For Auld Lang Syne

As I sit at my keyboard and listen to this beautiful song by Mairi Campbell I'm drawn to the waning minutes of this year-2010, my 60th year on this earth. 60 years....where did they go and I wonder if I missed any of them. Surely there were moments that I did not grasp. What happened to that third grader who lived for the summer months of baseball, hot dogs, and a dog named "Terry"? Did the high school pimply faced kid miss out on those cherished parental moments? Was college not just a reflection of a political foundation that never stuck? Did my failed marriage allow me to garner implication for preparation to be a senior citizen? I listen to the words of this ill fated song and hope to rely on long standing friendships and never to forget them and their total and utter importance in the person I've learned to become. I read the quote of Thoreau that I used several days ago, "to make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives". I hope I've been able to discern those from the less fortunate ideas that have scanned my brain waves, and those have dominated mine.

I look at the blessings of not just this year (for certainly there have been many)but for those that have been given to me for all time. I celebrate my life and am somewhat amused at those that look perilous at their own. I've grown to acknowledge the most insignificant of details in my life that their unconventionality have become conventional. Surely the most significant that linger are a job, place to live, health, friends, family, pets, but my faith and its ever present role in my life and its essence. I've learned far to late in life the presence it must have. I celebrate it as its sustainability for now and ever.

I Look To You

I've commented on this time of the year as being the happiest and yet sad as well. It's one of life's paradoxical segments that strains one's soul; the ability to confuse and yet redeem at a given moment. I've often spoken of my parents and the dedication of this very blog to them, is my testament to perplexity of my emotions at Christmas time. They're "here" but not here and my heart still cries out to them for comfort. Redemption is a peculiar entity when faced with the absence of their lives. I didn't take the time when they were alive to let them know that redemption is a powerful and ever giving quality. I learned it way too late. For now, I Look to You! Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad.

"The Rush"

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."
Henry David Thoreau

I've used this picture to emulate the idea personified by Thoreau in his quote. Just as it's not a single stream of water that engulfs this flow, so it is that are thoughts aren't just singular but an array of microcosms that flood our being. It is in the minute process of elementary thought that we capture one to dominate and influence us.

Strands of Time

I've always liked this image and it evokes not just a intricate reception of detail and pattern, but I also tend to let those considerations masquerade its underlying motive. That being the multitude of layers that make up our lives and the vast influences that cordon our very thoughts. As one would bend each strand and make a wish, you would also see the intricate highway of thought that effects one's life.
"A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him."-Kierkegaard

"Now Dancer"

Christmas 2010 has come....and will be gone in several minutes. I think of this marvelous poem and the hopes of every child from 1-99. As I lay there with "visions of sugar plums dancing in my head", I listen for the prancing and the pawing of each tiny hoof on my roof and I await his arrival down my chimney to only be covered from head to toe with soot so tarnished and black, I can recall in a moment my wish to him. I saw the twinkling of his eye, and the nod of his head as he looked at my stockings so eager to thread. His nose was so red and cherry, that my hopes for fulfillment never were to vary. He filled them love and trust for I knew to win was a must. He finished his work and gave off with a jerk, and up the chimney he rose to give me a tweak by a nose. I heard him say as he settled in his sleigh...."Now Piper, Now Dancer, on Remy"

At last I heard him say,"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night".

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and He came to my house this 25th day of December, in the year 2010.

REFLECTIONS

Wow, it's here (almost); that commercial and multi cultural phenomenon that is so marked by the appearance of that jolly old man in the red suit. We've become so enamored each year at an earlier and earlier time of it's coming. Christmas songs fill the airwaves even before the left over turkey has been wrapped in foil and the last vestiges of dressing have been Tupperwared. Tree farms send their stock and decorations abound the city streets. Those crusty old imitations adorn the malls and parents crowd those porcelain floors for the picture of "Junior" on Santa's lap. John Lennon belts out over the radio waves...."so this is Christmas, what have you done?", Nat King Cole's velvet cords croon, "chestnuts roasting over an open fire" and we're so absorbed by the marketing that we're lost in the true meaning of who and why we're celebrating.

