Shining Moments

My word for this year was SHINE.

And there have been shining moments throughout the year.

I joined the teaching staff of New Day Yoga Advanced Teacher Training and I'm loving the three week-long modules that occur each year. I assist with several of the workshops and teach the chapel portion of the program. My heart glows with shiny joy when I think about it.

I received this special SHINE jar from poet friend, Irene Latham. You can read a few of my favorite shiny messages.

I hosted a Coffee with Dori gathering on my sun porch over the summer. Lots of shining moments!

I climbed a mountain in Montana and got to see where my Bicycle Soldiers began their journey. I call them mine because I've been trying to tell their story for so long, it feels like they are mine. One day it will actually be a shiny story! 

I spent an incredible few days in Western Washington meeting poet friends, some I already knew and some I didn't. Met Nikki Grimes. Met Jack Prelutsky. Met Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell. All shining moments. And reading my poem from Poetry Friday for Celebrations made me feel all shiny and joyful.

I welcomed a new grandson. Perhaps the most shining moment of all!

I'll be taking a break from blogging for the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to celebrating a couple of end-of-December birthdays for my sons-in-law, celebrating Christmas with a new grandson, and celebrating New Year's with precious friends on a trip to Santa Fe. My Pondering posts will continue, as I've pondered ahead, but nothing that requires active thought beyond celebrating these moments!

I'll be back sometime in January with my One Little Word for the year.

 Merry Christmas. May you all shine this season. 

Merry, Merry, Merry

Here you see thirteen of the eighteen stockings hanging in my den. I'm off until the new year, so enjoy your holidaying. Wishing you great joy, peace in the midst of your preparations, and rest deep in your bones.

from Seventeens
by Amit Majmudar

1. Incarnation

Inheart yourself, immensity. Immarrow,
Embone, enrib yourself. The wind won’t borrow
A plane, nor water climb aboard a current,
But you be all we are, and all we aren’t.
You rigged this whirligig, you make it run:
Stop juggling atoms and oppose your thumbs.
That’s what we like, we like our rich to slum.
The rich, it may be, like it too. Enmeat
Yourself so we can rise onto our feet
And meet. For eyes, just take two suns and shrink them.
Make all your thoughts as small as you can think them.
Encrypt in flesh, enigma, what we can’t
Quite English. We will almost understand.
And if there’s things for which we don’t have clearance,
There’s secrecy aplenty in appearance.
Face it, another word for skin is hide.
Show me the face that never lied.


For  more about the poet, see his bio at the Poetry Foundation. Visit the his website.

Read the full poem, "Seventeens," here at The Flea.

"Seventeens" was published in Heaven and Earth, Majmudar's second collection of poetry, which won the 2011 Donald Justice Prize.

Here is an interview by author, Sarah Arthur. 

Arthur's book, Light upon Light:A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany is where I first found the poem. It is a wonderful collection of readings for the season.

Be sure to stop at Random Noodling for the Poetry Friday Roundup. 

Advent: God Comes Toward Us

May you be blessed with joy and peace, with sweet moments to remember, with the whisper of healing words as God comes near to you. 

Stained glass from St. James Episcopal Church, Perry, Florida

From The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp:

"This day, this night, the Light comes, and whose heart isn't kindled by ths Love that's a wildfire? The shepherds got angels, were lit by the angels. Everyone else that night got shepherds, heard the news from kindled, heart-burning shepherds who went and 'told everyone.' When your heart burns, you are a flaming match for other hearts. When you're a manger tramp who comes with nothing but your ragged heart and leaned close over that creche, when you've beheld his glory, the white heat of a Love like this--who doesn't tramp out of the manger and into the world with a heart glowing like hot embers in your chest?"

Wishing you Love.

Merry Christmas

Merry Poetry Friday

I am delighted to host Poetry Friday this week. With only days left before Christmas, I'm finished with shopping--thanks to my sweet husband who can out shop me any day of the year. The presents are all wrapped and stuffed under the tree or in boxes and mailed to family far away. There's still a bit of grocery shopping to do and bed making for the grand kids, coming in the wee hours of Christmas morning. They'll probably pass Santa somewhere on the road between Minnesota and Georgia.

 I stopped in the local bookstore this week just to see what was left of holiday books in the children's department. With that in mind, I thought I would wish you a Merry Poetry Friday with some of the titles I found.

Wishing you a rollicking good time with friends and family as you countdown the days.

Wishing you a bit of silliness, songs to sing, and stories to tell.

Wishing you some peace and quiet. Some silent nights...

with only drama of the Nutcracker type.

Something to celebrate.

Something to sing about.

Something to share.

And joyous blessings to you and your house.

The Wassail Song 

Here we come a-wassailing

Among the leaves so green,

Here we come a wand'ring,

So fair to be seen. 

Love and joy come to you,

And to your wassail too,

And God bless you and send you a happy new year

and God send you a happy new year.



Merry Poetry Friday. Leave you link below.

Poetry Friday: Robert Louis Stevenson in Hawaii

The hotel where we stayed in Hawaii claimed bragging rights to Robert Louis Stevenson's visit to the island. The Hau Tree Lanai is situated beneath the trees where Stevenson is said to have lounged and written. In a letter to a friend, he described a lanai as “an open room or summer parlour, partly surrounded with venetian shutters, in part quite open, which is the living room.”

