I had a lifestyle session with a local family just before Christmas. We had a challenge on our hands given that it was the darkest day of the year – literally just hours after winter's solstice. Rain kept us inside their cozy English farmhouse where we worked to catch a few glimpses of Christmas at home in a large family like my own, with some kids close by and others spreading their wings and flying around the world.
I am grateful to have shared a little bit of it with them.
Not far past, but I am on a bit of a time delay due to our travel schedule this season. We have a blessedly full house with our kids and their friends, which is just how I like it.
Been feeling a a bit crunched for time this week. So much so I have been tongue tied over here. Looking at her sweet face I am reminding myself that it is more important to become like a little child this season than to be uber grown up and organized and caught up and any number of words I am not at this moment. Only one thing is needful and if I rush I am going to miss it.
Still, I really hope all the bathrooms are clean before company arrives.
That is about how my Martha vs Mary debate goes these days. : )
"Incline Thine ear, O Lord, and make bright the darkness…."
– prayer for Gaudete Sunday
Because isn't this what we really need? Like everyone else I have been deeply saddened by the innocents lost last week, as well as by the darkness which envelopes a heart and allows such a thing to come to pass. But in the end, great positive change doesn't come through policies, but through people. It does not come in big sweeping blasts of condemnation and commotion, but in tiny lights which come together to illuminate a dark world.
Some things will never be heard through bull horns. Messages of love and peace, like prayers, can only be heard through whispers. They are spread through clasped hands and never raised fists or pointed fingers. They spill forth, a heart overflow. Gentleness and awe cannot be coerced, but are often inspired.
So this is what we do. We slow down. We whisper joy. We share beauty. We find peace and take great care in a restless and reckless time. We try to forgive immense pains, extend grace, and to step back from heated arguments. Instead of shouting into the darkness, or fixing our gaze there, we stop and make light, right where we are.
And yes, there are those who are waiting, ready to extinguish our fragile flames.
Indeed they are there.
We must be as unceasing as they, quietly lighting vigil candles of charity in every corner of the world we find ourselves. There is no other way.
Be a light in your corner of the world today – a light-seeker, a light-bearer. Make a heart bright.
A line from a book I read recently described the tree branches in winter as like arthritic fingers. I thought of that as I gazed out my window the other morning. While I stood there a group of dove-gray pigeons came to roost on those frost covered limbs, puffing out their chests as they rested there.
"In order to see birds it is necessary to become part of the silence." – Robert Lynd
It is a wonderful thing to find the quiet even if it is in tiny little pockets of the day.
"Hear and let it penetrate into your heart: let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you:
let nothing alter your heart or your countenance."
Starry Sky Journal 