***Christmas Eve falls on Sunday this year. This makes for a kind of fullness that can boggle the mind. Advent Four in the morning and Christmas Eve services in the afternoon and evening. This is not a complaint but a fact and a privilege. This blog post was written on December 24, 2008. Truth be told, I might not have written anything much different on this Christmas Eve 2017.

It is Christmas Eve. Once again those who celebrate this holy day will fill the pews of churches large and small. Familiar carols will be sung, candles will be lit and we will sew together messages from Isaiah, Matthew, Luke and John to tell the story of the birth of the Christ Child. The beauty of the liturgical church year is that we would do this even without the commercial reminders that it is Christmas. Years before malls and coupons and the message to buy, buy, buy, this story has grounded Christians in a simple, yet profound telling of the birth of Jesus.

I have been thinking about this story and the many ways it can be read and heard. And truth be told, each of us will hear it in our own way, with this year’s hearing different than last year. We have each added life experiences that have changed us and shaped us into the people we are this year. Jan Richardson writes of the many ways we can tell the story: “We can tell is as the story of an unwed mother who dared to enter into partnership with God to bring forth new life; as a political story about the birth of a revolutionary; as a tale about a love that longed so much for us that it took flesh, formed in the dark woman of a woman show shared her body and blood to bring it forth. We can tell it as a story of darkness giving birth to light.” So many ways to tell an ancient and simple story. It depends on the lens of our life how we read it, how we hear it, how we enter into it.

2008 is coming to a close. It has been a year that has rattled us in many ways. Many of the safety nets we took for granted have unraveled. It has also been a year in which we have seen glimpses of great hope. Tonight as we gather to once again tell the story of Christmas, how will our experience of this year shape our hearing? As the young ones don their angel wings and shepherd costumes, will our spirits be filled with the surprise and awe of how God enters our world? As the Magi present their precious gifts, will we want to dig deep into our own gifts and share them with abandon? As Joseph looks lovingly at the young woman at his side, might we be filled with the trust and faith of those confronted by Mystery? And might each of us remember all that has been lovingly birthed in our lives this year and, like Mary, treasure all these things in our hearts?

Wherever you are when you hear this story, I invite you to enter into its telling fully. This year’s hearing will never come again so savor it. Let it roll around in your heart. After your candle is lighted and the first notes of Silent Night have been sung, look around and be held in the miracle of these ancient words that bind Christians together everywhere. And as the candles die out and the notes of carols fades into the night, then we can begin to live into how the story might transform us, for this year, for our time. This is what will keep the message alive.

Christmas blessings to you…………..

“When the song of angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the brothers,
to make music in the heart.”
~Howard Thurman

A Prayer for Winter

We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart.
To make warmth and quiet for the heart.
To make soup and broths for the heart.
To cook for the heart and read for the heart.
To curl up softly and nestle with the heart.
To sleep deeply and gently at one with the heart.
To dream with the heart.
To spend time with the heart.
A long, long time of peace with the heart.
We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart.
Amen
~Michael Leung, The Prayer Tree

Last week I came across this prayer while leaving the time I had spent with my spiritual director at the Carondolet Center in St. Paul. These monthly sessions ground me and remind me to pay attention to the movement of the Holy in my life. The hope is that if I can have these reminders I might actually be able to help others do the same. Some days, weeks, years are more successful than others.

We are just over 24 hours into the season of winter. Yesterday in late morning the Winter Solstice suspended us between seasons for a brief moment of darkness and light and then began spinning us once again toward an ever-increasing experience of light. The months ahead we call winter and they have their own texture and gifts to offer. In Minnesota the snow that came a few weeks ago has a guarantee of sticking around as the temperatures plummet over the next week. Christmas Day is likely to be colder than any we have had for some time.

I am a friend of winter and of the cold. I am thankful for the ways in which slowing down is a requirement in winter. Otherwise you might find yourself flat on the ground having moved too quickly across icy pavement. As the prayer says, winter is a time for soup and reading and curling up and dreaming. These can be heart-space practices.

