In labor all creation groans
Till fear and hatred cease,
Till human hearts have understood:
In Christ alone is peace.
In labor all creation groans
Till false divisions cease,
Till differences are reconciled
In Christ who is our peace.
In labor all creation groans
God's justice to increase.
When right in place of might prevails,
Then Christ will be our peace.
- Delores Dufner, from Magnificat, January 2023
Finally finishing up my flannel skirt. I've also gone into my yarn stash, to try and work it down a little bit,
and found this cute pattern on Etsy.
The reading challenge this year requires a Jane Austen work I hadn't read. We have Sanditon at the library, so I read it. Well, that is I read eleven chapters, which is the part of the book that Jane wrote. The rest has been finished by someone, and I decided to skip it. I'll probably pick up Lady Susan at some point, but for now I'm re-reading Persuasion. Also, Rescuing Socrates, about the value of a liberal arts education by a fellow from the Dominican Republic, who is now teaching at Columbia. I just began it, but it's very promising.
Well! It's been snowing all day!
I wait for this. It can't last; the daytime temperatures are above freezing, and it rained a fair amount before the snow.
Meanwhile, Daisy broke the kitchen clock.
I'd rather focus on the snow.
The birds came along in late afternoon, to fill up. There was much to-ing and fro-ing but the video was too long for blogger, and I couldn't put it up.
A cardinal, and some smaller birds. I imagine their world is a whole lot different when there's a blanket of white over everything, as far as food goes. The snow was a little heavy and there was some wind, and the power "blinked" more than once. The oven even cut off, while the chicken was in it.
Now, all is quiet.
Pray without ceasing, pray,
Your captain gives the word;
His summons cheerfully obey
And call upon the Lord;
To God your every want
In instant prayer display,
Pray always; pray and never faint,
Pray, without ceasing, pray!
- Charles Wesley,
from Magnificat, January 2023
She runs over to watch when I buzz the stuff off my sweater; she flies into the bathroom if she hears the water running and the door's open. Just now my brother is writing something on a pad in his lap, and he said she was watching; he said she noticed that the pen was making marks on the paper. That's interesting! When the water runs into the sink, she is focused on the water that accumulates, not on the stream coming down. So it's very intriguing to me that she is looking at the result - if you can put it that way (with the sweaters, I'm not sure what she's observing).
I told her she's just like Aristotle.
It snowed a little bit this morning again, but then melted into the damp, warm ground shortly after. I feel hesitant to complain, since maybe winter will just have a late start - it's happened before.
I appreciate every. flake. A bit of snow changes the vibe for the whole day.
There's a Polish group at church - maybe a prayer group or Bible study or both? I don't know, but they had a Christmas party last Sunday, with an invitation to everyone to come; it was a potluck. I don't have any Polish dishes I make, so I just roasted carrots with cranberries, maple syrup, orange peel, and seasonings and brought it. We were two of three American-born folks there, but it was very enjoyable; we sant Polish carols afterward, which was great, I miss singing them since we stopped going to the Polish language Mass. We were there two and a half hours.
I put away the Three Kings and also some more glittery decorations. On the way to the supermarket we also saw a neighbor taking lights off a tree in his front yard, but another house on the main road which still has pretty lights along the front fence. Christmas is still on.
"Moth's leaning against the stone wall of a ruined building. He seems to be watching the last of the light, but he's not really here; his thoughts are beyond the horizon.
Are you okay? What's on your mind? Shall we go now and just get some sleep? I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.
Me too, but lately I've realized that it doesn't matter how tired I am, I can't miss times like this. I have to hold on to every moment I can.
But if you get too tired you won't be able to, you'll be sleeping through all the moments. As I say it, the memory of his endless sleeping before we left Cornwall floods my mind. The days lost in a fog of exhaustion and the doctor's warnings of 'don't get too tired'. It's taken every ounce of his willpower to get him to where we are now; I fear that extra hour of physical effort, or even the wind in the wrong direction, will be enough to send him right back to where he started from, or even further down.
I might have said the same before we left, but this trip has taught me something about all of this - the living, the dying, the void in between. It's not about how long it lasts, it's about the value of each moment. It's like one of your pans of mushroom soup.
