I love this old blog and it will stay here forever. I might even occasionally post old things from it. But it was time to move on and expand and create with more design intricacy, and, well. Here we are. Please come over, reset your bookmarks and continue the lovely conversation over at the new diggs.
Oh, and I hope you think thoroughly is at least a little bit easier to spell that “itinerant.” Isn’t it?
Joy to you all!
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The light of the Christmas star to you
The warmth of home and hearth to you
The cheer and good will of friends to you
The hope of a childlike heart to you
The joy of a thousand angels to you
The love of the Son and God’s peace to you.
-Irish Christmas Blessing
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The last dusk before the marvelous day has come. Behind our Christmas tree, the bay window is filling up with light like blue velvet, it’s frame the pale curve of aspens with bare, frosted arms. Drip by drop, the daylight is stained with dark and the flow of night rises and spills into our house through the glass. Shadows crawl up the walls, reach with long, knobbly fingers across the wood floor. But not around the Christmas tree. Sword straight, arms stretched out to hold the thousand smalls stars in its greenery, our tree stands like a fighter in his own unbroken circle of light.
A sacred circle, that. I think most children know this. It is, after all, the place where presents miraculously appear. It’s something more though too. When I was small child, I’d sneak in alone to lay on my back, face stroked by fir branches, the scent of the needles like a heady wine to my senses, and I’d look up, up, up. Through a maze of fir boughs like tiny paths that led somewhere I wished I could go. Alive in thought, alert as if I’d stepped out of the ordinary into somewhere marvelously else, I’d stay there as long as I could. The Christmas tree was always the centerpoint of holiday wonder to me, the live, almost personed presence of the strange gladness that invaded my home once a year. In the circle of its light, sparkle, and scent, anything might happen.
It was the circle of possibility. I feel it still tonight. Sitting alone in this darkling room, I feel hope edge up to me in that light. I’m older now, all the unnameable wonder of being little and having a few toys satisfy my hunger is gone. I want a lot more now. Things like peace in my soul, love without conditions, the way cleared for dreams. But tonight, my eyes opened by the beauty of the room and hour, I feel a bit of my childhood wonder coming back, and with the insight of adulthood, I understand that at its heart is hope.
This season is a celebration of unchangeable things being changed. Of death being made into life. Of the eternal outcasts being reconciled to the One who will always belong. In this way, the Christmas lights are an echo of the light that fell from the Bethlehem star. Within the circle of that light rested a baby who was what Madeleine L’Engle called “the glorious impossible.” His birth remade all that was wrong into all that is right. It is that glorious fact I celebrate tonight two thousand years later. It is that impossible good becoming possible that is the reason for all our extravagant celebrations. Christmas presents appearing in the circle of Christmas tree light just echo the gift of a God baby born for us into a circle of starlight.
Christmas is all about the circles of God’s light which enter this world and alter the wrong. It is all about the impossible becoming possible. And that is where the wonder lies. It’s what every child senses, beyond the simple love of gifts, a great, impossible good looming up beautifully all about them. I want to enter that wonder again. I want to stand by the circle of Christmas tree light, and let my heart enter its world-altering ground. Light Himself has carved a circle of possibility into the universe, and its echo is in the circle round my tree.
So I’ll sit here tonight and rejoice.
May you do the same.
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to Nashville. Have a cocoa and carols sort of weekend. And think good thoughts like these while you’re at it:
Earth strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring,
Heaven hath answering music,
For all Angels soon to sing.
Earth put on your whitest,
Bridal robe of spotless snow,
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
-Christina Rossetti
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When night comes on with song and tale we pass the wintry hours;
By keeping up a cheerful heart we hope for better days.
We tend the cattle, sow the seed, give work unto the ploughers,
With patience wait till winter yields before the sun’s fair rays.
And so the world goes round and round, and every time and season
With pleasure and with profit crowns the passage of the year,
And so through every time of life, to him who acts with reason,
The beauty of all things doth appear.
-Traditional English Song
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We must meet reverses boldly and not suffer them to frighten us my dear. We must act the play out. We must live misfortune down!
-Betsey Trotwood in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.
Maggie Smith (who plays Betsey T.) says this with such dauntless sparkle in the movie version I saw a bit of yesterday, I couldn’t keep the line to myself.
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Oh what a day! I’ve been trying to get a coherent post together since two days ago when I was delayed for three hours in the Nashville airport. The oddest of circumstances have stymied my efforts at every turn. I’m up near Boston visiting a friend and by a weird twist of events, ended up unexpectedly running a booktable for my parents today at a nearby conference. Selling books, I can do. And usually, I can get some blogging done in between. But today, my chair was situated right in front of the storage closet for the facility, so literally every ten minutes, I had to hop out of the way as a steady stream of workmen came in and out of the door. There was just no other place I could reasonably be. The poor guys, they’d grin apologetically and I’d scootch out of the way, apologizing profusely when I forgot they were in the closet, and they pushed the door open to almost send me sprawling- again. Ah. Dignity. Try to finish a sale in the midst of that, let alone an insightful post on the vagaries of modern travel (which was what I was going for)!
It was almost made up though by the exuberant welcome I received tonight from my friend’s Stephanie‘s four, tiny, darling children. It’s a flash flood, the patter of small feet and the clasp of little arms. “Sarah,” said a tiny one with a riot of black curls, my face scrunched between her hands. “Thank you for coming back to us. I love you.” Somehow she manages to say it with a British accent, and I reply in kind. And then there were tiny bodies cuddled next to me on the couch, and fresh cookies, and a late night watching of Bleak House (which you ought to see if you haven’t). And of course, philosophying with my friend over tea, which is a tonic to make any day better. And tomorrow there will be further languishing discussions with cups of coffee when my brother and parents join the cottage life here. Steph has been cooking since dawn.
And oh, walks in the leaves. Have you ever seen a maple tree in autumn burn in every vein with the fire of a glad, willing death? It’s almost indecent its so lovely. I saw one tree next to a cream-colored saltbox house yesterday, and it looked as if it would set the woods aflame. Walking through the forest up here with the trees just turned is like reading Beowulf. You enter an ancient existence where heroes die in battle and are farewelled with bonfires in the brooding dark. Every leaf is a warrior fighting to its death.
So, the real post is going to have to wait until I fly back to Nashville on Tuesday. I have two flights anyway, but if I get delayed another three hours, I might actually get something profoundly written. The Charlotte airport, my stopover place, has rocking chairs. Sounds good for thinking. Till then, I hope you have as lovely a weekend of feasting and friends and fall to look forward to as I have. You must enjoy this season. There is simply no other way to exist. I’ll see you Tuesday!
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Sorry friends. I just lost a page’s worth of a post. I’ll rewrite it all out again when I’m a little less droopy-eyed with sleep. We three girls swam for over an hour in a crashing storm of an ocean that felt cold as ice, and then we trekked shell-strewn miles up and down the beach and now, I’m worn right out. I did try to get that post up! More tomorrow. My advice for now? Look at the stars. Eat chocolate chip cookies dunked in coffee with whipped cream. Walk long, wind tossed miles. Laugh with anyone you can get your hands on. It’s working for me. Sleep well.
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Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
-Emily Dickinson
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