Thick Was the Snow

Snow-frosted branches

“Thick was the snow on field and hedge
And vanished was the river-sedge,
Where winter skilfully had wound
A shining scarf without a sound.”
— Charles Causley, “At Nine of the Night I Opened My Door”

“Snow
falls on snow —
silence.
— Santaka

The snow was beautiful while it lasted.  A brief taste of “real” winter here in the rainy Pacific Northwest.

 

Laboring Like the Snow

Snow day. Bring out the sleds!

Like Snow

by Wendell Berry

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.

I appreciate Wendell Berry’s sentiment, but snow makes me want to play!  I am not the only one.  Snow is rare in Seattle, and even a light covering of white on the sloping lawn around Green Lake was enough for sledding fun.

Snow day at Green lake

 

Snow Day! A Gift of Time

“I love that snow is mineral, falling as billions of temporary stars.”
— Diane Ackerman, Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day

Weeping poplar, snowy landscape

“”They seem tentative and awkward at first, then in a hastening host a whole brief army falls, white militia paratrooping out of the close sky over various textures, making them one.”
— Donald Hall, Seasons at Eagle Pond

My neighborhood this morning

Today I woke to a snow-covered world, and when I checked the inclement weather hotline I heard that the city’s branch libraries were closed today and I didn’t have to go to work. Yippee!  A snow day!  A whole day of unscheduled time.  What a gift!

I donned boots and took a morning walk around Green Lake.  So pretty.

Path at Green Lake

Dawn Redwood at lake’s edge

I loved the pattern of the black branches laden with white frosting

Witch hazel

Cedars

A Birthday Story for Christmas

December 25th was designated the day for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ by Pope Julius I in the mid-300s.  Since Christmas is a birthday, I thought I’d share with you a beautiful birthday story I read recently in Krista Tippett’s book, Becoming Wise:  An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.

The book summarizes the lessons Tippett learned from the wise men and women she has interviewed over the years for her program On Being.  It is perhaps fitting that the birthday story related here has Jewish roots.  It was told by Rachel Naomi Remen, a physician, who was given the story on her fourth birthday by her rabbi grandfather.  I am copying it here:

 

The Birthday of the World

“In the beginning there was only holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life.  In the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light.  And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke.  The wholeness of the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light.  And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.

Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident.  We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world.  It’s a very important story for our times.  This task is called tikkum olan in Hebrew.  It’s the restoration of the world.

And this is, of course, a collective task.  It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born.  We are all healers of the world.  That story opens a sense of possibility.  It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference.  It’s about healing the world the touches you, that’s around you.”

 

So here’s the wise lesson:  Be the light you want to see in the world.  It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but do even one thing.

Merry Christmas!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

My Christmas-season place mats

Now that I’ve no little children in the house, I’ve severely edited my Christmas decorating and obligations.  Still I do cherish and enjoy the few Christmas-y moments I’ve sought out this year, starting with having my red and green log cabin quilted place mats handy for our dining room table this month.  I’ve already written about my single string of outdoor lights over our front door, my makeshift garden trellis tree, my snowflake tree, driving to Bothell to see the Christmas lights at Evergreen Church, and painting a few Christmas cards.  In recent weeks I’ve also enjoyed a Christmas play at the Taproot Theatre and listening to Brad Craft, bookseller, reading aloud Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” at the University Bookstore.

Still to be enjoyed is a new Christmas book, Family Christmas Treasures, an anthology of stories about Christmas excerpted from literature and color plates of art celebrating Christmas.  I like that there are new-to-me stories, like “The Montreal Aunts” by Maureen Hull as well as some lovely art that I had not seen before.  For example, I really like these two Christmas prints by Andy Warhol:

Poinsettias by Andy Warhol, 1982

Untitled (Fairy and Christmas Ornaments) by Andy Warhol, 1953 – 1955

They inspired me to paint some of my own Christmas ornaments:

Christmas ornaments

 

 

Handmade Christmas Cards

Painted Christmas card, an ornament tree

I am getting fewer Christmas cards with each passing year, probably a reflection of my giving fewer cards as well.  Still, one of life’s joys is finding personal letters in the mailbox.  So in my limited way, I’ve tried to spread some joy by painting and sending off a handful of Christmas cards to my family and a few friends.  The rest of you will have to find comfort and joy via these images over the internet.  My digital good wishes are no less heartfelt!

