Snow Moon

This moon is a whisper, sshh-ing over the shining face of the silent snow. Hold your breath or you won't see it. Breathe the chill air, you will feel it. This moon can see you; it sees me; it's a bright eye with a twinkle smiling at the night world.

Maybe it smiles because it sees its face here, reflecting back in whiteness the divine blessing of night light. Maybe it smiles because it sees me shining here, lifted by the transcendent beauty of winter night.

Maybe my heart's song brings the moon a smile, the childhood rhyme that comes to mind when I look up at night: I see the moon, and the moon sees me . . . 

Please do sing along. 

Rainbow Snow Day

Seated at the kitchen table, again and still. It's been two days of snow now, slowly but steadily increasing the white cover on the back lawn. I have trouble, on snow days, moving away from windows. This window is large, a bay, and my shepherd's crook birdfeeder is just outside, so needless to say I've spent a lot of time here in the last thirty-six hours. Part of the kitchen time has been taken with stirring up new batches of suet for my hungry guests. I've refilled the seed and suet feeders several times since the weather turned wintry.

All the indoor lights are off now, children tucked away to bed. I'm alone, husband working in the upstairs office some more. I left on the back porch light, and it makes sharp-lined shadows of the porch rails, a black grid on the smooth white lawn.

The day's been far from black and white, though. I've had Roy G. Biv at the birdfeeder! Red cardinals, red-bellied woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, and red spots on the downy woodpeckers. Orangey tummy on our little house wren, whose tail feathers somehow got shortened but who still flies in daily for a nosh at the feeder. Yellow underwings on magnolia warblers, a first for me; yellow dots on the white-throated sparrows' faces added to the show. Green winter plumage on the goldfinches and the tiny olive-toned ruby-crowned kinglets. The grackles found the feeder today, and they finished out the rainbow with their iridescent plumage, black shining blue, indigo, violet.

One spot in the yard is not white, and at first I was unhappy with the brown, wet place near the garden. Midday today I remembered that the birds need water on frozen days, and I'd started to plan a water station when I noticed a cardinal and a slate-colored junco sipping from the muddy spot. I guess I'd accidentally given them water already - the wet place is at the base of a composting pile of leaves. I'm sure the heat from decomposition was melting some of the snow and sleet, and the meltwater flowed to the low place I'm planning eventually to fill with the compost. For now, though, I'm glad I didn't finish the project yet, as my delay became a way of attracting and providing for my colorful, thirsty visitors.

Away from the kitchen window, I've watched a movie with the children, tried to make snowballs, helped make a snowman, made snow cream and three batches of cookies, dried a lot of snowy clothes, nursed a child's injured finger, and built a small fire in the fireplace. I guess I'll move away again and head to bed.

It's been a quiet and colorful, memorable day.

Fifteen Fahrenheit

I sat on the worn porch steps, alone in the peaceful dark of winter. The blue-black sky was pierced with stars, studded in the familiar patterns of the season, and the quarter moon floated silently, a white boat sailing westward through the night.

Not only the moon was silent. The world held its breath, too frozen to speak. I celebrated the cold, lifting my face to the moon's glow, closing my eyes, inhaling deeply, reaching with my spirit to take it all in. When I looked again, the cloud of my exhaling danced and dissolved before my eyes.

How can I explain the joy I felt as the chill settled into exposed skin and began working through my layers of clothing? Exhilaration, titillation, freedom, praise. 

I breathe in, I breathe out. The Spirit flows with me. His breath gives me life. The chill is His touch, reminding me I am alive. Life is beautiful.

The penetrating quiet fills me with wonder. As far as my hearing can reach, not a creature is stirring, not a branch creaking, not a leaf whispering to its neighbor. After the fierce winds of yesterday, this soundless landscape is a welcome relief, but there is more. Who is this God who can shake a world or make it still at His whim? He can shout in a tempest, call from the flames, but more often He waits for me to be quiet and listen in stillness. In smallness. In infinitesimal infinity. As I grow more and more aware of my smallness and His greatness, I feel more and more aware of His power in me, for me, through me. This is the wonder of the silent night - it is holy, full of His presence, even as my senses tell me it is empty and lifeless.

Thank you, Holy Father, for the boundless creativity of Your creation. Thank you tonight for cold, clear, dry, silent nights. Such nights as this remind me You are holy, wholly other, pure and lovely. Thank you that every place can be a sacred space when I pay attention to You. Alleluia! Amen.

