I’ll be honest, most of the time I love Christmas. It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year.
But the Christmases of my distant memory are often haunted with darkness and loneliness—a desperate longing unmet.
Perhaps that’s why I work so hard to make Christmas full and bright, as much for my kids as for my husband and me. A celebration of all the good, happy, pretty things.
Red and green. Gold and silver.
Polished up kids, on the best behavior.
Shiny packages, bright with promise.
For the most part, and for most December 25ths, the magic glitter of Christmas works. But any one day can’t live up to the burden consistently and it frays at the edges, threatening to rip open from the pressure of little sleep, excess sugar, and packing in too much in too little time with too many people.
It’s a wonder we ever make it through without falling through a chasm—a la Griswold Christmas.
Today is cloudy, some might say dreary . . . okay, most days I would say it was dreary.
But I’ve been trying to look deeper into those things that look ugly, and I realized something–
There’s beauty inside that grey.
The sky is blanketed, in wisps of deep purple, whispering over blue and grey. Somber, cool, quiet.
I struggle to see that beauty sometimes, but I realized the other day that without the clouds, the beauty of sunrise and sunsets are just missing a little something. It takes some darkness, some flaws to paint a really amazing sky… Continue reading “There’s Something About . . . Clouds”→
I sat in church the other day and listened to folks talk to the brand new mom behind me.
“How is it going?” “Fine.” “She looks like such a good baby.” No response, but a small smile from the mom.
And when they left she breathed to her husband, “What else am I supposed to say?”
Tears filled my eyes. I hate the word fine.
Fine says nothing.
It’s neither here . . .
Nor there.
Fine makes it easy to hide.
How are you doing? Fine. When life is slipping through your fingers. Fine. When you’re barely keeping panic from exploding your chest. Fine. I look fine. Feel fine. The day is fine, thank you very much. Continue reading “When Fine Isn’t Fine”→
There is a core of who I am that is tangled in music. I grew up going to symphonies, playing in some of the best bands and orchestras in the state. I was through and through a clarinet-playing, band geek.
My life has a nearly constant musical score running underneath.
There I am with the pep band. Apparently I have no pictures of me ACTUALLY playing. You’ll just have to trust that I did.
I write to music. Sing snippets of Broadway, Mother Goose, Louis Armstrong, Simon and Garfunkle, and even “Uptown Funk” to my kids.
Soaring melodies, growling tympani, rising arpeggios, staccato xylophone—they draw pictures, speak words I cannot always form coherently. You know what I mean?
This weekend I went with my mom and sister to our local symphony’s live presentation of Disney’s Fantasia. The overlap of the art of film and music reminded me of the fear and destruction happening in our world. In short, it undid me.
A little over halfway through the program came the music of one of my favorite ballets, Stravinsky’s Firebird. It isn’t a piece most modern Americans are familiar with, but I love the unexpected twists and the drama it sings.
In Disney’s take, a mighty elk, king of the forest, wakes Spring – Life personified, beautiful fluidity. Blue and green swirls. Life exalts in melting the snow and playing with the birth of flowers and butterflies, but is shocked when a mountain, an extinct volcano, resists her efforts to sprout in greenness.
In the center of the bowl is a form, dark and frozen. When she touches his misshapen face, the firebird comes crashing to life. Foaming fire. Slashing into the sky. Delighting in destroying everything Life has created. Reducing everything to ash . . . even Life herself. Continue reading “Beauty from Ashes: a Metaphor of Hope in a Time of Terror”→
My daughter is studying the Native Americans in social studies. This week her class started studying the Eastern Woodland Indians, specifically the Cherokee. This amazing people group assimilated into the European colonies and, in many ways, looked exactly like their neighbors.
But they weren’t. They were different.
And that difference allowed people’s greed for gold to forcibly remove the Cherokee and other Native Americans from their land, enduring disease, exposure, and starvation. The Trail of Tears.
When I told my girl the story of the Cherokee, she stared at me, confusion pulling her eyebrows together.
“Why?”
In her wide-eyed innocence, “Why?”
Why, indeed?
You see, my girl is an artist and she understands that in art, in beauty, contrast and difference is celebrated and encouraged. That which makes something different, is core to making it beautiful. Continue reading “Beautifully Diverse”→
The light bends golden across the horizon.
Yellow leaves twisting golden in the breeze.
Distant sounds of laughter call me out
To join the dance
The celebration
Of coming winter
Of summer’s dying
A remembrance
Of predictable pattern
Of persistent change
In the beautiful death of one thing
Comes the shimmering new life of another.
When I realized that the late afternoon light was the perfect golden tone for pictures, I grabbed my camera for a selfie. It didn’t even occur to me to not fix my makeup. Continue reading “On Real Beauty”→
I lay in the darkness. Eyes closed. Willing myself to sleep.
But rest would not come. In the next room, I heard the baby cough. I held my breath, body tense, wondering if she’d need me.
Glancing at the clock, I groaned. The red numbers read 5:32. I’d fed her, changed her diaper, and put her back in bed an hour ago. But I’d been lying awake since then, bracing myself, trying not to wake my husband, not quite sleeping. It was easier to get back up if I didn’t fall asleep. And sometimes, sometimes, I had to get back up.
I’ll be honest, most of the time I love Christmas. It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year.
I sat in church the other day and listened to folks talk to the brand new mom behind me.
