The ground was covered in slush and ice this morning while the skies still were confused about what exactly to exude.  As the temperature slowly rose, raindrops reigned.

I have always been inept at walking on slippery surfaces, probably since my first traumatic roller skating fiasco where most of the hour in the rink was spent on my butt, or pulling friends down with me as they tried to keep me upright.  I’ve skied once and that was once too much–I barely made it home.  I’ve never ice skated–simply walking down the slope to the barn on surfaces like today is adventure enough, Yak Traks and all.   I’ll confess.  My body hates sliding in any form.   My feet betray me, my balance is nonexistent, and my brain panics.  Some of us have nervous systems that can’t handle it and we will crash no matter what we do or the defensive postures we assume. If we are going to have snow, at least let it be enough to crunch through up to my knees so that if I lose my balance, I face plant into a nice drift, thank you very much.

So a skiff of snow with ice quite undid me this morning.  I managed to finish my chores after sliding gracelessly down to the barn, and defying all the laws of physics, I slid my way back up to the house, if it is possible to slide uphill.  And here I sit, looking out at it all, wishing for the mud of spring, something I feel much more at home with.

What do I do with a Saturday like this?

Make soup and hunker down.  Pull everything still edible out of the refrigerator and cut, dice, stir and simmer into something wonderful to last several days, in case I’m stranded that long.  If I can’t walk outside with confidence, I’ll at least have something inside to show for it.

Oh, and take a nap.  Maybe several.

Many see an empty nest as sad and forlorn–a symbol of what was and is no longer.   Others see it as the gateway to freedom from responsibility and the daily cares of parenting worries.  I’m not so sure it is either.

Our children left us to fend for ourselves last August.  It was a distinct adjustment, knocking about in this empty nest without the usual crowd of flying feathers, hungry mouths and busy bathrooms.  When they recently came home for a few weeks at Christmas, it was a joyful reunion with great conversations, singing and music, wonderful meals and memories.  It felt like it always had.

As of today, the nest has emptied again–the house quiet, the refrigerator bare, the bathrooms always available with enough hot water, the calendar suddenly unfilled.  The adjustment again.

I will set to work cleaning, and laundering, and putting away what will be pulled out again in four to five months as they flock home briefly once again.  I know just how to line the nest, making it welcome and familiar to my family who are off to make their own nests elsewhere.   It is important that this home be here for them to land when they need to, to refresh, to relax and to belong and be loved.

There is nothing empty about it.  It is lined with comfort, is chock full of memories, and sits ready with unlimited potential for future gatherings.

And most of all, we’re still here, my husband and I.  There is absolutely nothing empty about that.

Eagle Vocalizations (Doug Carrick webcam from Hornby Island eagle nest)

These were happy family sounds; there was an intimacy and comfort in their back and forth that made me assume I was probably seeing and hearing a conversation between a mated pair and their grown offspring.  I’m more used to hearing the raptor screech of the local hawks and eagles as they threaten others in their territory or they announce a kill but this truly was a delicate and melodic twitter one would expect from a much smaller (and less intimidating) bird throat.

I’m rather relieved to know the bold bald eagle has a softer side–almost canary-like–when they are together as a family.  All that talon action, screeching, ripping and shredding of prey can get a bit overdone.  Instead, an eagle can use Twitter to communicate the important things without ever needing a keyboard.

I’m grateful all I have to do is step outside my back door to get the latest Tweet.

photo by Josh Scholten

This story is familiar to many but bears repeating each Christmas, more so than ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Five months into WWI, on Christmas Eve 1914, the soldiers in the trenches of France declared an unofficial and spontaneous ceasefire after the German soldiers shared chocolate cake from home with the British soldiers, who responded in kind with tobacco and beer.  According to eye witness accounts, they joined together in singing Christmas carols, exchanging gifts, and playing a game of impromptu soccer between the trenches in “no man’s land”.   The high command was upset and tried to prevent this social exchange but to no avail.  The truce lasted for at least one day along parts of the front, and longer in others.

What strikes me about this story and how it resonates with us is how similar the beliefs and upbringing were for those European soldiers in WWI and how easily they could find common ground.   Would the soldiers on either side of gun sights find this commonality in the now-ended Iraq war or in Afghanistan?  Given the cultural and religious gulf that divides us, this is unlikely.

