On the fifth day of Christmas. . .

The Christmas trees are beginning to line the curbs.  People are packing up their decorations.  For them Christmas is over, and it saddens me, for as George Keck says,  "Christmas is not a day, but a season – a 12-day season lasting from December 25 to January 5 during which Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ."  (Keck has some excellent suggestions for celebrating the 12 days of Christmas as a family in this Lutheran Theological Seminary article from 2008.) 


The weeks of the Advent season - beginning with the fourth Sunday before Christmas - are filled with activity and preparation.  The house is decorated, gifts are purchased and wrapped, and plans are made to spend time with family and friends.  In our work-a-day world there are parties and festivities, but still my heart doesn't truly celebrate during Advent.  It is hopeful and expectant, anticipating the joy to come on Christmas Day, but it does not celebrate.

In an article for ChristianHistory.net Edwin and Jennifer Woodruff Tait write:
"Sometime in November, as things now stand, the "Christmas season" begins. The streets are hung with lights, the stores are decorated with red and green, and you can't turn on the radio without hearing songs about the spirit of the season and the glories of Santa Claus. The excitement builds to a climax on the morning of December 25, and then it stops, abruptly. Christmas is over, the New Year begins, and people go back to their normal lives."
Yes, the excitement stops abruptly - just when it should begin.  The excitement stops when the gifts have been unwrapped.  The focus remains on the gifts we've exchanged and those that Santa has brought, not on the Gift we've been given.   In our culture it's a whirlwind of a day with wrapping paper flying.  And then it's over, packed up and put away.
If your tree is still decorated, continue to enjoy it.  If you have candles in the windows, light them for the world to see.  Rejoice and celebrate!  Give thanks for the greatest gift.

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, love divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

Love incarnate, love divine;

Worship we our Jesus:

But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

Love shall be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and to all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Her angels

Her angels

    "Consider this.  These days 

     Angels are tacky" -Jeffery Beam

Not a Hallmark ornament in glowing plastic

nor one of those Christmas light stencils

hanging from the telephone poles at strip malls

in December, wings blinking back and forth

like hands clapping in the cold.

My mother builds angels

from scraps of organza, taffeta, satin

leftover from the wedding dress

she made for her daughter

who left her this summer.

Scraps sewn together the way

God maybe stitches pieces

of those who left us

into elegant patchwork emissaries,

swan-winged guardians

for us, the tacky ones, clumsy here

among our ornaments and lights.

       - Adam Tarleton 

        Christmas 2000

My son wrote this poem for me 10 years ago.  The year I made this angel -

and many more like it.  

 During the Christmas season, my home is awash with angels in all shapes, sizes, and styles.   

They remind me of God's grace.  

 I believe in angels, and in this quote from Sophy Burnham:

"We all have angels guiding us. . . .They look after us.  They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands. . . .What will bring their help?  Asking.  Giving thanks."

 I can't remember when I began to collect angels, but I do remember when I made my first angel.  It was a crocheted angel made to adorn the top of our Christmas tree.  

Some years later, after admiring this angel, a neighbor loaned me a book of patterns for crocheted angels, and I made this one as an ornament.

When cross stitch was all the rage I stitched this little one for the tree.

But the making of angels took on more meaning after my oldest daughter was married in 1994.  I made an angel for her from scraps of the fabric I used to make her wedding dress.  I made myself and the women in my family one from the same pattern but different fabric.  Mine was calico.  the skirt is designed to hold a small bag of potpourri.  

  Each year after that, until just a couple of years ago, I made angels as Christmas gifts for the women in my family, and I also made one for myself.  

I've made tree topper angels

and angels from sea shells.

One of my favorites is this woodland angel with wings of peacock feathers.

There are some small angel tree ornaments

and the angel with wings of copper wire that hovers in my plants.

A dark-haired calico angel with a birdhouse sits on the cookbook shelf

and there is a little round glass angel made from a vase on my dresser.

Friends and family have blessed me with gifts of angels over the years.  In 1996 my oldest daughter stitched this beautiful angel for me as a Christmas gift.

A few years ago I realized that I had enough angel ornaments to fill an entire tree. 

