Snow as a gift

The sadness of not being perfect, the discovery that you really are sinful, is a feeling much too human, even borders on idolatry. Focus your vision outside yourself on the beauty, graciousness, and compassion of Jesus Christ. ... A heart like that is stripped and filled stripped of self and filled with the fullness of God.

But holiness is not a personal achievement. It's an emptiness you discover in yourself. Instead of resenting it, you accept it and it becomes the free space where the Lord can create anew.

You are no longer aware of yourself, like the sparrow aloft and free in the azure sky.

~Francis of Assisi

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Be prepared for a good dose of nostalgia/sentimentality:

The snow enchants me.
...walking absentmindedly across the quad, kicking the snow as if were an empty coke can or as if I were dragging my toes through the freshly damp sand
...unable to will myself to move inside, into the warmth, away from the frostbite grabbing hold of my finger, wrapped around an empty teacup...snowflakes coating the inside, infusing the Earl Grey leaves with a touch of white water
...walking over puddles of ice, stomping on them carelessly, without reverence
...staring straight up at the snowflakes hitting my glasses lenses like the rain drops feel on the day when the old man was snoring

In pure wonder. Suddenly, at least for a moment, my sorrow was lifted; released into the torrential down fall of unexpressed, unfulfilled deep-seated dreams and desires.
It was a gift; a grace. Given unexpectedly, un-asked for--like all gifts should be, if they possibly can.

...snow freezing upon each hair follicle
...the lamplight and purple Houghton college logos dusted, as if an afterthought...by glittering, suspended-in-gravity flakes
...as God's angels faithfully pelt snow down from the stores of the heavens, perhaps sprinkling it upon the earth as we venture to drench Christmas-tree shaped cookies with red and green

As I think on these things,
I feel courage.
I feel Love.

We are changed, after all, by a smile from a stranger;

how can we not be changed when we look at the face of Love himself?

Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die

Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave.

William Cowper

Love All Lovely, Love Divine

Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming from tender stem has sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming as saints of old have sung.
It came, a flow'r-et bright, amid the cold of winter, when half-spent was the night.

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 ev'ry nation, joy of ev'ry longing heart.

This is the irrational season when love blossoms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason there'd have been no room for the child.

When sins and fears prevailing rise

And fainting hope almost expires

Jesus to Thee I lift my eyes

To Thee I breathe my soul's desires

Are you not mine, my living Lord?

And can my hope, my comfort die?
Fixed on the everlasting word

That word which built the earth and sky



Jesus, I Lift My Eyes

Scattered Musings

Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, this night
arching over your sleepless wondering,
...
just to remind himself
...
out of what immense good-bye,

each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.

Li-Young Lee, Nativity


A poem Dr. Woolsey shared with us in London.

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Last night, I watched "East of Eden". A film adapation of a novel by John Steinbeck, starring James Dean. The novel is set in Salinas/Monterey, CA, which are classifiable as Northern Californian towns. Out of nowehere, I began wistfully longing, with a deep ache in my heart, for California. This doesn't happen very often; usually it occurs when I'm looking over all of my old childhood pictures and craving some REAL Mexican food. There's something very desolate about the West; something that always leaves one wondering; something that I can't quite explain, no matter how hard I try. I could use descriptors like "rugged", "untamed", and such, but I don't think that would do it justice. Of course, then again, it might. The colors there are less rich; the greens, especially. Even the blues, on the coast. Also, it rained yesterday, in Houghton, New York. It's the middle of December; it should be snowing--the snow coating the countryside like a little kid eagerly coats a makeshift gingerbread house with frosting. But it rained. Of course, it never snowed in Half Moon Bay, a town at the edge of the ocean, a town at the edge of the continent--in fact, even on a different continental plate than a town 20 minutes east by car.
A few years ago, my dad decided to take my sister and I on a trip to Monterey, as we hadn't spent a lot of time there, growing up. We usually didn't make it any further than Santa Cruz, for the beach boardwalk there in all its delight. The landscape down there is a bit different than that I grew up with. There was less sand, and more mishmashed colors in the shrubbery reaching down to the ocean. The trees were more akin to acacia trees found on African savannas. The ocean itself was more blue, more vivid, somehow; the weather was slightly more clear and less bleak. Half Moon Bay is one of the most fog-drenched towns on the entire coast of California, I'm sure. Perhaps this is why I resonated so well with London. This city with such roots in history and tradition (as I've come to associate the East Coast) yet constantly indwelt by this fog, this dampness, powerful enough to reach into the very marrow of your bone and take hold of your heart. Where is my home?
Is my home my dorm room, in Houghton, New York? My only ties to the place being my professors and my friends?
Is my home the Amish-owned house we rent in Rebersburg, Pennsylvania? A place I've not lived in for more than 3 months at a time, I think? A place my mom claims as her home.
Is my home still the house we rented in California, 756 Mill Street? With an adobe feel to it?
With childhood memories I can't quite or don't try to access?
Is my home London, a city I spent 3 months in, but that made me feel so alive? Where tea tasted somehow better than it does to me now?
All of this may just be nostalgic and sentimental fluff.
But, I'm longing for Home.
So desperately.

Psalm 85:10-11 (New Living Translation)
10 Unfailing love and truth have met together.
Righteousness and peace have kissed!
11 Truth springs up from the earth,
and righteousness smiles down from heaven.