Let the Love Light Glow

The fourth candle of advent is the candle of love.  And when the waiting is over, we light the Christ candle.

My previous blogs on these candles, the candles of hope, peace, and joy,  have had a bit of darkness in them, but love? Well, love is what the Christ candle is all about.

All week long, as we celebrated Christmas amidst the hustle and bustle of plans and food and gifts and comings and goings of children and friends and family -- and yes, also amidst the weariness and frustrations -- this poem by Christina Rosetti, put to music and sung by Shawn Colvin,  has been playing in the background of my mind:

Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, love divine
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angels gave the sign.
...
Love shall be our token
Love be yours and love be mine
Love to God and neighbour
Love our plea and gift and sign...

If you do not know this lovely carol, there are numerous versions on YouTube, but this is my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDzL_22nDA

It’s all about love. Passing on the message of Christmas, symbolized by the white Christ candle, is acting on it: giving it away, letting it be our token, our gift, our sign.

And I’ve experienced that this week. Love is two 80+-year-old women watching two very active pre-school brothers in the church nursery, passing up the Christmas eve service so that the boys' mom could experience an hour of peace. Love is watching my son and daughter-in-law cradling their month old baby. Love is watching people throw money in the Sally Ann kettles, and love is joining one of the bell ringers in a slightly off-key version of The First Noel outside the doors of the local grocers. Love is doctors, nurses, gas station attendants, pharmacists, pastors, policemen, waitresses, cooks and so many more folks working to keep us healthy, safe, nurtured and well-fed while we enjoyed our holiday. Love is homemade Christmas gifts. Love is walking with your loved ones and finding a token of love on the trail: a heart-shaped stone.

Love is a tiny fir tree in our woods, carefully, beautifully, and anonymously  decorated to give walkers in the woods a moment of surprise and joy.

 Love is writing your worries on a slip of paper and tossing them into the God-box, saying, “They’re all yours, now,” and knowing it to be true. Love is the resident sweetie, who hates performing or speaking in public, joining the Dutch folk at church to sing  “Ere Zij God” (a Dutch carol, much loved by his wife); and love is the Scots Presbyterians saying, “Beautiful!”   Love is a moment of quietness. Love is serving a simple meal of meatballs and mashed potatoes for Christmas dinner and not having anyone whine, “Where’s the turkey and the stuffing and the cranberry sauce?” Love is being able to do what you love and giving it away as a personal gift to the world. And love is having a friend send you a quote that fits in perfectly with this blog: “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love." (Hamilton Wright Mabie)

It’s all about love. Pass it on, eh?

The Third Candle

The third candle on the advent wreath is the candle of joy.

Oh, goody! I’ve been looking forward to writing about this. Joy is such a contagious, happy-sounding word. Writing about it will be a joyful pleasure, right? Um ... maybe not.

The dictionary says that synonyms for joy are  “delight, great pleasure, happiness ... ”  But a friend reminds me of a quote by Thomas Merton. “If you do not know the difference between joy and pleasure, than you have not yet begun to live.”

Joy is serious business, apparently.  I decide to explore some more before I write (always a good idea; careless, thoughtless writing is joyless for both the writer and reader.)

If you google joy quotes, you will get an eyeful of them. For instance: Joy is inside of you and doesn’t depend on outward circumstances. Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. Joy is a net that catches souls (that one came from Mother Theresa). Joy wipes away pain. Joy is a sign of God’s presence. If you are attentive, you will find joy in the present moment. Music will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.  Joy is a choice. Joy is easily transported: bring it with you. And I love this one: In times of joy, all of us wish we had a tail we could wag. (WH Auden).

After I’m finished smiling about this image, I notice something. It’s the words “In times of joy...” that stops me. In times of joy...we are almost always reminded that there’s another side of life, that is, times of sorrow. Times of blues. Times of unhappiness.

I’ve just come back from sharing a lovely evening with a group of good friends. We laughed as we told stories and shared memories of Christmases past. We were warmed by fellowship, and  were feeling the joy of community. And then the door opened and pain walked in. It’s not all good news out there; we all struggle with issues; we all have friends and relatives with serious emotional and medical  problems, and we feel so helpless. We’d like to fix it, but we can’t. Is there room for joy in that scenario?

I haven’t found any great treatise on joy that will give me and you the definitive answer. But here’s how I see it. It seems to me that in the range of feelings from sorrow to joy, there are many different shades, and they mingle together: happy-clappy joy with deep sorrow, quiet joy with winter blues, ecstatic joy with black despair. Like streams of water coming from many sources, they mingle and merge to form a river – the river of life that carries us on. We can’t undo those mingled currents and travel always on the river of joy; but we can look for joy in our darkest moments, because it is there. This I believe.

