch sight of them from our front windows, the dangling white lights so meticulously strung by my husband last weekend. Artificial lights, mass produced and purchased at Menards, yet they offer me solace, these beaming lights, their brightness permeating the darkness, helping in some inexplicable way to quiet the cacophony of inner voices that crowd out silence, that squashes out prayer.  I leave the warmth of our home, the smells of a pumpkin scented candle mingled with a curried lentil soup dissipating into the briskness of the late November air. Momentarily I stand in the silence of the night, the business of all creatures quelled by the shift in the seasons, and gaze at our home. It is ablaze with light shining out into the darkness, the pressed autumn leaves still taped to our windows are vibrant and beautiful, the scrawl of the Emily Dickinson poem written on the wax paper enveloping the leaves illegible but present. And then I am back inside, the children are squealing and racing in circles through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. There are desperate pleas for their father to wrestle with them, to tickle them, especially under their arm pits, and peals of delight when he obliges. I am touched by their wonder, their voracious energy, their innocence, and offer up a plea that my own human limitations and sins will not spoil their sense of awe, their sense of the divine everywhere present. Already we have entered the season of preparation, a time of joyful solemnity, as we are asked again to embark upon a journey that will lead us to an encounter with the incarnate Christ. Along the way, there will be feasts rich with traditions - shoes to be left out for St. Nicholas with the expectation of gifts and chocolate gold coins (not that we are counting down the days, but there are five to be exact), a white and red dress hidden in my closet to be worn by our daughter on St. Lucia day, and the ingredients for Swedish ginger cookies served for this feast already stashed in our pantry. Tomorrow we will light the first candle of Advent and ask the question, "Who is like God?" finding the answer not among the noblest of warriors or the most devout of priests, reaching beyond St. Nicholas, St. Herman of Alaska, and St. Lucia, to the nativity of a helpless child, the God-Man, nourished at his Mother's breast, lying in a cattle stall.   

The Ponds

Mary Oliver

Every year

the lilies

are so perfect

I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding

the black,

mid-summer ponds.

Nobody could count all of them—

the muskrats swimming

among the pads and the grasses

can reach out

their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that

rife and wild.

But what in this world

is perfect?

I bend closer and see

how this one is clearly lopsided—

and that one wears an orange blight—

and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away—

and that one is a slumped purse

full of its own

unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life

is to be willing

to be dazzled—

to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even

to float a little

above this difficult world.

I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -

that the light is everything - that it is more than the sum

of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

Postscript: Yes, my children insist upon dressing like it is summer and like to mix patterns. I applaud them for showing early signs of bucking the system. Incidentally that fuzzy thing Elliot is wearing is my hat: I have always wanted to be Russian. And yes, Russell is holding yarn and pretending it is a baby and did request I take his picture. Also, it was he that prematurely placed every shoe we own out for St. Nicholas, and it most certainly took much coaxing to convince him to put the shoes away. And yes, Thomas has requested that the box he promised to St. Nicholas in his note contain peanut butter blossom cookies. Hershey kisses were purchased today.