Today this spot is an open patio with the Hau Tree as a roof. You have to watch your head. In fact some low branches had been wrapped to keep folks from doing any damage if they accidentally banged into one.

“If anyone desires such old fashion things such as lovely scenery, quiet pure air, clear sea water, good food and heavenly sunsets hung out before his eyes over the Pacific and the distant hills of Wai’anae, I recommend him cordially to the Sans Souci.”

It was a good recommendation.

We always decorate for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. This year, since we had no children or grands nearby, we borrowed some.

Our Christmas lights were bad, so Lauren, Leah, Abby, and I piled into the car and headed to the store for replacements. The girls decorated the tree and wrapped presents. What a big help!

For Poetry Friday, in honor of Christmas decorating and Robert Louis Stevenson, here is Christmas at Sea. Stop by Carol's Corner for the roundup. 

Christmas at Sea
The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate Jackson, cried.
..."It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94).

Stop by Carol's Corner for more Poetry Friday.

New Year's Day

I know it's time to look ahead--and I have begun to think about goals for the new year--but I'm still sorting through Christmas memories. There were twenty-three of us, altogether, counting children, grandchildren, grandparents, and in-laws for a full week. Split between three houses. Mine, Cliff's mom's next door, and my mother's up the street. Every spare bed was taken. We had air mattresses on the floors, pull-out sofas pulled out, and pallets and porta-cribs filled with little ones. Here are some of my favorite memories.

1. Greeting each of my four precious children and their families as they arrived from Oregon, Minnesota, Texas, and Mississippi.

2. Rolling in the kitchen floor with my two three-year-old grandsons (cousins, not twins). One of them informed me that since the pudge in my belly wasn't a baby (like his mother's) then it was just fat.

3. Mochas with my two oldest grands (ages 9 and 6) at Starbucks. They sat in the big stuffed chairs while I sat at a table next to them. A sticker on the table instructed us to offer this table to handicapped customers. They concluded that there were no handicapped customers in the store at the moment, so it was fine for me to sit there, even though I wasn't handicapped, just old, like a grandma.

4. Walking to church for the Christmas Eve service, arm in arm with my two daughters.

5. Two great-grandpas swapping stories over a bottle of wine.

6. Reading from Luke 1 on Christmas morning. Zacharias is one of my favorite characters in the Christmas story, though he is peripheral. Struck dumb for not believing he was going to be a father, Zachariah nearly burst with praise at the birth of John. I have prayed parts of his prophetic song for my children for many years. That they might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all their days. It's a good prayer.

7. A few quiet conversations in the midst of the chaos.

8. The silence when the door closed for the last time.

Ah, now I can look ahead.

Poetry Friday: Christmas at Mole End

I hope you are finding time to slow down, enjoy a cup of hot chocolate, and delight in this Christmas season.

My crew will be in town in a few days, so this may be my last post of the year. I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

Here is a wonderful Christmas song from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, sung by "a group of little field-mice" who "stood in a semi-circle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their forepaws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet dancing for warmth. "

Villagers all, this frosty tide,

Let your doors swing open wide,

Though wind may follow, and snow beside,

Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;

Joy shall be yours in the morning!

Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,

Blowing fingers and stamping feet,

Come from far away you to greet--

You by the fire and we in the street--

Bidding you joy in the morning!

For ere one half of the night was gone,

Sudden a star had led us on,

Raining bliss and benison--

Bliss tomorrow and more anon,

Joy for every morning!

Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow--

Saw the star o'er the stable low;

Mary she might not further go--

Welcome thatch, and litter below!

Joy was hers in the morning!

And when they heard the angels tell

"Who were the first to cry Nowell?

Animals all, as it befell,

In the stable where they did dwell!"

Joy shall be theirs in the morning!

More Poetry Friday here, at the Poetry Farm.

May joy be yours now and "in the morning."

Merry Christmas.

Jingling Bells!

It's not quite December, but the Christmas season is already jingling in at my house. My husband loves Christmas and I'm doing good to get him to wait until December to start the Christmas carols. He plays them in his truck year round, but I make him wait in the house!

Our "stereo system" is a single CD player. We haven't mastered the whole ipod thing yet. The CD he puts in in the morning generally plays all day. Christmas CDs tend to be short, so by evening I've heard the same songs over and over all day. My patience for Frosty the Snowman wears thin and silence feels comfortable.

Picture books can be like that, too. My kids wanted the same ones over and over again. I can still quote the first few pages of Daisy Dog, a Little Golden book that my firstborn loved. That doesn't mean I loved reading it, though. For a picture book to stand constant re-reading, it needs to delight the reader, as well as the listener. It needs a theme that touches the heart. It needs rhythm, even if it's prose. It needs characters you love to come back to, again and again. Not an easy task.

One of my favorite Christmas picture books is Patricia Polacco's The Christmas Tapestry. I've read it many times and it never grows old. Of course, I'm a sap for a happy ending, and this one certainly delivers. A lovely blending of two families who celebrate both the Jewish and Christian heritage in the holiday season.

I highly recommend this one for reading aloud during the Christmas season.









For pure fun, you just can't beat Dori Chaconas' When the Cows Come Home for Christmas. Chaconas is a master of rhythm and rhyme. A delightful twist at the ends makes this one a keeper for Christmas story time.