The candle of joy is pink. That’s because, way back when Advent and Lent were established in the church calendar, both were somber times of penance and reflection, a time of mourning for our sins. One of the popes, however, was wise enough to know that people can break under the yoke of unrelieved sadness, so in the middle of Lent, he gave out roses to the priests, to remind folks of the joy that was coming. Pink became the colour to symbolize that joy, and so a pink candle was also inserted into the advent wreath.

I added a river of various coloured threads to the rose on this candle

It seems to me that God is handing us roses at Christmas time. Joy came down to live with us. Light the candle of joy, and let the flame spread light in the darkness. And go ahead: wag that figurative tail!

The Second Candle

The candle we lit last week Sunday on our advent wreath was the candle of peace.

I’m sorry, dear readers. For once, I am stumped. I have nothing to share with you. Peace on earth, the song the angels sang to the shepherds, is a mystery. God knows how much we all desire to have peace on our earth today. What a wonderful world it would be! Instead...well, you know the instead:  War. Violence. Hatred. Crime. Greed....

What was all that singing and rejoicing by the angels all about then? Jesus himself was a lightning rod of divisiveness, and his life was marked not only with good, but also attracted enemies, who waged acts of violence, anger and hatred. Now, centuries later, religion still causes wars. Peace on earth? Really?

I am at my wit's end and have decided to skip writing a blog this week when I read something that makes me sit up.

Marian Wright Edelman, a children’s advocate, quotes Edmond McDonald: “When God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, He goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn’t release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And God puts an idea or purpose into the mother’s heart. And she puts it in the baby’s mind, and then—God waits. The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.” Those babies, says Edelman, grow up to be Gandhis and Mandelas and Mother Theresas – and you and me, all charged with the mission to guide the earth toward peace, rather than conflict.  Each of us is a possibility, another channel through which peace could come to earth.

The dove with an olive branch is a universal symbol of peace.

I need to change the way I think of peace. I need to turn conventional thinking upside down. I’d like to stamp my foot and shout, “I want peace on earth, and I want it now!” But that’s not the message of the peace candle. Peace does not come about through a show of power, or forcing others to our wills. It does not come with rules and laws and treaties.  It comes as a child, vulnerable and helpless. At Christmas, we are reminded of the child in the manger, who grew up to spread a counter-cultural message, the only message that will bring about lasting peace: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Each of us is bound by invisible threads to every other person on the planet, and we all are bound to the earth that we walk on. The peace we’re looking for begins not with the end of wars, but much closer to home: it begins with me and you.

PS: I couldn't resist showing off the little wall hanging I wrote about last week. My grandson Solay (aged 6) designed and drew the tree, chose the fabrics and beads, and helped me sew the decorations to the tree. It was fun!

The First Candle

Last Sunday morning, we lit the first candle in the advent wreath at church: the candle of hope. It’s become a ritual, both at church and at home, where our advent wreath sits on the dining room table, and where we sing the candle song every time we light it. “Light the advent candle one, now the waiting has begun...”

Our old advent wreath: I made it in the early 80s. It's pretty beat up, but very precious.

I know the meaning behind the ritual. We are waiting to celebrate the birth of the Christ child who brought hope to the world.  The candles help us mark time. I know the symbolism: that Jesus came as the light of the world. My head knows it all. My heart? Not so much.

Hope:  “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” as poet Emily Dickinson wrote. Hope: the expectation of good. Hope: believing in spite of the evidence.

The truth is, so often the Christmas season is just a jumble of traditions and practices that I observe half-heartedly – the other half of my heart is ticking off the list of stuff that needs to be done, calculating how long each task will take, wondering whether I’ll survive the season intact, or come down with another cold (a Christmas tradition I’d love to skip.)

“A candle of hope, eh?” I think pessimistically. Fine. I’m hoping that everything will get done and that somewhere in the midst of it all, the Christmas spirit will touch me.  My candle of hope is only flickering faintly in the breezes of busyness.

I’m not alone with this feeling. All the newspapers are filled with stories of doom: climate change, wars, abuse of power, economies failing , ebola ... Truly, we wonder, is there any hope for this world, or are we teetering on the edge of disaster? Mostly, we are afraid to hope – isn’t “dwelling in hope” just the action of a romantic idealist, reaching for pie in the sky?

