Dreary day before the day before....

Freezing rain all day in Cheshire. Every thing icy and slick.

Bern put rugs and towels down the back steps of the deck so the Puli could go down at all. He falls more and more and fell on the deck before getting to the steps. Bern mopped the dining room floor and he fell there.

I'm made anxious by his decline--so steep now.

We didn't even clear the ice from my car and Bern's truck.

I went to the car to get something and walked so carefully it could hardly be called 'walking' at all.

More like creeping very slowly.

Tim and Mimi and Eleanor come tomorrow. I hope the ice goes away.

It will be odd not to go for a morning service tomorrow. The three churches I serve--little rural places--decided to forgo Advent IV and only celebrate Christmas Eve. Good call, I'd say. Especially if it's still icy in the morning. Snow is manageable, ice is not.

Stay warm. Don't fall down. If you live where the world is not iced over--good for you!

Merry Day Before the Day Before....

Christmas Eve sermon

Christmas Eve 2017—St. Andrew’s, Northford

          Sing, Choirs of Angels, sing in exultation….

          Hark! the Herald angels sing, glory to the new-born King….

          It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old,

          From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold….

          Angels from the realm of glory, wing your flight o’er all the earth.

          Ye who sang creations story, now proclaim Messiah’s birth.

          The shepherds feared and trembled when lo! Above the earth,

          Rang out the angel chorus that hailed our Savior’s birth.

          It’s all about the angel-song. A dark, chill, starlit night, shattered by the rustle of wings and a sound not heard by human ears before.

          There were shepherds, of course, there to listen. And the mother and babe and dear, good Joseph…and the animals in the barn…. All of it is necessary to bring the Night alive…. But it begins with the angels, with their voices raised in song….

          The first Nowell, the angel did say, was to certain low shepherds in

                   Fields where they lay….

          The angels hovered ‘round and sang this song,

          “Venite adoremous dominum…”

          Angels we have heard on high, singing sweetly through the night

          And the mountains in reply, echoing their brave delight.

          Oh those angels….those angels….and their song….

                                                ***

          Over a dozen years ago I discovered that I had developed tinnitus—commonly known as “ringing in the ears”.

          It began one chilly night when I was on the back porch, letting our then dog, Sadie, out and listening to the crickets. When I came back inside to the warmth, I realized I could still hear the crickets. Then, almost at the same time, I realized what I heard wasn’t crickets—it was below freezing and there were no crickets singing….

          So I went to the doctor and was first examined by his 3^rd year Med Student intern. I told the Med Student about the crickets.

          He looked dutifully in my ears and asked: “are they crickets or cicadas?”

          I told him, “Well, I thought of them as crickets, but I guess they could be cicadas.”         

         “It’s tinnitus,” he told me. Then he said, “tinnitus can be quite severe…some people are so troubled by it that they commit suicide.”

          “You can’t tell people things like that!” I said, “What Med School do you go to?”

          (It was Yale, by the way….)

          Looking back, I realized the first symptom was hearing music after the music was over. At night, just before I go to bed, I switch off the radio in the kitchen that is usually tuned to classical music. I’d get half way up the back steps and realize the music was still playing. So I’d go back and check the radio. I must have done that a dozen times before I realized the music was in my head—echoing on long after it ended.

          Which causes me to think about the angel song—how it must have stayed with the Shepherds all the way to Bethlehem and back, how the echoes of that celestial music must have still been in their heads when they laid down to try to sleep…how it must have greeting them the next morning when they awoke at dawn and how it must have lingered through the day.

          How long must that angel song have stayed in their ears? Did the shepherds just get used to it and go on with their lives—or did it sing within them always? How could you ever let go of music like that? Why would you ever want it to end…?

                                                          *

Once, again years ago, In Saturday’s Waterbury Republican American there was a large block ad on page 3 that said: DEAR FRANK, GIVE US ANOTHER CHANCE. I LOVE YOU, BONNIE.

          The pathos and pain of that ad touched me deeply. I could hardly breathe thinking about Bonnie and Frank—their broken relationship, the anguish of it all.  No angel song echoes in Bonnie and Frank’s ears—all they hear is suffering and loss.                      