Still, there is inspiration in the sweet thought of “Stille Nacht” and “Silent Night” being sung by sons of different mothers, all children of the same Father in heaven,  only hours before and after trying to kill each other.  What sadness to think it took so many lost lives to resolve this war years later despite their similarities.

The song below written and sung by John McCutcheon, an American folksinger, was my first introduction to this bit of history and is just as touching today.  It can be found in various versions on YouTube but this is one I particularly like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9coPzDx6tA

Christmas in the Trenches

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.

‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still
No Christmas song was sung,
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground,
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound,
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear,
As one young German voice sang out so clear.

“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me,
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony,
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more,
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.

As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent,
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent,
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I,
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.

“There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried,
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side,
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright,
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night.

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land,
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand,
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well,
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ‘em hell.

We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home,
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own,
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin,
This curious and unlikely band of men.

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more,
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart
That lived that wondrous night,
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”

‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were warmed
As songs of peace were sung,
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war,
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell,
Each Christmas come since World War I,
I’ve learned its lessons well,
That the ones who call the shots
Won’t be among the dead and lame,
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same.

photo by Josh Scholten

written in 2003 on the solstice night

We are in our darkest of dark days today in our corner of the world–about 16 hours of darkness underwhelming our senses, restricting, confining and defining us in our little circles of artificial light that we depend on so mightily. Yesterday, we had a sudden power outage at home around 5 PM, and our bright, noisy, Christmas-tree-lit carol-playing house was suddenly plunged into pitch blackness and silence. Each family member groped around blindly, looking for elusive candles and flashlights in the dark, each running our toes and knees into things, and then found that each of us had to share a little circle of light to navigate. Dinner, which was almost ready in the oven, was eaten gratefully by candlelight, and became a sacrament of sorts as we huddled around our advent candles, now burning out of necessity, not just in a ceremony of anticipation.

The light this morning is just now finally coming up in the southeastern sky, blending the gray of the ubiquitous clouds with the mist over the fields and barns here on the farm and over the mountain peaks and waters of the bay in the distance. Even the golden Haflingers are gray in this light. It all melts together with the deep green of the forests and fields–a blended water-saturated palette struck by rays of piercing rosy light here and there, creating alpenglow on the distant mountain snow, and sporadic pools of brightness in our barnyard.

It is so tempting to be consumed and lost in these dark days, stumbling from one obligation to the next, one foot in front of the other, bumping and bruising ourselves and each other in our blindness. Lines are long at the stores, impatience runs high, people coughing and shivering with the spreading flu virus, others stricken by loneliness and desperation. So much grumbling in the dark.

I had a conversation with a remarkable young college student recovering at the hospital this week reminding me about the self-absorbance of grumbling. A week ago she was snowshoeing with two companions in the bright sun above the clouds at the foot of nearby Mt. Baker. A sudden avalanche buried all three–she remembers the roar and then the deathly quiet of being covered up, and the deep darkness that surrounded her. She was buried hunched over, with the weight of the snow above her too much to break through. She had a pocket of air beneath her and in this crouching kneeling position, she could only pray–not move, not shout, not anything else. Only God was with her in that small dark place. She believes that 45 minutes later, rescuers dug her out to safety from beneath that three feet of snow. In actuality, it was 24 hours later but she had been wrapped in the cocoon of her prayers, and miraculously, kept safe and warm enough to survive. Her hands and legs, blackish purple when she was pulled out of the snow, turned pink with the rewarming process at the hospital, and a day later, when I visited her, she glowed with a light that came only from within–it kept her alive.

One of her friends died in that avalanche, never having a chance of survival because of how she was trapped and covered with the suffocating snow. The other friend struggled for the full 24 hours to free himself, bravely fighting the dark and the cold to reach the light, courageously finding help to try to rescue his friends.

At times we must fight with the dark–wrestle it and rale against it, being bruised and beaten up in the process, but so necessary to save ourselves and others from being consumed. At other times we must kneel in the darkness and wait– praying, hoping, knowing the light is to come, one way or the other. Grateful, grace-filled, not grumbling.

May the Light find you this week in your moments of darkness. Merry merry Christmas.

One of my childhood decorating tasks included anchoring the string of bubble lights onto sturdy branches so the little clear glass candle lights stood upright.  Once their little bulb heated the liquid inside, a string of bubbles perpetually boiled up to the top.  The bubbles animated the tree and fed the eye already overwhelmed with so much light and color.  I remember sitting on the floor looking up at the tree for hours,  just drinking in the magic of the blinking, bubbling and sparkle of those special lights.  I was the official monitor of the strings of lights, inspecting them each day as the tree was illuminated to see if any bulbs had gone out, as the whole string would fail to light up.  It took detective work to find the culprit bulb and replace it.