But a funny thing happened as I began my annual  trip to the Bethlehem manger last Sunday. Hope  ambushed my grinchy Christmas spirit and gently showed me a thing or two.

My personal candle of hope

It started that evening, when, on impulse, we invited our in-town family to help us decorate the tree. When the kids were children this had been a ritual on the evening of the first Sunday of Advent; supper was always finger foods and fizzy drinks. Now, 20 years later, once again on the first Sunday of Advent, the tree got decorated. We shared stories about the homemade ornaments with the grandchildren; lots of pizza was eaten and beer consumed; we lit the first advent candle, and sang our song. When the crew left and we were cleaning up, the resident sweetie and I counted our blessings. Against all reason, we realize that some traditions are continuing, and love for each other surrounds us.  Counting your blessings: a way to nourish hope.

Then I picked up my latest good read, The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a book of essays with the  subtitle  “a citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear,”  written by people who have experienced hope in a myriad of ways. All are sharing their  insights on hope so as to encourage and enlighten the most jaded of readers. Each essay I read kick-started my hope-meter.  Leaning on others when our own hope is weak: a way to nourish hope.

The week unfolded with new opportunities to live in hope. I sat with my grandson while he picked out fabric and beads, and designed a little wall hanging, which I helped him make. Sharing your passion and nurturing it in another person: a way to grow hope. The RS and I walked in the woods together, and saw an eagle perched in a tree nearby – “the thing with feathers”. We sensed our connections with the natural world: a link in the chain of hope. I participated in potlucks with quilting friends: a circle of friends to support you breeds hope. And then we attended a performance of The Messiah. The orchestra, the voices, and the audience were united in this awesome experience. Hope swells and grows when we are with other people and are carried away outside ourselves, remembering something much bigger than ourselves.

In the previously mentioned book, African-American singer and songwriter Sonja Tinsley says, “You have to pick your team.” One team dwells on cynicism – nothing you do will make a difference, they say. The other team “admits that they don’t know how things will turn out, but have decided to work for change.” She includes people like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela on that team. “If I’m going to stick with somebody, I’d rather stick with people who have a sense of possibility and hope. I just know that’s the side I want to be on.”  Me too.

The candle of hope and "the thing with feathers that perches in the soul" were stitched on a repurposed Thai silk scarf.

The full text of the poem about Hope (#314) by Emily Dickinson:

“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.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

On Thursday evening, we got the eagerly awaited phone call: we have a new grandchild to crow about. We rushed to the hospital to meet the newest member of the family, and I got to hold her for a precious few moments. What a beauty she is! Welcome to the world, baby girl!

This baby has strong roots. She is blessed by a loving web of family and friends. Together, we’ll all be teaching her something about the world. As an Oma who is becoming more aware of the important role of “elder”, I’ve been wondering what messages I will be giving her as I rock her and sing to her, as I read her stories and spend time with her.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit because of my latest quilting project. Yes, of course, I’m making a baby quilt which will be stitched together with love, but that’s not the project that’s been teasing my mind. Instead, it’s an assignment from my Small Worx quilt group: name 5 things you like about yourself, then create a self-portrait based on that. I realize that how I feel about myself will have an impact on this new little life, and indeed on all the lives I touch.

Quick, now: can you name 5 things you like about yourself? Sure, we could ask our friends what they like about us, but what about the things WE like about ourselves?

All the women who participated in this challenge found it hard. Perhaps our first reaction was based on a message many have heard since childhood:  Pride goes before a fall, so don't get uppity about yourself. Some of us have also heard that it’s only by the grace of God that there’s anything good about us, because we are all broken creatures. You don’t brag about yourself.

And the fact is, it doesn’t take long for innocent newborns to get messed up. We’ve all been  bruised and bent out of shape by painful words, unkind actions, rejection and anger directed at us by others, even those we love who had good intentions at heart. If we believe the negatives, it shapes how we see ourselves.

In the hierarchy that was my high school society, if you didn’t wear the right clothes, have the right WASP background, were a little too smart or a little too slow, it was a smart survival tactic to keep your head down and hope nobody noticed you. This too is not conducive to a good self-image.

And even now, as mature adults, we are getting messages that diminish us: ads about beautiful women and beautiful clothes set an impossible target, and the workplace can be a harsh teacher about power and equality. The final indignity for me now is  the unspoken assumption that people of our age are on our way out the door, so not very valuable members of society.