Now the angel tree is the first Christmas decoration to go up each year, and sometimes the last to be packed away.

May you feel the presence of angels around you this Christmas.  May they remind you of the source of all joy - God's love and the precious gift of His Son.

Merry Christmas!

Birthday blessings

My first born child celebrates a birthday tomorrow.  She will be more than twice the age I was when she was born, yet she will always be my little girl.  She has blessed my life since the day she was born.  I created this digital greeting for her using Hallmark's Smilemakers.  She, not the card, is the smilemaker.  Happy Birthday, Tracy.
The beautiful music is by Janet Stolp from her CD "Slow Me Down".  She is accompanied by my brother-in-law, Dave Stuntz.

This digital slideshow customized with Smilebox

Seed pods and harvest

Harvest time.
My son and his family came for a weekend visit and the weather was perfect for spending time outdoors.  In this photo my grandsons are harvesting moonflower seeds.  The blooms on the moonflower vine were spent long ago and the foliage has nearly all dropped off the vine.  But the seed pods are full and heavy.  I showed my grandsons how to crack the dry pods open and retrieve the seeds.  The seeds will be held on to and stored until spring when we can plant them and wait once again for blooms.  From this one moonflower plant, four of my grandsons and I have harvested many seeds. (My oldest daughter visited last weekend and her two sons took a bag of seeds home with them.)
As we hold on to these seeds through the winter months, we often must hold on to our hopes and our dreams, patiently waiting through a cold winter of disappointment and despair before they bloom.  And as these seeds are hidden,  promises for us may be hidden - hidden in parts of our lives that have withered and dried.  Crack open those hiding places, trust in those promises, believe in those dreams, and patiently wait.  They will bloom.  Your blessings will multiply.

"An expectant hush, rather than a last-minute rush"

Let's approach Christmas with an expectant hush, 
rather than a last-minute rush. 

Anonymous

Expectant, not frantic.  Hushed, not boisterous.  Contemplative, not celebratory.
Advent is a time of waiting and preparation for Christ's coming.  Beginning with the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day (November 28 of this year) we prepare our hearts for the celebration.  We focus on  hope, joy, peace, and love.
When our children were growing  up we observed advent in our church worship services, but we also observed it at home.   I made an advent wreath.  We gathered around it at the dining room table to read scripture, light the candles, and sing advent hymns.  When the children had learned to play the flute and piano, they accompanied us.

Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel's Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Setting up the advent wreath 1982

Our purpose and hope was to remind the children that the true joy of Christmas was not in the gifts under the tree, the cookies fresh from the oven, or the lights and decorations.  We wanted them to know in their hearts that "love came down" that first Christmas.  That we celebrate that love by sharing it with others.  That during advent we prepare our hearts to receive that love and to joyfully and expectantly wait for the second coming.

“Love came down at Christmas; love all lovely, love divine; love was born at Christmas, stars and angels gave the sign.”  Christina Rosseti

Our children have homes of their own now, and there are no little ones here to gather around our advent wreath.  But we realize that we weren't just doing it for the children.  We were doing it for ourselves, too.  Next week I'll set out my wreath with fresh candles.  The hymnal and the Bible will be close by.  We'll sing and read and prepare our hearts.

My husband blogged about advent and Christmas preparations in 2008 here.

For some advent resources go here.

Sweet dreams

Sleeping in the car - with your head on someone's shoulder - that's the way to travel.

(My oldest daughter at age 3, sleeping on my brother's shoulder.  My son and younger daughter resting on each other.)  

Who do you trust with your hair?

Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges,

but eventually you find a hair stylist you like. 

~Author Unknown

 

Cutting my son's hair 1982

My sister cutting my step-brother's hair 1975

 We've saved a lot of money in haircuts over the years, and not just from barbering the boys.  My sister and I started by using the scissors on our own heads when we were little girls.  I don't have that picture, but I've seen it - not a pretty sight.  But later on we improved on our skills.  My husband hasn't been to a barber since the early 1970s when he was required to have a military haircut.  My sister has been barber for both of her sons and her husband.  When her oldest was a toddler she cut his hair while he slept because that was the only time he was still enough. We had a beauty shop session on our last girls' weekend.  Shampooing, cutting, and styling someone's hair in this way is a laying on of hands of sorts. They're all intimate acts of service and the one receiving the service is putting trust in the giver.  Having someone shampoo and massage your scalp can be a healing experience.  