Lately, I have been thinking much about the heart. Heart is both real…that organ which keeps us alive and moving…and metaphor…that deep held place of love and passion and compassion. In these Advent days, I have been companion to those whose hearts are expectant with the promise of new birth and new adventures. I have also been present to those whose hearts are breaking with grief and despair and loss. It is easy to think that this Christmas season we hold so dear and dress up in all kinds of fancy, shining garments would not have any of the later. But we know this is not true. The world and all its seasons and celebrations keeps moving even as our hearts rejoice and as they break.

One of my favorite lines of scripture telling of the first Christmas is the description of how Mary, the mother of Jesus, looked around the stable where her baby was born and took in the animals, the shepherds, the angels and the magi and ‘pondered it in her heart.’ In this pondering, Mary was not unlike most new parents. With a heart warmed with the promise of a new life, most parents ponder…cherish…those experiences in ways they do nothing else in their lives.

As a season to cherish the heart, winter can be a great teacher for both joy and sorrow as it calls us to a pace and rhythm that strengthens this life-giving muscle. Called to reflection and quiet, we can be called to our own pondering of the stable in which we find ourselves. May there be blessing in both beating heart and place of compassion as we make our way toward Christmas.

***The last few days It feels as if I have been searching for something. These times of transition like the Winter Solstice can bring about an unsettling and I am feeling it. This post was written December 20, 2015 and it conjures a lovely memory for these dark winter days. Memory and deep hope.

Last night my family and I attended a performance of “Between the Worlds” at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater. For as long as I have lived in the Twin Cities, I have loved their work and the depth of their creativity. I must say that I have learned as much about the importance of ritual and how to create it from these artists committed to craft and social justice as I ever learned in seminary. I know that the work I do on a weekly basis would somehow be less if not for the inspiration of Sandy Spieler and her troupe of those dedicated to what can be done with simple objects…paper, wheat-paste, paint, sticks and poles, and a little wire. It is magic they create, a magic that draws the audience into an encounter with Mystery.

Last night’s performance was a celebration of these dark days we call Advent in the Christian household. But these are days that have been honored throughout time by cultures who lived closer to the earth than we now do. Those who lived in the rhythms of the seasons and who patterned their lives around the give and take of the Sun and the Moon. Those who knew in their bodies the power of both darkness and light. As people whose lives are now dictated by the flip of a switch, those who believe they have control of light and its arrival, we have lost the wisdom of those ancient ones. I personally believe we are lesser for it.

A poem by Marilyn Krysl graced the program for the show, a few of the final words I will share here:

the moon stops the fountain of your sleep/ and drives you out to wander and pace/ wide awake and burning, mouth dry eyes burning/ so that you are forced to acknowledge your own body/ and to remember the body is holy/ and to remember the body is one body/ and this earth the one holy body you cannot desecrate with impunity/ so that you understand that if you deny the dark/ you make a mockery of light.

These words draw me not only to the gifts of darkness and of light but also to the thing we say we are celebrating when we lift our candles high on Christmas. Incarnation. The belief that God shows up in the body. In the body of a newborn baby in Bethlehem. The body of the grown up Way-Shower, Jesus, who held before those in his time the power of both darkness and light and invites us to do the same.

Incarnation is both specific and individual and also communal. The Holy was born in a stable more than 2000 years ago. And the Holy is born in us when we remember and act as if we remember that ‘ the body is one body’. We are inextricably connected together as humans and with the earth which is our home by the One who created us to be reflections of the Sacred in the world. To do so is an honoring of what it means to be the face of the on-going Incarnation.

In these last days before Christmas, we would be wise to notice the play of dark and light. In these last days before the Winter Solstice, we would be wise to watch how the darkness holds the space for the Light to be born. These are precious days that hold us ‘between the worlds’. They are pure gift of grace and promise.

Stay awake! The Light is coming.

***We are hearing reports of a possible snow storm over the next few days. Who knows if it will materialize but this post from December 12, 2012 reminded me of how moving about after snow has fallen can be a time of great learning.

To say that making your way around the Twin Cities these past few days has been difficult is really an understatement. The snow that graced our presence on Sunday has wreaked havoc on the act of getting from point A to point B with any attention to time schedules. It seems the combination of snow, low temperatures, chemicals that need a certain temp to actually work and, perhaps, an attention to snow removal that was less than timely, has made for some of the slowest and painful commutes in recent memory.

