Snow-Flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Fresh snow in my parents' backyard this week

To My Dad:

Happy Birthday!

Merry Christmas!

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood,
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heav'nly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spread its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the pow'rs of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At his feet six-winged Seraph,
Cherubim, with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia,
Lord most high!

Let all the earth keep silence...Habukkuk 2:20
Liturgy of St. James, 5th century; Adapted by Gerard Moultrie, 1864
Traditional French melody, 17th century; Hymn, 1906

This Christmas carol is a favorite of mine (just like every year, each song I choose for my Christmas post is a favorite - and thankfully I'm not in danger of running out of carols anytime soon!), and one that we sing at church each year during the Advent season. I love how this hymn reminds us to keep silent as we remember Christ's birth; the fact that he came to earth should cause awe in us - "And with fear and trembling stand." This song also makes us look at one of the reasons He descended - "That the powers of hell may vanish." This was part of Pastor John's message yesterday - Jesus became flesh to take away our sins and to destroy the devil's works. "[Christ] was manifested to take away our sins...For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (I John 3:5, 8).

Merry Christmas, everyone! May you experience the peace and blessing of personally knowing our Savior this Christmas. May we be filled with awe at His sacrifice and give Him homage and glory that He demands and deserves. Alleluia!

The view from the front door this morning. Crusty, but pretty.

gack! I have a sore throat mere days from Christmas?

This is not fun! Not fun! Don't worry - I'm drinking lots of orange juice and eating healthy food. And come to think of it, that's probably why I've been so tired this week, unable to stay up past 9p. =\

Do people hear what they're saying?

I'd say in this lady's case, probably not. Watch it through to the end when she talks about what she will do to keep her baby Jesus from being stolen from the Nativity scene again.

Very exciting

Less than two days left until I take a week and a half off work for Christmas and New Years! yay! And it's now less than six weeks until I go on vacation in the Caribbean. (I'm not even going to dignify the question of how many weeks until session begins with a response - I'll just enjoy the vacation thoughts for now, thanks.)

When you've gone to bed by 9p three days in one work week (and it's only Thursday morning!), you know it's time for a few days off.

Christmas Shopping - Check!

Never fear, family and friends. After discovering this item, I have completed my Christmas shopping.

Santa deposits some holiday cheer in green and red. Comes with green and red poo poo candies.

Another Birthday...

I kind of forgot a couple days ago, but I know you're out there, so Happy Belated Birthday, Aunt Nancy!

You know you've been listening to the all-Christmas music radio station too much when...

...you can sing all the lyrics to "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas."

Books Online

Have you ever tried to read an ebook? I've decided that I'm not much of an online book reader. I love to read, but there's something cold and heartless and sterile and clinical about scrolling down plain text versions of books, with no pages to turn, nothing. The only ones I've managed to get into are the ones that are either scanned in so you can scroll through pages, or those sites that somehow differentiate the pages so you can kind of feel like you're reading a book. Otherwise, no way.

Poetry may be a little bit different, but who wants to read Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha in such a boring environment? For example, check out this quasi-clinical version here (scroll down a bit). But then google books comes through with the scanned page format, and I'll take that any day over the quasi-clinical version. At least with the second version, you might be able to trick yourself - at least on the Google books version, it was a real book at one time. There's a note wishing Cousin Emma a Merry Christmas inside the cover, and the book actually existed as a New York Public Library book, making the reading of it much more enjoyable and as realistic as a computer can make it.

Justification

So, if I work out, does that mean I can go home and eat cheetohs, cookies and egg nog for dinner, and lounge around on the couch watching White Christmas? uh, 'cause that's what I did last night.

There's nothing like...

...baking cookies at Christmastime.

...a Christmas party with good friends.

...drinking hot coffee on a cold winter's morning.

...Advent poems and candles at church.

...playing Christmas music on my grand piano (which means visiting my parents - also a good thing).

...playing a Christmas concert at church, complete with choir and orchestra.

...not playing a Sunday afternoon orchestra concert before playing the church Christmas concert that evening.

...a Sunday afternoon nap.

...eating cookies for "dinner" on a Sunday night.

...eating cookies for "breakfast" on Monday morning. (What?! At least these ones I'm eating have oatmeal and raisins in them!)

All of these are things that made for a good weekend for me on Saturday and Sunday this week.

*I also just realized that if she were still alive, my grandmother would have turned 91 today. That is hard to believe - 'cause it means we're all getting much, much older.

Disturbing Diamonds

I recently came across the following website: LifeGem. These "LifeGems" are memorials created from a lock of hair or cremated remains.

"The LifeGem® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life...as a symbol of your personal and precious bond. Like the memory of a loved one, a diamond lasts forever."

I find this concept highly disturbing for many reasons and thoughts, only one of which I'll mention here. Can you imagine being a woman and finding out your fiance didn't give you a real diamond, didn't even give you a fake diamond, but one made out of his dead mother?

Christmas Comes to Mpls

I always meant to get pics up last year. This year's decorations haven't changed much. We're still content with our coat rack Christmas tree. At least this year we got a tree topper for it. =)

2.25 hours. 10.5 miles.

I can walk faster than I was able to drive through the snowy rush-hour traffic to get home. And we have more snow predicted for Thursday, Saturday and Monday. I love snow, but even this seems excessive...although it could be the tired and hungry in me talking.

Add to today's commute last night's debacle with a dead car battery and quasi-frozen key locks on both car doors (this after the prison food! it was a tough day), and I'm praying for some easier travelling in the near future.

I have eaten prison food, and have lived to tell about it.

If there is no other deterrent to keep a person from committing a crime, I say this one would suffice - feed people prison food, and they'll hate it even more than airplane or hospital food and realize a life of crime is not for them. It's been 24 hours, and I have not yet suffered even indigestion at the fare offered on my latest prison tour and working lunch; for this I am grateful.