I Just Want to Say

I guess I want to say today, this first day of a new year, that even when life doesn't make sense, I still believe in God.

I guess I want to write this down, mark this, that despite my lack of understanding, I believe God's understanding is greater than mine, and in His mind, my sometimes-confusing life makes perfect sense.

I guess I want to note that even when I can't figure out which way to go, I believe He watches over all my ways.

I want to remember that when I feel lost, He has no trouble finding me.

I want to proclaim that when disappointments and delays and disturbances come, singly or in massive walls that seem insurmountable, I am free to celebrate the joy of relationship with a God Who is able to work all things for good.

I guess I want to say today, this first day of a new year, that nothing, nothing at all, can separate us from God's love, His care, His watchfulness. I guess I sorta want to write it on my forehead, maybe backwards, so I'll read it in the mirror when I look to see how I'm doing. I kinda want to mark it on my forearms so I'll see and remember when my hands are busy working at tedious tasks. I think I want to turn it into a song so it will pop up randomly in my head and remind me of the truth sometimes when I'm slogging through and slipping into forgetfulness.

I guess that's a good enough start for a year. I just wanted to say it.

Another Taste of Moonshine

Smooth and round a day ago, the lemon gelato moon has begun to melt, flattening from the top downward, and its light is puddling in the mist surrounding its base.

December Moon

This sky is the color "midnight blue" from a box of sixty-four Crayola crayons with sharpener, and it's as featureless as the surface of that wax stylus when it was brand-new, shiny-smooth, as yet unmarked by fingernails or other crayons, still sharp and unbroken in its pristine wrapper with the neatly lettered, mysterious name. I wasn't allowed to stay up until midnight, of course, but this crayon, with its honest childhood smell, promised to show me what it would look like if I could see the sky at that late hour.

It isn't midnight now; it's barely dark, and the moon is just beginning its climb from the horizon into that smooth, flat, midnight blue sky. The moon is pale buttercream yellow tonight, but it isn't soft-edged like a frosted cupcake. Instead it is as sharply round as the circles an art teacher cuts from construction paper, circles I try in vain to copy with compass and tracing patterns and round-tipped scissors. The moon's edges are so sharp, in fact, that the sky looks as if some gigantic teacher has cut one of her perfect circles from it, and I can see through the dark into a world of light beyond, a world where  beautiful and warm and welcoming people are smiling and waiting to meet me, shining a light to show me the way in.

I think if I can get there, they won't even mind that my circles are a little pointy.

Nelson Mandela Has Died

It's a dark and dangerous jungle out there, full of tangled vines hanging heavy with hidden intentions as well as gaudy displays of obvious positions. Tooth and claw are ever ready to slash and gash the unwary as well as the aware.

A man died in that jungle. Like every man, he had done good things in his life. Like every man, he had made mistakes. Unlike most, many of his deeds were publicly known. Still, he was a man, and he died. He lived, he died, a man.

"Ah, we are so lost."

"Oh, he was so good. We miss him."

"No, he was a devil. Good riddance."

"He showed us God."

"Thank God he's gone."

Seeking words, when someone dies, we cry with loud voice, "I . . . "

But I am not the one who lived the life, who suffered the blows, who struggled for sanity, who accepted the role, who fought the fight, who called the judgments, who chose the way. I am an observer, many times removed, and my vision is affected by every filter placed between him and me, every voice of interpretation or propaganda.

Who am I to say he was good or bad? Who am I to explain his place in history? Who am I to predict the future impact of his life?

And who are they, the hissing, growling beasts lurking in the shadows of greatness, hiding inaction with loud protestation or proclamation? Who are they who shine their tiny torches from under their bushels to enlighten the world about this man's light?

And what does it matter who we are?

A man lived. A man died. He was a man.

We all live and die. Are we being all we can be, shining all the light we can shine, making all the difference we can make? Why instead do we jump from hiding or pause in the clearing to see if someone else took a speck from his eye? What of our own eyes? And whether our eyes are clear or clouded, does it make them clearer to say we saw what he saw, or to say he could not see?

I tire. I see Jesus looking over the Holy City full of unholy busy-ness and nearly empty of eyes to see. Blind beggars all of us, striving for more, when we have been given all. I am not called to be Mandela, nor am I justified to judge him.

He was a man. He lived. He died.

How will I?

Thank God that in the midst of the posturing and pontificating, the canonizing and vilifying, at last I found a place of peace. One quiet voice spoke, and I heard it, and the jungle grew still, the storm calm.

"Go well, Madiba."

Thank God.