Yesterday morning as I was creeping along the road, a certain nugget of wisdom that I learned on the Island of Iona a couple of years, came to mind. ” You can only move at the pace of the slowest pilgrim.” This caution was spoken to a group of folks I was traveling with just as we embarked on what became a nearly six hour Pilgrim’s Walk around the sacred places on this tiny island. This declaration ensured that we were attentive to one another, the pace each was able to walk, that no one was left behind, that no one rushed ahead.

Thinking of this way of walking as a pilgrim my mind then jumped to something poet David Whyte said when he was here in October. Speaking of the many names and identities we wear during a lifetime, he asserted that the one that remains true throughout our living is that of pilgrim. We are always a pilgrim in this life. Traveling from one identity to the next, one year to the next, one day to the next, one breath to the next. We are always on some pilgrim path.

So as I traveled my pilgrim way yesterday, I was aware of a car several yards ahead of me. Moving at the snail’s pace in which we were all engaged, this particular pilgrim was unable to make it up the slight incline that had become an ice rink. His tires spun. His car slipped left, then right. I watched as the pilgrims between me and our slowest kin tried to decide what to do. Wait. Pass. Slow down. Speed up. Feel anger. Offer compassion. So many choices on the pilgrim path.

Eventually, several passed by this whirring pilgrim trapped in his metal container. Most did so with trepidation. His spinning could result in a face to metal experience of this fellow traveler. As we all made our way past him, something moved in my chest knowing that I had broken the cardinal rule of the pilgrim walk. We were leaving our slowest one behind. Traveling on without him. Leaving him to fend for himself.

Practicalities had to prevail on a day like yesterday. Decisions needed to be made about staying put or going on, about passing or taking the risk of not having enough momentum to make it up the hill myself. My heart still went out to this one whose name I did not know but who shared this identity as pilgrim with me.

Advent continues to unfold and we are pilgrims on the journey toward Christmas. The darkness continues its hold on us. More lights appear every day as people rail against the night by decorating their windows and walkways with lights that spill color and illumination. It must be done. For we are people who walk in darkness yet long for light.

This morning this Blessing for Courage by John O’Donohue seemed appropriate:

“When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside……
Close your eyes
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.” 

***This was first posted on December 20, 2007.

“Will you, God, really live with people on earth? Why, the heavens and their own heavens cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built…..Listen to the cry and the prayer I make to you today. Day and night let your eyes watch over this house, over this place of which you have said: “My name shall be there.”
1 Kings 8:27-29

Yesterday I walked into what is ‘sacred space’ for me. Once a month I am privileged to visit the Carondolet Center at the College of St. Catherine. This beautiful old building represents for me a true center of hospitality, a sacred dwelling. There is always someone with a pleasant greeting as you walk in. There is attention to detail, cleanliness and order. Depending on the Christian season, there will be paintings or displays that invite you to remember that it is, indeed, Advent or Lent…a candle here, an icon there. Those who work or live in the building….it is still home to a few Sisters of St. Joseph….move through the building with ease and a sense of purpose. Calmness seems to ooze from the walls, held I am sure, in the countless prayers that have been said over the years by these devoted women.

Most of us don’t live or work in such a space. Instead we sometimes successfully seek them out…. that place where we can sense, know, that indeed the Holy moves here. Even though we may claim ‘God is everywhere’, it is often difficult to really feel that is true in many of the spaces we exist. It takes great intention and attention to know the presence of the Holy in many of our spaces. Even our churches can miss the mark of creating ‘sacred space’.

Of course, many of us find the most sacred of spaces not in buildings at all but in a grove of trees, overlooking the sparkling water of a lake, standing on a mountain top gazing out at the land below and beyond. It is often easy to feel the vibration of the Holy under our feet in those places where our body and Earth connect. With stars dancing in the night sky, the Moon shining down on us, we are caught in the Mystery of what it means to be human reflecting upon the Divine.

