O Holy Night

As performed by Miss Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

The Cherry Tree Carol

As performed by Miss Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

 

Christmas sights

Peace Garden, St Leonard's Church, Hanover Street, North End, Boston

Outside St Stephen's Church, Hanover Street, North End, Boston

Christmas lights in The Red Hat, Bowdoin Street, Boston

A Carol

("Minuit, chrétiens": translated by Thomas D)


Midnight, O Christians, is the solemn hour
when God who is truly Man comes to you:
he shall remove the stain of our offenses;
he'll please his Father and make all things new!
The whole world trembles, chills of expectation:
the long-sought night which brings us saving grace
now has arrived!  O kneel in adoration!
Behold, behold the Child-Redeemer's face!

Now may the light of faith ceaselessly burning
show us the way to the cradle of birth,
just as of old, the brightest star in heaven
led Eastern sages across desert earth.
The King of Kings is born where beasts are feeding:
O powers-that-seem, so boastful of your place,
proud men and cold, now heed the silent teaching!
The Child is God, his Mother full of grace.

The Savior's strength has burst through every fetter;
our world is free, heaven open once again:
a lowly slave becomes a prince's brother;
chains break asunder.  United are men!
What shall we give the Lord for all his goodness,
made flesh for us, to suffer pain and death?
Rise from your sleep!  Deliverance is upon us!
A child is born: praise him with every breath.

Stubborn and tough

Trolley ramp, Lechmere Station, East Cambridge.
Photo taken while I was waiting for the Number 80 bus.

My lady's knitting

... and a cup of coffee!
and a bottle of water!

The beautiful purple-blue square!

Photograph

December by the brook. Arlington.

snowless freeze
and late November sunlight

the rusty workmanship
of ordinary time

"the fences of the light"
brown leaves gray trees

the industry of man
in metallic suburbs

abandoned shells of trucks
beside the endless railroad

no sunlight colder than yesterday's

*

the monarchy of yesteryear
has fallen like a city

the landscape writes a song of desolation

its entertainments are the cloak of grief

its prayers are phrased to distant vacancy

the earth grows adamant and passionless
beneath the tiny grandeur of the stars

can darkness comprehend
beatitude

Our Lady of Guadalupe. Feast: December 12

Nouwen and Houselander: Recent Reading

Your heart is broken, the heart that did not know hatred, revenge, resentment, jealousy or envy but only love, love so deep and so wide that it embraces your Father in heaven as well as all humanity in time and space. Your broken heart is the source of my salvation, the foundation of my hope, the cause of my love. It is the sacred place where all that was, is and ever shall be is held in unity. There all suffering has been suffered, all anguish lived, all loneliness endured, all abandonment felt and all agony cried out. There, human and divine love have kissed, and there God and all men and women of history are reconciled. All the tears of the human race have been cried there, all pain understood and all despair touched. Together with all people of all times, I look up to you whom they have pierced, and I gradually come to know what it means to be part of your body and your blood, what it means to be human.

Henri J M Nouwen, Heart Speaks to Heart: Three Gospel Meditations on Jesus (Ave Maria Press, 2007), pp 36-7

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The Christ Child in a nation is like the presence of the child in the house: everything centers upon his youth; and he fills everything with his life. If He goes away, the child's values go, too, such as the sense of wonder, mystery, beauty, and adventure: the poetry which, free from materialism, is the most complete realism.

Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God (Sheed and Ward, 1961), pp 103-4

Twitter meme: Proud to be a fan of ...

Here are 10 things of which I am "proud to be a fan."  There are others, but these were the first ten that came to mind.

Dylan Thomas
Theodore Roethke
E E Cummings
Shakespeare
monks
The Smiths
Tracy Chapman
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Boston's CatholicTV
Blessed John Paul II

Advent (In Mary-Darkness)

I live my Advent in the womb of Mary.

And on one night when a great star swings free

from its high mooring and walks down the sky

to be the dot above the Christus i,

I shall be born of her by blessed grace.

I wait in Mary-darkness, faith’s walled place,

with hope’s expectance of nativity.

I knew for long she carried me and fed me,

guarded and loved me, though I could not see.

But only now, with inward jubilee,

I come upon earth’s most amazing knowledge:

someone is hidden in this dark with me.

Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, p. 81

*

And here is Fr Philip Dabney, CSsR, of Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, incorporating lines from the poem above into a short homily (it's toward the end):

20 Things I Don't Like

Summer. Loud noise. Most hip-hop. Tequila. Peas.

Cottage cheese. Baked beans (but I like pinto beans). Pumpkin ravioli (but I love cheese or spinach ravioli). Tom Petty. Stevie Nicks.

Charles Bukowski. People who say the F-word too much. A doctor I had in 2003, uncompassionate and convinced of her own infallibility. A biology teacher I had in 1983, ditto. Talk radio.

Aggressive or reckless drivers. The New American Bible. "Dialogue" or "fellowship" used as verbs. A certain strain of overconfident, inflexibly convinced Protestantism. Brutality of any kind.