It’s so much easier to tally up the traits we don’t like about ourselves. “Well, my dear,” I could say to my new grandbaby, (and to all my grandchildren), “I’m not much, but I’ll do my best for you.” Is this the message I want to send to a little girl who’s just entered the world? No!

And so I got to work, looking at the other side of life. What do I know and like about myself? It turned out that once I got the wheels rolling under the Appreciation Train, it was hard to stop. What do I like about myself? I like my hair – I used to hate it, because it would never conform to the “in” look. Now I realize it is unique, like me. I like that I’m a quester, always eager to learn more about life. I like that I’m creative, and that I inherited some of my mom’s aura of warmth. I like that I am vulnerable, and that I belong to a whole network of communities that support me. I don’t have to go striding down life’s trail strong but alone.

I chose to portray myself from the back, facing into the future, with a limitless horizon.The green leaves on the tree are indications of growth and change.

The beaded and stitched circles in my self-portrait symbolize the circles of support for which I am so thankful.

I am purple, the colours of imagination and spirituality. 

And I can say all this because I believe I am a child of God, deeply loved. Even though sometimes, because of life’s stormy weather,  I don’t see or feel it, I believe that the Creator of all is smiling upon me – and all of you too.

I hope, dear Grace Lydia, if you learn nothing else from me, you will feel and learn that message. I hope and pray that  this too will be your truth. You are deeply loved. Welcome to the world, baby girl.

Do the Math

The other day, I had a hissy fit. I’d just finished writing a blog about the monster in my inner closet, and Whoosh! It made an appearance. And it was all because I can’t do math, especially when math relates to time management.

A friend posted on Facebook a while ago that being creative is like being a computer with 2, 349 windows open ALL THE TIME. Every little stimulus could lead to another window opening up, with vast potential. I’m not as creative as Pippa, so maybe I have only 124 windows open, but boy, do those windows call out to me. Hey! Look! Cool! You can do this! Try it! And when I do listen and follow the call, time often disappears. I don’t know where it goes – maybe to Ottawa? Maybe they have a time bank there where Daylight Savings Hours go to wait for a recall. But I digress... (see what I mean? Another window opened up. I can just picture those hours having a good time, swapping stories about how they trip people up.)

Back to my hissy fit. We were having good friends over for supper, and I was keeping it simple. Lasagna – make it once, and you can have four dinner parties in the freezer. And gluten-free foccacia bread, also a simple recipe. Key word: simple. It never is...but I digress.

I was late getting started, because the blog that I wrote on Tuesday didn’t work out, and I had to do another one. That window refused to open till Saturday morning, but it looked like it might work, and if I started at 9 I might be done in an hour, and still make it to the fabulous annual fabric sale at St. George’s church. Ha, ha. Time management 101: everything takes longer than you think it will. Unfortunately I have lived for 66 years and still think I can beat the odds.

A few hours later, I was done, did some housecleaning which the resident sweetie had already started.  Sometimes (not this time) we invite company only so we’ll be motivated to clean the house – but again, I digress. Another window.

Time to do the prep work for the dinner. But I was short some ingredients, so that meant a shopping trip. Shouldn’t take long, and it was awfully early to start cooking.  (Time management 101? PHHHHT).

I got back. The RS had cut the grass while I was gone, and was back to cleaning. The monster stirred a little, attacking me in my weak spot: the one that grows guilt like leftovers in the fridge grow mould.  I pushed away the monster. I had work to do, and time was no longer on my side, in fact it was speeding up alarmingly. Then the wheels fell off. Couldn’t find the recipe for the focaccia bread. Couldn’t find the recipe for the lasagna. Couldn’t remember the proportions. The noodles didn’t cook right. There wasn’t enough sauce. And when would I bake the bread, if in fact I could find the recipe book? Theoretically, there was still time to do it all, and wash the floor beside. But all the possibilities of what could go wrong flooded my imagination. My friends would reject me if dinner wasn’t perfect, don’t you know?  The monster saw an opening. Hissy Fit of major proportions. Even a few tears. Ridiculous, but that’s the way it was.

Well, the RS talked me down. He dropped the vacuum cleaner and began chopping vegies while we discussed options. I found the recipe book for the bread. I began to feel some optimism that it would work out. “Look, take it easy on yourself,” he said. “I’ll go buy some bread.”  Great suggestion, but really, our favourite gluten-free foccacia doesn’t take that long to make. (By now you must be thinking, she is way out in la-la land, this lady is.)

“How long?” he asked.

“20 minutes,” I answered.

“Half hour,” he countered. True.