What is ‘sacred space’ for you? Where is the place you can go to that allows all the pretenses of daily life to dissolve, the place that allows you to connect most fully with the Sacred? Wherever this place is for you, I pray that, during these days that can seem full and rushed, you can go there and be renewed by the Spirit which cannot be contained in heaven, the place that speaks through its very existence…the eyes of God are watching over this place…..blessed be.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
—Wendell Berry

We only have another minute to lose of light as we make our way to December 21st and the Winter Solstice. This threshold time stands in the midst of some of Minnesota’s coldest and darkest days. The door at this threshold sits in the season of Advent and will move into the celebration of Christmas. These, of course, are not unrelated events though we in the Christian household have sometimes tried to deny the fact. But the honoring of the Sun’s return and the celebration of the birth of Jesus, called the Light of the world have been entwined by human’s need to make sense of what they experience and what they believe about that experience. The common denominators are darkness and light.

Several years ago my husband and I traveled to Newgrange in Ireland. This ancient place of worship and history is full of mystery and a sense of power that defies words. Most believe it to have been built by humans as a way of measuring the ways sunlight seems to recede and then return. Looking like a giant earthy spaceship it rises out of the lush Irish countryside. Stone carvings lay in various spots around the outside of the mound. Walking around its perimeter allows the imagination to see the ancient ones circling, dancing, and moving in ways understandable and confounding.

But it is inside that the real mystery and amazement happens. We stood in the center of the cave-like structure, humans who did not know one another just a few minutes before crushed together in silence and awe, looking at the cave drawings pointed out by our guide. Giving us a sign that the electric lights rigged up to keep the curious safe would be turned out, we fell even further into a deep quiet. We were plunged into darkness that was so black it was disorienting. The only thing that allowed me to know where I was came from the breathing of the people around me. I was still surrounded by humans even in this deep darkness!

Using an enormous flashlight, the guide then began to simulate how the Sun would rise and hit a stone at the end of a very thin opening in the path ahead, striking it just so. It shown so brightly it seemed impossible. She then explained that this is what those who had built this place had probably intended. Out of the pitch darkness they would know that the light was returning. I am imagining that planning for planting for the next months could then take place. But my imagining was, and is, still held in the mystery of this place and the darkness I experienced at this created threshold. What must it have been like for those who did not know, did not have even the most rudimentary understanding of how the planets work?

The next few days will be the darkest of this year. Even with the twinkling lights we have hung on trees and in our homes, the darkness is our companion. The threshold that welcomes us is shrouded in a mystery we partially understand. But once that turning happens and our planet creeps ever so slowly into the light of Christmas the mystery does not end. How does the light brought into our faith story by this infant we celebrate illuminate our path? How do we allow this Light to become not only the beam we follow but the light we become? How do we make our own cave paintings telling of the stories of the darkness in our lives and where the light came in?

There are only a few days left before we know the turning of the light once again. Until then, the invitation is to go dark, to watch for what is blooming and listen for what is singing and how we are companioned by dark feet and dark wings.

***This blog was created in December 17, 2007. Much can happen in 10 years. We all know this. Yet the rhythm of the seasons is a constant that holds us. As we anticipate the Winter Solstice and the returning of the light,we continue to rest in the message that the light does overcome the darkness. Sometimes it may take longer than we hope. As people of faith we continue to light candles and to hold out to the world this nonconformist notion.

“A candle light is a protest at midnight. It is a nonconformist. It says to the darkness: “I beg to differ.” Samuel Rayan

It was not a candle light. It was much bigger than that. It was a bright orange dinner plate sphere that rose on the horizon this morning. After nearly nine hours of darkness, the sun finally rose at 7:46 a.m. I was privileged to be driving toward it this morning as it rose, gloriously, into the pale blue and misty sky. In its rising it shouted to the world: “I beg to differ!”

We are in the last of the darkest days of this year. As we approach the Winter Solstice on December 21st, 12:09 a.m., the Sun will once again start returning us to days with more light. I recognize that the majority of people walk through these days with very little awareness of this movement, of the variance of light and darkness but this year I have been particularly watchful. Seeing the growing darkness has informed my experience of Advent, of the waiting, the watching, the anticipation, the hope of new life to come.