          It is not a good time to hear the Angel Song. Things collapse around us. The sounds of fear drown out the Angel Song.   

          At this holy time—the birthday of the Prince of Peace—the Middle East is in chaos, hundreds of thousands of refugees have no home, terrorism escalates around the world, climate change threatens us more each day.  The sounds of war and weather drown out the Angel Song.

          Surrounded by the affluence of the richest state in the richest country in the world, we cannot help but see the sharp contrast of the bitter poverty on the edges of our wealth. The cries of need and want drown out the Angel Song.

          And all of us—like Frank and Bonnie—have heartache and pain in our personal lives that tend to distract us—like ringing in the ears—from the Angel Song.

          The writer, Madeleine L’Engle captures all this well. Listen:

                        “This is no time for a child to be born,

                        with the earth betrayed by war and hate

                        And a nova lighting the sky to warn

                        That time runs out and sun burns late.

                        That was no time for a child to be born,

                        In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

                        Honor and truth were trampled by scorn—

                        Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

                        When is the time for love to be born?

                        The inn is full on the planet earth.

                        And by greed and pride the sky is torn—

                        Yet love still takes the risk of birth.

          The clanging of greed, the tumult of war, the sharp cries of injustice, the shrillness of fear—a cacophony of noises drown out the Angel song.

          Yet love still takes the risk of birth.

          Again, the Child is born. Again, the Gift is given. Hope, like a fledgling, spreads her wings within our hardened hearts.

          When is the time for love to be born?

          There is no time but this. And even in this dark time—on one of the longest nights of the year—a Light will shine if we can be the people who take the risk of love.

          A Light will shine if we can let Hope find a home in our hearts and Justice spring new born in our lives.

          A Light will shine if we only still the clamoring of fear and greed and hatefulness long enough to once more hear the Angel song.

                                                  *

          “Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;

           beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong;

           and warring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring;

           O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing.”

          Once more, once more as always, Love takes the risk of Birth.

          O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing….

Christmas Trees Past

CHRISTMAS TREES PAST

Sometime after Epiphany,
Bern takes the Christmas trees outside
and cuts off the branches
until only the trunk remains.

And the trunks stick around,
sometimes for years.

I was just out on the back porch,
smoking a cigarette,
(I know, I know, but I do!)
and there was a trunk from last year.

At first I thought of it as forlorn,
stripped, abandoned.
But then I looked through the window
and saw the tree for this year
in all it's glory.
Sparking with lights--
mostly white but colored in the middle--
which Bern did, of course
(I have no gift for lights...)
and spangled with ornaments
from years gone by.

Mimi's first Christmas ornament is there
(Josh's is long destroyed
but we keep it's wounded self'
on the mantle where the stockings hang).
The balloon lady who reminds
me of e.e. cumming's
"little lame balloon man",
who "whistled far and wee".

So many winged things--
angels and birds and a flying elephant
and soaring winged Hindu gods,
and angels of all kinds,
all kinds. Angels, always.

And the strawberry orniment
Josh got in pre-school,
when all the other kids
got toys of some kind.
It has ruptured much
and Bern has done surgery on it
from time to time.

Each ornament tells a story
of some Christmas past.

And I love them,
love them all.

Even the trunks that lean
against our deck.

Christmas present is infused
with Christmas' past.
Until all are one.

One. Christmas. Always.

Better now

Little Eleanor, 16 months old, is out of the hospital after an overnight stay.

All the blood tests and EEG came back with no definitive answer to why she had a seizure at daycare and another in the ambulance yesterday. She had one several months ago. Mimi and Tim haven't seen any of them. When they got to the hospital she seemed mostly normal.

She was released today.

Sometimes 'not knowing' is harder than 'knowing'. If they knew the 'why' to the seizures there would be things to be doing.

Keep the three of them in your hearts as we move toward the Light of Christmas.

I just realized

I just realized I haven't posted for almost a week.

I have excuses.

It's almost Christmas and I've been buying/wrapping/bagging gifts for a while--not that long really....

