The Sixth Day of Christmas: Reflection

New Year's Eve. I've never much liked this holiday, but then I've never been one for parties. Instead I want to give a brief reflection on my year of 2011.

I am in awe. The sheer quantity of events is staggering, but the gravity of some of them -- it's troubling to reminisce. Briefly:

The Fifth Day of Christmas: Murder in the Cathedral

I'm late posting this, but I have good reason. I've been reading.

Yesterday was the Feast Day for Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who worked against King Henry II's attempts to secure the English church under royal authority. The conflict culminated in Becket's murder in Canterbury Cathedral.

So, I recalled that T. S. Eliot had a play about this, Murder in the Cathedral, and I had never read it. I thought, ah, what better way to spend an afternoon with a bad cold? I'll just curl up with a mug of tea and read for a bit. Or, several hours. That is, I read the play straight through and then flipped back to the beginning and read it again, aloud (yes, with a hoarse voice and stuffy head but it had to be done --  it's that good). I don't even know what to say, it's still fresh and new for me. Vivid. My favorite part, as of this moment, is the four Tempters but that's probably everyone's favorite part...

Meanwhile the substance of our first act
Will be shadows, and the strife with shadows.

The Fourth Day of Christmas: Humble Christian

For this day I wondered what to write. I'm struggling with a chest cold -- mustering the strength just to think straight is about all I can do. And then my friend, Jamie, who bears the title of Honorary Fourth Brother (I am blessed with brothers!) wrote this little meditation: The Hidden Power of God at Christmas

Go and read it.

Technorati Tags: Christianity

The Third Day of Christmas: Of Prayer and Pie

I am very like my mother, which shouldn't be surprising I suppose. "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his." -- Oscar Wilde.

Mum is a person who is constantly at prayer, so I am too. I've thought a great deal about this, wondering when and how she taught me, but we both don't know. I can hear her when she goes about the house at night, turning out the lights, or when she's folding laundry she speaks blessings on her children as she folds our clothing. I remember reading once from John Piper, he said he gets up very early and while his family is still sleeping he goes to each bedroom door and prays for his children. Mum is like that.

Today I heard her in the kitchen, putting away leftover pie and wiping down the counters. She puts her arthritic hands in the hot dishwater, washing away, and looking out the window hums hymns and mutters prayers. Sitting in the front room, where I'm writing, a piece of pie waiting by my elbow, I realize that I'm also humming and muttering. Technorati Tags: Christianity

The Second Day of Christmas: Living in New England

This is my family's first Christmas in New England. We are stressed and sometimes a little worried, mostly about financial difficulties. It is a hard thing to move half way across the country to live in such an expensive place. It is a harder thing for my parents to live separately for several weeks at a time -- my mother living here, my father working so hard in Missouri.

Dad came into the house Christmas Eve, took one look around at the lit candles and truly stunning tree, and said, "Look -- it's Christmas and I'm with my family. A miracle." Technorati Tags: Christianity

The First Day of Christmas: Herein is Love

The Medieval practice of counting the Twelve Days of Christmas begins at sunset, not sunrise. Christmas Day proper begins the evening of the 25th and so continues until sundown of the 26th. Is this obvious to all you readers? I have no idea. I've only observed this practice in recent years, so it's all still new.

My family woke this Christmas Sunday, donned our finest, and worshiped in church. This has to be the best way to prepare for Christmas.

In this was manifest the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
  1 John 4:9-10

Merry Christmas! Technorati Tags: Christianity

Christmas Eve Meditation

East Coker
Quartet No. 2, III.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away --

East Coker, St. Michael's Church
Source

...So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning,
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

-- T.S. Eliot

"That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, 

that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship 

is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things 

write we unto you, that your joy may be full." 

1 John 1:3-4

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Literature, Poetry

Speak Lightly

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
     Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my savior and my God.

Psalm 42:5 (and 11!)

Favorite Psalm (of many people, I'm sure). But then I have to go and write appalling poetry about it. Why, O why? It's wordy, it's dashed off, it has no set form...just sort of sprawls. But I post it here anyway, for my own peace; my mind won't let it alone!

She Understood

“Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy–fully armed too as it’s a highly dangerous quest.”

–Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Writing

Friendship: A Rumination

"To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue.” -- C. S. Lewis