I have tried very intentionally to not see the darkness as a negative but as an integral part of the process of birth. Dreams, after all, take place in darkness. Babies are nurtured in the darkness of a womb. Bulbs and seeds are growing in the darkness of the cold soil….even when we cannot see. Many animals are sleeping in the darkness of caves and warm earthy holes, growing even as they rest. Creativity itself often seems to take root and grow out of the darkness of confusion and challenge. Most of us have found spiritual transformation out of what we might refer to as a dark night of the soul.

So these dark days, I believe, are not to be feared or dreaded. Instead they are meant to be opportunities for staying awake and aware to what the darkness has to teach us, to offer us. When we do we may find ourselves staring with awe at that morning platter of rich, fire red and orange…..the Sun that offers us a glimpse of what is yet to be…….another amazing day to walk the Earth with both darkness and light as our backdrop. This Sun which feeds the fields of food we eat and the trees that bring us oxygen also has its work to do…life giving work, nonconformist work. Though we need the darkness for gestation, we need the light for life.

For the next few days, darkness will continue to grow. But in just a few days, the Sun will have its say:”I beg to differ!”

“Darkness cover me like a blanket of night, oh, cover me lightly. Hidden seed, deep in the dark soil of the earth, fertile ground, womb of the night, bring us new birth.” Sara Thomsen

***This a post written a few days after the tragedy at Sandy Hook on December 17, 2012. Today marks five years since this horrific act of violence. We are still struggling with this and what it can mean to a culture that does not seem to be able to come to terms with its relationship with guns and the perceived freedom they represent for some. We are still struggling to make sense of acts of darkness writ large and how to stop them, how to heal from them. For now, our hearts continue to break while we live in hope of change that is within our reach.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
~Mary Oliver

We were given a box full of darkness on Friday. It is a gift we do not understand, did not want, do not know what to do with. As news trickled in about the horrific shooting in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, we became held captive by a darkness that threatened to overwhelm. At both times wanting to listen, watch, and wanting to run from this horrid scene, we once again felt helpless in the wake of yet another shedding of the blood of the innocents. How to hold such darkness……

It is too soon to look, as Mary Oliver reminds us, for the gift in this. The grief is too large, too raw. It will take, as she says, years to understand what may be at some time in the distant future named as gift. But even in the darkest corners of this black box, the light of hope still refuses to be snuffed out. As we learn of teachers who became superhero protectors, we see a glimmer. As we hear of those who responded first and shielded children’s views from things that would scar their eyes, for a lifetime, we get another glimpse. These are strands to hold onto until our learning evolves.

All through Advent I have lifted the image of darkness and light and the holiness that resides in both. The last few days have made that more murky, less visible even as a metaphor. And yet something inside me believes that even in those who walk in darkness, a darkness that no human heart is prepared to live, some experience of the Holy One still exists. This is, perhaps, the true hope of what can seem like sentimental notions of Christmas, of the in-breaking of God in the every day lives of people.

I have thought much about the young ones who did not come home on Friday. I have found myself looking more intensely at the children who have crossed my path. I have noticed their smiles, their eyes, the ways in which they move with confidence or reticence in this world. I have remembered to note how precious they are. To look, to really look, and to bless them. To remember that Jesus said that heaven belongs to them.

But I have also thought about the young man who visited such violence upon this world. I wondered at the box of darkness that had been handed to him, perhaps from his birth, the one that traveled with him every day as he tried to find his way in an unwelcoming world. It was never gift to him and there must have seemed no one, no older, wiser adult, who could make it so. What is it like to wrestle with such darkness each and every waking moment?

We will, of course, continue to try to make some sense of this tragedy. The years have taught me that there may not be any words or way to fully understand. We will speak of gun control yet again. Hopefully, we will speak of mental illness and how to help those who suffer, their families, their communities. We will look for answers that may or may not be present. We will chase after the haunting ‘why’?

Some day we may see some sharp-edged or luminous gift in all this. But not yet. Not yet.

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
~Dylan Thomas

I was sent out onto the streets of Quebec City to look for images of the Sacred. The assignment was that, once I saw something, to take a photo with my smartphone and to email it to the retreat leaders. They would create a photo meditation of the images captured by those on this retreat in this beautiful, foreign city of French speakers. It was November so blooming things were out and snow, ice and a fierce wind were in. And so I bundled up and headed out with my eyes wide open.