We hope to get together for girls' weekends several times a year - maybe we'll make the beauty shop sessions a regular part of them.  Those haircuts may not be professional, but they are blessings.

Sewing the memories

Easter 1982

When my girls were young I made Easter dresses for them every year.  The dresses they're wearing in this picture were my favorites.  They're slightly different variations of the same Vogue pattern, with tucks in the bodice and tucks around the hem.  The fabric was from Wade Mill where my mother-in-law worked and was printed with tiny rosebuds.  My son was wearing a Carolina blue John-John handed down from his cousin.  I wish I remembered what he was laughing about!
I made many of the dresses and other clothes that my girls wore when they were growing up.  I made costumes, confirmation dresses, cocktail dresses, and later their wedding dresses.  I made pocketbooks and book bags and Barbie doll clothes.  It gave me much joy. Most of those things are gone - handed down or worn out.  But they survive in these pictures, and for that I'm grateful. 

Ice cream and pigtails

My sister and my daughter cranking ice cream.

Summer 1974, making ice cream at my husband's parents home in Anson County.  Probably peach ice cream made with Georgia Bell peaches.  Hand cranked, the old-fashioned way.  It was our semi-annual visit to North Carolina during the years that we lived in Fairfax County, Virginia.  My sister, between her junior and senior years of college, was traveling through and stopped by for a visit.  We soaked up all that family time in those semi-annual visits and lived off of it for the next six months.  While in North Carolina we'd buy jars of Duke's mayonnaise and six packs of Cheerwine.  We ate crowder peas and Silver Queen corn and fresh tomatoes from my in-laws garden.  They'd give us jars of pickles to take home. 
My oldest daughter, then 3 1/2 years old, helped crank the ice cream.  She now has a 3 1/2 year old of her own.
Family, vegetables from the garden, homemade ice cream, and a 3-yr-old in pigtails.  Blessings all.

One photo, many blessings

So many blessings in this picture

• The man leaning against the lamppost is my husband.  He would soon be leaving me for four months in Coast Guard Officer Training School.  We swore we'd never spend another night apart after those four months.  His draft number was 29, but he escaped the draft by joining the Coast Guard.
• The coat he's wearing was his daddy's Navy pea coat, worn in World War II.  One day, years later, I left it in my unlocked car and someone stole it.  My husband wrote about it in his weekly newspaper column and a kind woman knocked on our door with her own husband's pea coat in her hands.
• The house in  the background is the much loved family lake house when it was only a few years old.
• The larger dog is Sam, who adopted us one summer.   He appeared one day and was so hungry that he tried  to eat the hose.  He loved us all but he and my dad had a special bond.
• The smaller dog is Zippy. She came to us when we were children and she was a puppy.  When Sam came to live with us Zippy was an old lady of a dog,  but Sam gave her a new outlook on life.  
• The car in the carport, a Carolina blue Toyota Corolla, was our first new car.  We kept it until our oldest child was old enough to drive it.

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.  ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French

A storehouse of blessings

Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day. ~Robert Caspar Lintner

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! ~Henry Ward Beecher

Warm happy memories are like a storehouse of blessings.  When the days are long and dull and that normally thankful heart is having difficulty finding the blessing in every hour, we can draw on those happy memories.  They cheer us, bless us, and transport us.

A few months ago I purchased a relatively inexpensive slide scanner.  In the 1970s and early 1980s we used slide film for our photos.  We have boxes and boxes of slides stored in a trunk.  Occasionally we get out the slide projector and have a viewing, but digital photography has spoiled us.  And we want to be able to preserve the slide images and share them.  

And so I've been scanning - an entire tray at a time in the beginning and a few slides at at time recently.  The scanner doesn't like flash pictures or any pictures with a great difference in light levels.  But nevertheless, I am happy to get as many images as I can stored on my computer.  And even happier to be remembering all of those vacations and holidays when we were young parents with small children.