One day our one string of bubble lights failed to light when plugged in. I had a spare bulb to add to the string as I tried to determine which bubble light no longer worked.  As I moved the bulbs from socket to socket, carefully handling the fragile glass columns of colored liquid, I lost my hold on one and it dropped to the linoleum floor.  The glass  fractured,  the red liquid bleeding out and quite unexpectedly started to cause the linoleum tile to melt, leaving a significant hole, exposing the plywood subflooring underneath.  My parents were quite concerned about such a toxic acid being inside the lights, wondering if I had been splashed, but my worry was that I had no other spare light bulb and a string of bubble lights that still didn’t light up.   I had a job to do.  The hole in the floor was a mere inconvenience to me but, of course, a big deal to my parents once they realized I hadn’t been harmed.  My father patched the floor with some spare linoleum he cut out from the floor inside a nearby closet.  That patch always looked fresher and a bit stark in the middle of a well-traveled spot, a constant reminder of my bubble light mishap.

The liquid inside modern bubble lights doesn’t melt through floors or skin.  The bulbs are still fragile to handle but the lovely bubbles are worth the extra care it takes to place them on the tree.   I find just the right branches for them, gazing into their amber bubbles and remembering the younger me so long ago, just as captivated now as I was then.  Some things really don’t ever change, although now my wrinkles are illuminated by bubbling lights that highlight my greying hair.

The tree and its lights may only be for a couple weeks each year, but the memories linger more than half a century, and I hope for a few decades more.  Someday, the bubble lights will be gently placed on a tree by an adult grandchild, who will tell the story of a great grandmother who melted a hole in the floor long long ago.

I’ve always enjoyed listening to the eating sounds at night from the remote vantage point of my bedroom TV monitor system set up to watch my very pregnant mares before foaling. A peculiar lullaby of sorts, strange as that seems, but when all my farm animals are chewing and happy,  I am at peace.

It reminds me of those dark deep nights of feeding my own newborns, rocking back and forth with the rhythm of their sucking.  It is a moment of being completely present and peaceful, and knowing at that moment, nothing else matters–nothing else at all.  That must be a little bit how Mary felt cradling her newborn son in a barn so many years ago.  We know she “pondered these things in her heart”, knowing more, much more, was to come…

If I am very fortunate, each day I live has a rhythm that is reassuring and steady, like the sounds of hay chewing, or rocking a baby. I wake knowing where the next step will bring me, and live in each moment fully, without distraction by the worry of the unknown.

But the reality is: life’s rhythms are often out of sync, the cadence is jarring, the sounds are discordant, and sometimes I’m the one being chewed on, so pain replaces peacefulness. Maybe that is why those moments in the barn~~that sanctuary~~are so treasured. They bring me home to that doubting center of myself that needs reminding that pain is fleeting,  and peace, however elusive, is forever. I always know where to find it for a few minutes at the end of every day, in a pastoral symphony of sorts.

In my work at a university health center, at least 1/3 of my patients have some sort of upper respiratory infection, often with a significant sore throat.  It is crucial that my medical team members sort through the possibilities of Group A strep throat, mononucleosis, early tonsillar abscess or the rare case of potentially fatal Lemierre’s Syndrome.   Although most of the sore throats are viral infections that will resolve simply with time and rest, the discomfort caused by a sore throat, no matter the cause, is miserable. The students often could benefit from something more than the routine salt water or lidocaine gargle, pain pills and numbing lozenges, and certainly don’t need unnecessary antibiotics.

I think it might be time to bring back an old remedy that worked for me some fifty years ago as a kid with frequent sore throats.  My mother wrapped my neck in one of my father’s old gray wool socks with the red toes and tops, usually one that had been darned one time too many, and just couldn’t hold up in a work boot any longer.  She would rub pungent camphor/menthol Balm Ben Gay on my neck and chest before the sock was wrapped around and anchored toe to rim with a big safety pin.  I was always a little concerned about an inadvertent stab to the jugular while she was snugging it up to be pinned, but she never did draw blood.

The heat from the balm and the comforting wrap of wool calmed the child and the misery.  There was just something about my mother’s ministrations and my father’s large sock around my neck that made me feel completely and utterly cared about.  Maybe there was a therapeutic value beyond that, but I suspect that my immune system simply responded positively to love made tangible.