Of course, there were the people…various ages and shapes of humanity doing the things humans do on any given day. Shopping, talking, reading, sweeping, making coffee, selling bakery, laughing, rushing, resting. I thought of snapping any number of photos of the interesting faces that breezed by. Certainly all were made in the image of the zone who breathed them into being.

I stopped for some time in front of a quirky sculpture by Salvadore Dali that stands in one of the city squares. Certainly this was an image of the creative Spirit as it worked through artist and metal, holding forth with a whimsy and movement that brought the cobblestones on which it stood to life. Creator and Creation were present here.

Turning from this dancing creature I was confronted by one of the churches that anchored the same square. Ah, I thought to myself, I should go inside and look for images of the Sacred there. Entering this probably centuries old church, there was the visceral sense not of holiness but of neglect, the smell of mold in the air. Paint chipped off the walls and there was a general messiness that made me uneasy. This seemed to be the opposite of an image of the Sacred. I left feeling sad.

Walking out the door and across the street I began window shopping feeling a bit of a panic at my inability to find something to photograph. And then I came upon a store window filled with lamps of all shapes and sizes. Glowing back at me from the window were colorful mosaic shades of brilliant colors. Each tiny piece of glass moved together to form something more than itself and the composite was lit from inside causing glowing illuminations that made my heart sing. I stepped back from the window and focused my camera on the window. This was my image of the Sacred. I sent it off to the retreat leaders and headed into one of the coffee shops for a treat. When in Quebec, right?

Later that evening those of us who had been on the scavenger hunt for images of the Sacred watched as our photos came alive on the screen underscored with lovely music. Some of the pictures were simple and literal while others were abstract, even confusing. When my image flashed on the screen I loved its colors and its glowing lights. For me, it was a lovely representation of how the Holy moves in these dark days of Advent.

And then I noticed that among the lights and shapes of the lamps was reflected the church which had seemed so lifeless to me. I wondered what to make of that and I still do. I think about it every now and then hoping that the church was more vital than my impression of it. All I know is that on that particular November day in a city where I had difficulty making myself understood in language, I saw beauty and light and a reflection. The visual memory can still move me to experience the Sacred. This dance of light and dark plays itself in us in countless ways and we are wise to open ourselves to it. Even if it takes a long time to understand its meaning.

**This post was written on December 14, 2009. Amazing to think that the children not yet born are now eight years old!

“The world has tilted far
from the sun, from colour and juice…..
I am waiting for a birth that will change everything.”
~ Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

Here in the northern hemisphere, more particularly in Minnesota and regions near, we are experiencing the darkness of December. We have only two more minutes of light to lose before the Winter Solstice on December 21st. The interesting thing is that it does not get dark sooner in the evening but instead stays dark longer in the mornings. With the fresh snow that fell over night, I watched the neighborhood children run toward the bus this morning, white springing up from their feet as they moved through early morning shadows. Our world, tilted toward darkness, or away from the sun whichever way you tend to think of it, is the landscape of Advent. We live tilted….toward something….away from something.

As I look out my office window the twisted limbs of the strong oak tree is dusted with snow that clings to its gray branches making a silhouette of jagged edges against an even grayer sky. It is difficult to look at it and remember the full greenness of its alive state. And yet, its roots are still reaching down into the earth, tilted toward the life that will travel through root and branch and limb to form the leaves of next summer. It is in a stagnant time, a dark time, waiting for life to once again course through its full body. It seems almost to be in prayer.

I am blessed to be surrounded by several pregnant women these days. I watch them move in the cold of these days knowing they house life within the darkness of their wombs. While everything seems to be in stillness, in suspension, these women carry a life that will change everything for them. Families will grow. Houses will need to take new shape, find new space for an addition that will alter how things have been done before. Parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors will embrace a newness that will surprise them and change how they relate to one another.

This winter season can be a burden for many, a nuisance to others. But for me, I want to embrace this darkness, this chill that is void of color,lacking juice. In these days when we are tilted from the sun that brings warmth and greenness and life, I believe it is important to remember all that is nurtured in darkness, in Mystery. I want to spend these days waiting in expectation for the return of the Sun…..and the birth of the Child….that will change everything.