That’s how long it took. And the lasagna got done, and the house was clean, and the table set and the appies on the counter AND we had a half hour to spare, so that we greeted our friends with a smile and had a lovely evening.

But. I need to face the fact that I don’t do the math well when it comes to time management. In the last week or so, I’ve had the uneasy feeling that I have said YES to many windows that are all open and calling to me. Most of them I don’t have an option of closing. And there’s always the possibility that more will come up. With Christmas approaching (less than 50 days away) I reluctantly tell myself  – again – I can’t do it all.

A few of the projects piling up and needing completion.

If, in the next few weeks, the blogs come out only sporadically, you will know why. I am busy taming the anger monster in my inner closet by releasing some pressure in my life, and giving the resident sweetie a bit of a respite. He deserves it.

The studio where I'll be spending a lot of time in the next few weeks. I hope!

Just Junk?

There's lots of junk in this world: junk mail, junk heaps, junk bonds, junk food. Originally, junk was a nautical term for a piece of old cable; then it became a synonym for unwanted or poor quality items. Lately, it’s also been a “euphemism” for male genitalia – see the things you learn when you read CrowDayOne? But we won’t go there in this blog, I promise; how the family jewels became junk is a mystery I’m not interested in exploring.

Junk is another word for mess, and that’s what we found when we got home from our trip: our garden was a mess. Overgrown perennials, dead sunflowers, long snaggy grass, tomatoes sliming on the vine. “We’ve got to get out there and clean up that junk,” said the RS, gazing mournfully out the window,  and I agreed. But it rained. Then it rained. And it rained some more.

While we were waiting for a sunny day, I spent time cleaning out my closets and  shelves  – three garbage bags full for the thrift store. One woman’s junk is another woman’s treasure.

I also checked my e-mail and began unsubscribing to junk-mail posts. One regular posting I didn’t delete, however, was the blog post I receive from Margaret at awaytogarden.com – lots of useful information, including a post on cleaning up your garden. Well, that’s timely, I thought. Except that her message was: DON”T. Don’t clean up your garden – at least not to the point that it’s what my mom would have called “nettjes” – a Dutch word meaning neat and tidy, proper and orderly. Nettjes is good; slordig – sloppy, messy, junky –  is not. But Margaret was telling me that slordig might be fine. Hmm.

What we think of as junk is a treasure to others of God’s creatures. Apparently, birds, bees, bugs and other small wildlife such as toads and salamanders love slordig, which is the natural state of nature – seeds to peck at, leaf piles to keep them warm and to hide them from their enemies. And we saw the evidence in our backyard. We’d never seen so many birds flitting about and feasting on our junk. We’re cleaning out the garden, but we’re being a little more thoughtful about it. How can we continue to share it with other forms of life?

It’s made me think about junk with different eyes. Yesterday, while carving up the Halloween pumpkin, I cut open the top and began scooping out the junk. But the innards weren’t junk, I realized – they were actually what the pumpkin was supposed to produce, each seed a jewel that could, if given the right conditions, produce many more pumpkins. (Sorry to say, my pumpkins’ seeds were consigned to the compost heap,  but still...)

I thought about the potential that might be hidden within so many other things that we call junk...including people. In the quilt I made to celebrate the year I turned 60, I created a square that looks like junk. It’s a self-portrait, actually – I was feeling very angry that week, and so I portrayed the monster that was living inside my inner closet. Maybe you have one of those too, that comes out of nowhere to sandbag you and turn you into a raving Frankenstein, practically foaming at the mouth? Not a pretty picture.

I did a lot of journaling and exploring that week, and realized that the anger monster just might be my best friend, telling me that there’s something wrong in my life, telling me to pay attention. Sooner would have been better, before the lid blew off and spattered the RS, but later is better than never. So I made friends with my inner monster, fixed up some things that needed fixing, and that was a good thing.

I belong to a group of fiber artists that challenges itself to create works on specific themes. The Small Worx sisters this month are working on self-portraits to show what we like about ourselves. When we first heard the assignment, some of us had that “deer-in-the-headlights” look, paralyzed by doubt. It would be so easy to portray the junk within, the things we don’t like about ourselves, the monsters in our closets. But this assignment asks us to come home to ourselves and recognize ourselves for who we are: not junk, but created masterpieces.

This week, poet Galway Kinnell died. His poem St. Francis and the Sow is such a lovely reminder that God doesn’t make junk, although "sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness".
We may be kind to ourselves, blessing the “us-ness” within.

Saint Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

--Galway Kinnell