 Each one of those memories is a blessing.  Through the month of November, I want to share some of them with you.  

 We're a family of readers, and the children got an early start.  My oldest daughter was almost always happy to read to her sister and later to her brother.  

I did a little running in my younger days - even ran in a couple of 10ks.  My sister encouraged me and stuck with me through those races.  Here we are returning from a run on Thanksgiving Day in the early 1980s.  Don't you just love the socks?

Summer vacations at the lake - the hammock - so many great memories!

More to come - stay tuned!

"The days are long but the years are short:"

A little over a year ago I came across this video and was moved enough by it to find out more about Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness Project.

I followed The Happiness Project on facebook where this link on keeping a one sentence journal was posted.

I loved this idea for a one sentence journal designed to prompt happy memories. I didn't have a good history of journal keeping.  In a college freshman English class I was required to keep a journal for a semester and what an intimidating exercise that was!  I couldn't write a word without imagining the grad student instructor critiquing it and snickering under his breath.   I bought a nice leather journal a few years ago with hopes of being less inhibited, but my entries were sporadic and self-conscious.  But a one sentence journal - just daily notes on what I wanted to remember?  That was something I could handle - and I was in love with the idea of being able to look back over time to what had happened on any given day in previous years.

I bought a book for my new sentence journal within a few days of reading Gretchen Rubin's blog about it and have been faithfully recording something almost every day since.  I'm almost two months past the one year mark and so I'm able to look back now at 2009.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer in early 2009.  By October he had been through chemotherapy and radiation.  My entry for October 27, 2009 reads "Daddy received good news at Drs office - all blood work was good - he's maintaining!"  The good reports continued until December.  He died March 24th.  Over the coming months I'll be remembering those last few months of my dad's life as I look back in my journal.  It will be hard remembering his pain - but remembering his love and the time spent with him will be a blessing.

My dad and stepmother Thanksgiving 2009.

As Gretchen Rubin says "The days are long but the years are short."

*note:  I've also been recording longer and more frequent entries in my other  journal as well as blogging here and at Ginny's Garden.  As with many other things in life, expressing myself has become easier with practice.

Blessings and a cure

refractory |riˈfraktərē|adjective formal

stubborn or unmanageable : his refractory pony

We did a little time traveling this weekend - back to a time when being tarred and feathered was considered  "a cure for the refractory".  (That's the bag of feathers you see there.)  In the scene below is a man who was refractory, and was on the verge of being tarred and feathered.  But he expressed remorse and was saved from that fate.

This was just one of Colonial Williamsburg's "Revolutionary City" events Saturday.

We were there, under the cloudless blue skies of a nearly perfect day, to enjoy the pageantry, the gardens, the history, and the food.

I first visited Colonial Williamsburg in the 1960's with my family, and though it rained the entire time, I have great memories of that visit - especially eating dinner in the basement of Christiana Campbell's.   Soon after we were married, my husband reported to Officer Candidate School at the Coast Guard Reserve Training Center at Yorktown, Virginia,  just down the road from Williamsburg. My father and I drove him to Yorktown, and while there we visited Williamsburg and ate at Christiana Campbell's.  My husband and I have been back numerous times over the years and have found something new to enjoy each time.  Every visit has been a blessing.

We arrived for this visit late Friday afternoon, as the sun was going down.  Firewood was stacked in front of a  number of buildings - ready for the many fires that will be built when the weather turns colder.  The streets were fairly empty.  It had rained not long before.

Saturday morning we toured the gardens (and took many pictures) at the Governor's Palace as we waited for an audience with Thomas Jefferson. 

Following the audience with Jefferson, a "Revolutionary City" program was held in the garden.  The time was 1775 and three Shawnee Indians who were in Williamsburg to keep the peace were discussing their situation.  One of these actors is on the cover of a recent issue of Our State Magazine.

Afterwards, Hal enjoyed coffee with George Wythe at Charlton's Coffeehouse.  (I enjoyed tea at another table.)  The Coffeehouse was still being excavated on our last visit, but is now open and serving samples of coffee, tea, and chocolate.