I was afraid of this day for the very reason I welcome it's presence now. As much as I didn't want it to be a focal point, it signified success. And while I asked Him each day to give me another day..and another...and another, I was mentally besieged that it would somehow betray me. He hasn't and I'm so very thankful that I'll get to celebrate this day with not just him, but my other four legged friends as well. For when you live with the possibility of its coming each day, you cling ever so faithful to His inner strength. Thank you for giving us this special day, but another day as well. I continue to be blessed.

Can't See the Forest Through the Trees

I've often been perplexed by this quote and what it actually means. It's an oft used quote in a variety of contexts...songs, poems, prose, books,etc. One of my favorite John Denver songs-"Boy From the Country" uses it as the boy who doesn't want to see the forest through the trees. In looking at the overall picture we often miss the details that make up that big picture. And so too in life, we're often bogged down by the mundane, the idiosyncratic and thus our lives become an anomaly of mediocrity. We've forgotten the Higher Power and the place that it has in our lives. How many times have I failed to look for the detail of a decision or missed the importance of an imperfection and dismissed it as trivia. Let's strive not to be impeded by the lack of detail but rather the significance of totality.
Hey, it's going to be a White Christmas this year.

Winter's Grip

I neglected to mention in my last post of the images that were posted are some stark ethereal images of winter and it's rather icy grip that befalls us at this time of the year. Fortunately we don't adhere to the really austere grasp of a bitter cold such as Minnesota or God forbid-Alaska and it's frozen tundra. But here in St. Louis, we can get stung by an icy field that chills one to the bone and harkens us to the droll of the dog days of summer. And if you've ever been to St. Louis, it's the one thing that identifies us with the whimsical, the farcical, the quirky is that if you don't like the weather, wait a day, it will change. Alas, this blog or even this post isn't a weather report. This particular post favors on the mystique of winter and the allusion of a silent reverie that we subject ourselves to. We harbor to our barcalounger, in front of the fireplace and hunker down from the icy blast. We entertain ourselves with the thoughts of Thoreau, or the poetry of Frost, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and however pensive our idioms become we look for the finite in an infinite world. Just as the ice on this leaf is kissed by the sun, and slowly cascades to the ground, we look for the flow of those dissolving waters to carry us home.

Been Awhile

As I look back on my last post (July 13, 2010, egads-five months!) I wonder if I had been in some kind of time warp having been redirected by some alien force. My looks haven't changed,(a little more gray hair) I'm not able to read anyone's mind, I don't possess some cosmic power that entitles me to know the winning lottery numbers (darn-not that I'd know what to do with all that money anyway but to give it away),but it's been more of a just being lazy-fashioning my gluteus maximus to the Frasier Chair. It's not a matter of being preoccupied with some other edifying editorial espionage that has garnered my time. The few events that have been most distracting to me as of late are still that way. My best friend is still with me and we have each others back. I've had many thoughts along the way in these last 5 months, but just didn't have the where for all to go upstairs and sit down in front of this screen and put them down on paper...er' LED readout.

It's now several days away from the most important holiday of the year-Christmas, my most favorite time of the year. And it also creates a strange paradox for me as while it is the happiest of times for me, it certainly evokes the saddest time of the year as well. Maybe I should refer to it as bittersweet instead. It's an oscillating breath of emotion that occurs. Happiest in that there is such a bevy of joy, sharing, and good deeds being done, and it is also one of sadness in that the most significant people in my life aren't here with me; at least in the physical sense-Mom and Dad. I think of the poignant words of Kathy Mattea's haunting song, "Who's Gonna Know But Me", "cause who's gonna know but me to help me recall those old memories,when I'm all that's left of this family of three". And now that's left is but the 3 of us...my beautiful sisters. "If I were a video I could rewind, I go back and slow down each moment in time, and I'd disconnect the fast forward button, so I'd forever to tell them I love them".
Merry Christmas Mom and Dad...but then again you knew this.