And I've had one of those early winter colds that gets better and then worse and then better again and then comes back. I blame Bern for giving it to me. So, I've been out of sorts.

Then I seem to have developed a rash that exactly conforms to the mask of my C-Path machine. I've had this machine for several years and all of a sudden I'm breaking out down the sides of my nose. Bern has begun to disinfect it as she did the toys at the day care she ran and it's some better. I can't see my dermatologist until January 2 but, of all things, Benedryl cream seems to be helping the itching that has woke me up at 4:30 a.m. for several nights.

Plus, I've been writing for Bern every day. For Christmas, she gives me something she has made or painted or constructed and I write her stories and poems and such. This year the writing has been difficult. I blame my depression over having He Who Will Not Be Named as my president and all the damage he is doing, left and right. (Just a phrase--the damage is all from the Right!)

But I finally finished a poem about 'Home' and a poem about our granddaughters and a story about Bela in the Kennel over Christmas and a sonnet. I used to write Bern sonnet after sonnet, but haven't for years since free verse is so much easier. But I wrote a sonnet for her today in about an hour and a half. 14 lines, iambic pentameter, a/b/a/b, c/d/c/d, e/f/e/f, g/g about my love for her.

So, I should be back.

But there's this--17 month old Eleanor had two seizures today--she had one months ago in school. Today there was one in pre-school and one in the ambulance. She's in the hospital for tests. Tim and Mimi, I'm sure, are beside themselves. They were supposed to come here on the 23rd and fly from Bradley in Hartford to Florida to see Tim's family late Christmas day. All that is in the air now.

If you pray or meditate or think sweet thoughts, send them out to Eleanor and Mimi and Tim. And to Bern and I if you have any left.

Lordy, Lordy--children and grand-children, how you worry....

If one day could do it....

If one day could turn around a year of agony, yesterday was that day.

For all my angst and upset over President He Who Will Not Be Named since his election and everything that has happened since. Yesterday restored my hope and longing for the country I want to live in--and it came from the most unexpected place.

Alabama.

I've never been in Alabama and until today I never wanted to be.

I'm a transplanted Appalachian in New England (the first hundred years are the hardest--then you belong here) but I've never been a Southerner. If you think people from the mountains are Southern, I could give you a lesson in why not.

I love going to Oak Island, North Carolina, but that's vacation land and doesn't really count as 'the South'. For most of my life 'the South' has stood for everything I don't stand for and Alabama has been the 'most South' place of all.

But the coalition of blacks, young people, city folks and suburban (small 'r') republican white women gave me faith that even in Alabama I could find a place to be.

I grew up in the Pilgrim Holiness Church and the Evangelical Methodist Church. I have a warm spot in my heart for white evangelical Christians. Some of the 'best people' I ever knew were those folks.

But the lies they've had to tell themselves to support Trump and then Roy Moore have tarnished my admiration for their position (without agreeing with their position much at all--I admired their stand). But the cracks in the wall of all the 'family values' and 'Biblical principles' have become very deep.

I pray they regain their previous moral stance and, though my moral stance is different, I long to respect them again.

But now I don't. How far you'd have to come from the faith of my grandmaw Jones and the Jones family to support Roy Moore is beyond belief.

We need Evangelical Christians in our midst to give us a plum line about morality.

The plum line has gone badly askew.

As the signs on barns throughout the south say: Get Right With God.

Heed that my white Evangelical brothers and sisters. Heed it well.

Heal and come back to be a compass in our midst. Please.

"Sweet Home, Alabama...."

Today I heard a devoted Evangelical Christian on NPR painfully and awkwardly explain why he was voting for Roy Moore. He said Doug Jones believed in a woman's right to abortion (the law of the land, by the way) and he decided he would rather vote for a man who abused "a few girls" than someone who sanctioned 'the death of millions of babies'.

Bless him for his attempt to justify what I find unjustifiable--a man who broke laws, albeit years ago, is better than a man who upholds the law.

But Alabama, against all my disbelief, did the right thing tonight.

Doug Jones won!!!!

Something is right in this somewhat crazy world.

I breathe a little deeper than I did this morning.

And I thank God for the people of Sweet Home, Alabama....