is for Christmas.
nother reminder of God's open hands of blessing.Outside, looking in, this was not a banner year for our crew. We had a lot of illness manifesting itself, suddenly in one person, then the next.
There was also a hole inside me where my brother should have been. Daniel was away this Christmas, and I felt his absence. And, to my deep regret, the turkey was roasted with a pan that gave off a metallic smell--infusing the meat with an unpleasant taste. This ruined the gravy, thus, the meal. So very sad.
But from the inside, looking out,
I feel the rich texture of this blessed life. As I have mentioned, in previous posts, there has been a sense of loss about me lately. It is as though the burnished shine of my world-lens has been muddied a bit. I find myself wanting to cradle the sad, hopeless characters on screen, and off, and tell them they won't be swallowed whole by the mess they've made. But, of course,
I can make no such assurances. And so I ache. And pray. And learn to accept loss, all the while experiencing the juxtaposed magnitude of the blessings upon me.
God was so good to place laughter within us. As a family, we always have that in abundance. We played a game called
"What?" It involved answering questions anonymously and assigning the responses to the individuals who wrote them.
Q: If Queen Elizabeth baked you a batch of cookies, what would you do?A: I would ask her if she thought of England when she baked them, and I would thank her very much.
A: Feed them to a cornucopia of Polish hens.
Q: What makes retirement enjoyable?A: Liver spots in the shape of Togo.
Q: What would make riding the bus more exciting?A: Square wheels. You would never fall asleep and miss a stop.
A: A
tv, then everyone would watch it and I wouldn't have to listen to all that Chinese.
A: A toupee and a muff.
Q: What should you definitely not send the President?A: A poster of a fat baby in a cabbage.
Our gift giving is a delight to us all.The adults take care to stuff one
anothers' stockings with tiny packages well suited to the one receiving. And Kate and I always labour over something homemade. I barely managed some simple shell ornaments this year. Kate, however, outdid us all with
hand stitched letters for each of her nieces and nephews. I can't bring myself to hide these up in the bedrooms. They have to stay downstairs.
People often speak of the weight of burdens and trial.
There is also a weight to blessing -- a knee-bending sense of wonder. Why me? And then comes the restless tug. Go! Our blessing comes with a command to go and share it.
7 Beloved, let us love one another,
for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because
God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that
we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that
he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
~1 John~
Over the holidays we actually completed this week's worth of work. We simply did is Sllllooooooooowly. In ::Art:: we are celebrating the end of our exploration of Raphael Sanzio by painting just like him--well, attempting to. I found a painting that had a fairly straightforward landscape in the background, and the kids went from there. Caelah re-created the blue sky, and gold fields, but transformed the buildings into a castle. She omitted the blond Madonna and child, and replaced them with flowers, deer and snow. That is true artistic interpretation. Elijah went with a humpback whale. Gabriel painted the night sky.