Some other highlights of our trip included:

The ox and all of the other animals.

Fifes and Drums

The horse-drawn carriages.  We overheard a woman announcing that she'd just been proposed to while on a carriage ride!

Visiting Great Hopes Plantation on the walk from the Visitors' Center to the historic area.

Checking out what's growing in the Colonial Nursery.

Visiting the brickyard and learning how bricks were made and fired.

We didn't take any building tours on this trip, opting to be outdoors most of the time.  To really enjoy everything about Colonial Williamsburg, we would have needed at least a three-day visit.  

We've been to Williamsburg in all seasons except the heat of the summer and all seasons have something special to offer - but I think fall is my favorite.  Some of the trees were already brilliantly colored, but the peak of the fall color is over a week away.  (For fall color and garden pictures, check out my other blog, Ginny's Garden.)

We headed home Sunday afternoon, crossing the James River on the ferry.  

We left Colonial Williamsburg behind but brought home many memories to cherish.

The circle grows

Our family

is a circle of strength

and love.  With every birth and 

every union the circle grows.

Every joy shared adds

more love.

Every crisis faced together

makes the circle stronger.

I have these words in callligraphy and framed on my piano, surrounded by family wedding photos.   In my extended family every word of this is true. I was reminded of it this past weekend when we gathered at my sister's to celebrate the birth of the newest family member - a girl, my sister's grandchild and her namesake.

At the gathering were my brother and his wife, who will celebrate their first wedding anniversary this week, and my nephew and his bride-to-be.   Many of our group weren't able to be with us for the gathering, but we felt they were with us in spirit.

We have rejoiced in the additions to our family this year, and we have also grieved together.  The patriarch of our family, my father, died in March.  I wrote about how we strengthened each other in a post that week called "In the midst of grief blessings abound".  

Joy, love, strength - these are the gifts my family has given me.  G.K. Chesterton said that "gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."   I am filled with gratitude.

 The family gathering this past weekend.

The family gathering to celebrate my dad's 89th birthday in September 2009.

I don't care how poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich. ~

Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford, "Identity Crisis," M*A*S*H

 

"Go and serve creation joyfully"

Today is  the feast  day of St. Francis of Assisi.  Most of us are familiar with the Prayer of St . Francis of Assisi and of St. Francis's love of animals.  Many churches hold a blessing of the animals on this day. He was a man who loved and revered all of God's creation.   In an article in Lutheran Woman Today, Bryan Cones writes that St. Francis is most well known for his poverty, and that it was through poverty that St. Francis' "found oneness . . . with the whole natural world, with all of God’s creation. "

" In his poverty he learned what so often we forget. Not only are we as utterly dependent on God as the birds of the air, we are no less tightly woven into the tapestry of creation. We belong to a vast web of created things, each linked to the others, and we, perhaps, need them far more than they need us. Francis reminds us that as we watch the destruction of God’s creation around us, we are watching also our slow demise."

May this canticle from St. Francis of Assisi remind us of the great wealth we are blessed with.

CANTICLE OF CREATION

Be praised Good Lord for Brother Sun 

who brings us each new day. 

Be praised for Sister Moon: white

beauty bright and fair, with wandering
stars she moves through the night.

Be praised my Lord for Brother Wind,
for air and clouds and the skies of
every season.

Be praised for Sister Water: humble,
helpful, precious, pure; she cleanses
us in rivers and renews us in rain.

Be praised my Lord for Brother fire:
he purifies and enlightens us.

Be praised my Lord for Mother Earth:
abundant source, all life sustaining;
she feeds us bread and fruit and gives
us flowers.

Be praised my Lord for the gift of life;
for changing dusk and dawn; for touch
and scent and song.

Be praised my Lord for those who
pardon one another for love of thee,
and endure sickness and tribulation.

Blessed are they who shall endure it in
peace, for they shall be crowned by
Thee.

Be praised Good Lord for sister Death
who welcomes us in loving embrace.

Be praised my Lord for all your
creation serving you joyfully.

Francis of Assisi, 1225 A.D

Go and serve creation joyfully!