Evergreen forest

Merry and Bright

Decorated Christmas tree

Ornament tree

Snowman ingredients

Holly tree

 

 

Islands of Warmth

Last month’s full moon

“The cold has the philosophical value of reminding men that the universe does not love us. Cold as absolute as the black tomb rules space; sunshine is a local condition, and the moon hangs in the sky to illustrate that matter is usually inanimate. . . . To return back indoors after exposure to the bitter, inimical, implacable cold is to experience gratitude for the shelters of civilization, for the islands of warmth that life creates.”
— John Updike, “The Cold”

I am getting tired of the dark, the gloom, the clouds, the cold, the dampness, the rain.  I dream of warm sun on my skin.  That local condition is months away.  In the meantime, I will try to be grateful for central heating, electric lights, polar fleece, and mittens!

 

 

 

The World All a-Glow

Bedazzled by lights

“Until one feels the spirit of Christmas, there is no Christmas.  All else is outward display — so much tinsel and decorations.  For it isn’t the holly, it isn’t the snow.  It isn’t the tree nor the firelight’s glow.  It’s the warmth that comes to the hearts of men when the Christmas spirit returns again.”
— Author unknown

“Christmas is most truly Christmas when we celebrate it by giving the light of love to those who need it most.”
— Ruth Carter Stapleton

I love the lights of Christmas.  I look for their colorful, twinkling cheer to brighten the darkness of this time of year.  The day after Thanksgiving I made myself proud by hanging a paltry, single string of lights over our front door.  Even that small source of color makes me happy once evening comes.  I won’t be putting much effort into Christmas baking or decorating this year, but that single string of lights makes a difference.

This year I found a new way to celebrate the lights of the season — I drove out to the suburbs to see the Christmas Lights show put on by Evergreen Church in Bothell.  The free light show runs very night from November 25th to January 1st.  For about 25 minutes, there is an extravaganza of bedazzling lights blinking on and off in time with piped-in Christmas music.  There is a warming house, cocoa and cookies, warming lamps outside, and on the grounds a tunnel of light and nativity scene.

Just before dusk, ribbons of crows — thousands of them — flew by high over the church to their night roosts.  That was amazing, too.

Evergreen Church in Bothell

The church itself looks a bit like a suburban motel, but then it is magically transformed under the lights.  In the opening video, the church’s pastor states that there are 70 languages spoken in the city of Bothell, and then we hear individuals send us Christmas greetings in their native tongues.  I appreciated this warm welcome.

Here are some photos:

 

 

Finding the Fruits of Winter in the Witt Winter Garden

Witch hazel

“But the winter was not given to us for no purpose.  We must thaw its cold with our genialness.  We are tasked to find out and appropriate all the nutriment it yields.  If it is a cold and hard season, its fruit, no doubt, is the more concentrated and nutty. . . ”
— Henry David Thoreau, Journal

The sun was shining — a rare occurrence this winter season — and I was moved to go outside for a walk.  In the spirit of adventure, I made my first visit to the Joseph A. Witt Winter Garden at Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum.  What a delight to see things blooming in this seasonal garden, proving that even winter yields its fruits.

Washington Park Arboretum

Orange beauty witch hazel

Ruby glow witch hazel

Cyclamen patch

Hellebores

Snowdrops, Washington Park Arboretum

Snowdrops

February’s Browns and Grays

Structure visible

“January and February are my favorite months.  I like the bare branches of trees, structure become visible, and the subtle colors, all sorts of varieties of browns and grays that are seen only at this time of year, brought into focus by the pellucid light that is as close an analogy as I know to the silence out of which my work emerges.”
— Anne Truitt, Prospect: The Journal of an Artist

Here are some of the beautiful grays and browns in my Seattle landscape this February:

Chinese red birch bark

Fern

Foggy February morning at Green Lake

Green Lake in winter