So I may stock up on gray wool socks, safety pins, and BenGay in the clinic along with the usual bags of tea, instant chicken soup broth and peppermint drops.  If the students don’t go for it (it’s not exactly fashionable to be reeking of camphor and wearing a grey wool collar) then we’ll just start making sock monkeys.  They are therapeutic too.  You can’t look at one without smiling.   You can’t hold one without feeling better.  You can’t sleep with one without having sweet dreams.  They just might cure a viral sore throat all on their own.

Maybe the new medicine is really the old medicine.  I think we have forgotten how well it works.

(Originally written in 2004)
If I recall correctly, the first catalog with holiday theme items arrived in our mailbox in late July. The “BEST CHRISTMAS ISSUE EVER!” magazines hit the racks in September. Then, with the chill in the air in October and Halloween past, the stores put out the Santa decorations and red and white candy, instead of the orange and black candy of the previous 6 weeks. I have been inundated with commercial “Christmas” for months now and finally, it is will soon arrive, after considerable fanfare and folderol. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted, beat to a “best ever holiday” pulp.

All of this has little to do with the original gift given that first Christmas night, lying small and helpless in a barn feed trough. I know a fair amount about feed troughs, having daily encounters with them in our barn, and there is no fanfare there and no grandiosity. Just basic sustenance– every day needs fulfilled in the most simple and plain way. Our wooden troughs are so old, they have been filled with fodder thousands of times over the decades. The wood has been worn smooth and shiny from years of being sanded by cows’ rough tongues, and over the last two decades, our horses’ smoother tongues, as they lick up every last morsel, extracting every bit of flavor and nourishment from what has been offered there. No matter how tired, how hungry, there is comfort offered at those troughs. The horses know it, anticipate it, depend on it, thrive because of it.

The shepherds in the hills that night were starving too. They had so little, yet became the first invited to the feast at the trough. They must have been overwhelmed, having never known such plenty before. Overcome with the immensity of what was laid before them, they certainly could not contain themselves, and told everyone they could about what they had seen.

His mother listened to the excitement of the visiting shepherds and that she “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart”. Whenever I’m getting caught up in the frenetic overblown commercialism of modern Christmas, I go out to the barn and look at our rough hewn feed troughs and think about what courage it took to entrust an infant to such a bed. She knew in her heart, indeed she had been told, that her son was to feed the hungry souls of human kind and He became fodder Himself.

Now I am at the trough, starving, sometimes stamping in impatience, often anxious and weary, at times hopeless and helpless. He was placed there for good reason: a treasure to be shared plain and simple, nurture without end for all.

Who needs Christmas cookies, pumpkin pies and the candy canes to fill the empty spot deep inside?

Just kneel at the manger.

Getting a Handel on “Messiah”

One small town
Containing more churches than banks,

A ninety year old choral society
With an Advent tradition of singing Handel’s Messiah,

Seventy-some enthusiastic singers recruited without auditions
Through church bulletin announcements

Farmers, store clerks, machinists, students
Middle schoolers to senior citizens

Gather in an unheated church for nine weeks of rehearsal
To perform one man’s greatest gift to sacred music.

Handel, given a libretto, commissioned to compose,
Isolated himself for 24 days, barely ate or slept

Believed himself confronted by all heaven itself
And saw the face of God,

And so created overture, symphony, arias, oratorios
Soaring, interwoven themes repeating, resounding

With despair, mourning, anticipation
Renewal, redemption, restoration, triumph.

Delicate appoggiaturas and melismata
Of astounding complexity and intricacy.

A tapestry of sound and sensation unparalleled
To be shouted from the soul, wrung from the heart.

This group of rural people gathers to join voices
Honoring faith foretold, realized, proclaimed.

In concert parallel to original Messiah’s mission
Of performance to benefit those in need.

Ably led by a forgiving director with a sense of humor
And a nimble organist with flying feet and fingers.

The lilting sopranos with angel song,
The altos provide steadfast support,

The tenors echo plaintive prophecy
The base voices full and resonant.

An orchestra paints heaven-sent refrains
In tapestry of counterpoint melodies.

The audience sits with soft smiles, moist eyes,
As if in familiar prayer of praise.

The whole sanctuary overflows
With thankfulness:

Glory to God! For unto us a Child is born
And all the people, singers and listeners,  are comforted.