Blue plums, almond stove, needle in eyelid, Charley Brown tree

Tomfoolery of our Santas and Snowmen

Pale weak limpid sun rises lower and lower in December’s horizon.  It rarely shines through gray clouds, although today stratus clouds allow its orb to deck the skies with sunny cheer.

We’re buying a new almond stove, our first stove in thirty years.  They’re discontinuing the color “almond”.  It’s a gas stove, it has to be, due to our regular power outages when trees blow down over electrical wires.  We bought locally this time.

I wonder what makes some of us want to share our lives, while others prefer anonymity, silence.  What makes some of us want to share words about pale suns and almond ovens, while others don’t?

A moon by any other name…

Almost all our snow melted in the warm spell.  Now it’s near freezing again and bare branches sway slightly in the afternoon breeze.

We’ll soon dig in our basement closet for Christmas lights, garland, snowmen and Santas.  We’re not putting up a real tree this year, although our daughter is coming home in 20-some days, thank all the stars twinkling in the holiday skies.  Maybe we’ll find a Charley Brown tree and tenderly place in a pot after she arrives.  Maybe we’ll string popcorn and cranberries upon its branches.  Maybe we’ll find her favorite little snowman ornament and gently place it on the greenery.  Maybe.  I can’t predict much these days.

So often I still want to share daily.  You shouldn’t start your blogging career writing a daily blog or you’ll be hooked on the rhythms and joy of sharing small things.  Sharing about sunlight.  About possible Christmas trees.  About branches swaying in afternoon breezes.

You won’t care so much about writing a “big essay” or an “important article” because you’ll realize that it’s the small joys that count, the little things, the precious ordinariness of daily ovens and blue plums–and even frightening needles which glimmer sharp toward your wild and irreplaceable eyes.

Does anyone really want to hear about a new stove?  Does it matter?  I love this moment of sitting down at the computer and seeing what the Universe has to say through Kathy.  Some days it’s Presence-filled and thoughtful, other days it’s just plain funny, other days it’s photos, other days it’s just what it is and no one can predict a fathom what the Universe might share.

Candle for the world

Friday a doctor in the big city of Marquette will peer at the sty on my eyelid from back in September.  It never really healed.  It still gleams a bit red, like a tiny eyelid Christmas ornament.  (How’s THAT for a metaphor?)  If it’s like last time–maybe six years ago–he’ll take a long sharp silver needle and lance it.  It won’t hurt because the area is suitably numb, but afterwards…well, my memory doesn’t like the pain which burned afterwards for maybe an hour or so.

Here is a poem by Mary Oliver which might make your hummingbird heart flutter.  Thank you, Colleen, for posting it on Facebook.

Santa pauses in an evergreen

Messenger By Mary Oliver:

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.