It's almost completely dark, on the edge of an island stuck out in the North Sea, a chilly north-easterly wind blowing in from Scandinavia, and he's comparing life and death to a pan of soup.
What?
It takes loads of mushrooms, so you only ever make enough for two bowls, but it's full of such deep and complex flavours - thyme and garlic, and earth - that it doesn't matter. That one bowl is enough, because it holds so much.
Earth? That's probably the compost I haven't washed off the mushrooms.
You don't have to do that.
Do what?
Whenever I mention death, you joke about it, or change the subject. Don't you get it? It's part of the soup. There's always more flavour when the mushrooms are about to go off: it makes the soup so much richer.
I might not make that soup again, not if it makes you think of earth and death, it's tomato from now on.
You know I see right through you, don't you?
I know. But you also know this trip's always been about gathering the ingredients for a great soup.
It's already good soup.
The very best soup.
We walk away as darkness falls, somewhere in the void between life and death, that place where we all exist."
Landlines, by Raynor Winn
I hope it's not illegal to print this here!
It dawned on me I haven't said much about Christmas. Well, you know how overwhelmed we get with goodies from my brother's customers - that did not happen this year, although we certainly got plenty of cookies and candy. More than most people receive, but not - for us - a ridiculous amount. And the Polish lady made a gingerbread! Why didn't I think to mention that? I don't know, and I was sure I'd taken a photo of it, but it's nowhere, so I guess I didn't. She gave me the recipe last year (although I never made it) but now that she knows I like gingerbread, perhaps she'll always give us a one. That is fine with me.
And speaking of gingerbread, I made this recipe today for muffins. I used a gluten-free flour mix and left off the lemon glaze. They are nice, but a little plain and I'm thinking of how they could be fixed up a bit. Still, the most interesting thing about this recipe, I think, was her advice on baking temperatures; she says if you bake muffins at a high temperature at the beginning, they will rise up nice and high, and then you lower it. I will try to remember this for all subsequent muffin recipes to test it out.
It worked on these!
I 've been reading Raynor Winn's Landlines. It's been out since September, but not in the U.S. and I was so afraid they wouldn't publish it here! But I've got it now, and I think it must be a UK edition, since the cover says "The Sunday Times bestseller".
Anyway, I'm almost done with it. All I can say is, read The Salt Path, if you have any small interest in it - and then read the other two. She is a born writer, but would be unknown if it weren't for her husband's illness and their treks along these trails in Britain. I can't say enough for these, her writing, the moving way she describes their difficult situation, the way she goes by her instinct and how things turn out when she does. It's amazing, and so human. I wish them all the best, and more. Read these!
A Happy New Year to everyone! We're having very mild weather, with predictions of sixty degrees on Wednesday. It's nice, but - a bit of snow would make it seem more like Christmas.
This photo is as grainy as it can be, but - it's too cute; the minute Daisy hears the sound of the sweater defuzzing machine, she comes flying in. Today she was so into it that she kept sitting on the sweater I was trying to defuzz.
After a priest recently told me that the animals are also made in the image of God (honestly, he didn't say it exactly in those terms, but I can't recall precisely). I am trying to see them in a newer, deeper light. Of course, I already knew that just because God made them, they had importance, but there was something about the way Father worded it. I hadn't thought about it in quite that way. So, little Daisy-Waisy was being a cat and a youngster, and investigating. I need to laugh about these episodes and enjoy the whole business. And then, in Malcolm Guite's Waiting on the Word, is the poem for today,
The Bird in the Tree, by Ruth Pitter.
The tree, and its haunting bird,
Are the loves of my heart;
But where is the word, the word,
Oh, where is the art,
To say, or even to see,
For a moment of time,
What the Tree and the Bird must be
In the true sublime?
They shine, listening to the soul,
And the soul replies;
But the inner love is not whole,
And the moment dies.
Oh, give me before I die
The grace to see
With eternal, ultimate eye
The Bird and the Tree.
The song in the living Green,
The Tree and the Bird -
Oh have they ever been seen,
Ever been heard?
