This bit of local heritage is just creepy enough to endear me to it. Surely something must be haunting the premises!



Do you not agree that two sizable wreaths with red bows would brighten up the place nicely? Perhaps I should be the wreath-elf and pound stakes into the doors tonight to hang them while the town slumbers on...

As the winter's first snowflakes drifted from the sky and blanketed town in a deceptive purity, a friend brought a gift to me from a distant and warmer place, dropping it into my open hands and causing love to cascade into this deceptive heart.



Deception is the real word for true love and friendship, I have learned with time; for it is in deceiving your own fear that you are able to love freely.

Simplicity amid the holiday madness.

Sadly, it only rained and thundered and blew like mad yesterday. No snow; no ice; no need for the Klondikes. But in our imaginations, it was Christmas Town!

Our tree's official name? "Choppy" !

:)

Today is a rainy, windy, blustery day - and we are going to brave the elements for a Christmas tree! We shall pull on our heavy Klondike boots, wrap our heads in woolen hats and mufflers, pull on our warmest coats made for sub-zero temperatures and ... drive to our local nursery.



If only it were that exciting!

A moment of panic gripped me as what I am stood on the threshold of what I could be; or, more disturbingly, what I was meant to be.



A lifetime of insecurities camouflaged to everyone but those who know me best; the things they are privy to is nothing less than piteous. You don't believe me? Ah well...

As I sat last night paralyzed, gnawing on the fingernails of fear, words appeared on the screen of my iphone - words from a daughter-turned-friend.

"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not."

Have you stood on that threshold alone and shaking, only to suddenly feel warm and unexpected hands pressed against your back? Angel hands prodding you on?

Christmas, indeed. This is how He comes.

'Tis the season for Blueberry Pie!

There are poets, words that move me, that pull my lungs out of my chest like a magnet with their passion and intimacy. Some of these I have quoted at gallimaufry. Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, Seamus Heaney, Denise Levertov, Robert Bly, Thomas Merton; deeply introspective writers who are utterly transparent about their passions, their rage, their sins and tenderness, their ever-flowing love and beauty:

life as the mortal soul knows it to be.

It was not so long ago that I came to know a pianist, and not a poet, who writes with sound and touch; melody and texture; fullness and void. I would not have thought that music could be as poetic and raw as words.

Olivier Cavé

http://www.olivier-cave.com



My compliments.

Some have asked me why I bother to knit when I have so many other things to do. This is the reason why: for the joy of seeing someone you love pull your work out of their pocket and slip it on their hands, around their neck, over their head.



What an elation last week when this little eight year old girl unknowingly wrapped herself in my love for her. Her thought was simply to warm her freezing hands! But I knew that the mitts would someday warm her freezing heart... or mine.

xo

A season begins; a wondering, a thoughtfulness. Who is the Son of God, and why is He here? Is it for me, for my children; or is it for the ones I would disdain?

Bold, self-righteous heart. Sit in the glowing silence and know your place. The time has come for thankfulness

and passionate, unflinching love.

Running one evening in Kansas, I came upon a family having their picture taken among the grasses and waving rods of the prairie preserve. They had turned away and were walking toward the sky.



All I could see was the cowboy hat; the gait of a native ushering his family toward a horizon of better light. There was no resisting the temptation to pull my camera from my tiny pocket and snap away. But when I had finished relishing the moment, as I stood staring after them with a heart billowing in love for my native people and land, I felt pulled to glance to my left where his family stood watching, unbeknownst to me!

My mind panicked. Perhaps they were offended that I'd taken his picture without asking!

Without warning, Allison of Europe rose to the surface. Allison who greets people in French every day. The Allison I had been trying so hard to suppress!

"Bonjour! Je voulais juste prendre une photo de son chapeau !"

I could literally feel the shock run through my body. What are you doing? Speak English! And then... in my very best French accent (still unclear as to why I did this) I blurted out,

"I zust vant to take picture of American het!"

My gosh. Is it possible I just did that? Why, why, why?

The people smiled at my quaint foreignness while I nearly fainted in horror. And as my feet ran the rest of the path, I realized without a doubt that I am a foreigner wherever I go. Home is not here, and home is not there. Divine joke? I suppose it's time to embrace myself.