Settling in and a New Year’s wish

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Happy New Year’s Eve!

It feels good to be back here with you after a four-week break to move across the country and start getting settled in to an unfamiliar new home.

I hope you’re enjoying some rest during the holiday season, though I know tonight may bring revelry and exuberance as we usher in 2015.

As I settle in to my new home and get accustomed to unfamiliar surroundings, I’ve been struck with how fortunate I am to live where I do, near a beautiful protected park along the river. From the first morning’s walk with my husband and dog, I was captivated with the surprising beauty and peace of the place.

I was surprised one morning to see this tree filled with vultures. I tried to look alive as I ran under the tree.

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How many vultures can you spot in this tree?

This isn’t even a very big tree. I was amazed at the numbers gathered there and was briefly unsettled, until I remembered my husband telling me about the salmon spawning here during his visits in November.

The vultures didn’t care one little iota about me. They were here for their Christmas dinner, and given the smell of rotting salmon coming off the river, I was glad for their presence. They still have work to do, and I find myself happily looking for them and counting them each morning. Today was breezy, and several circled the river riding the wind. They looked almost graceful in their enjoyment of the ride.

While I would never have thought vultures would teach me something about a new calendar, these birds have. Not everything can stay the same, nor should I want it to.

Not everything can stay the same, nor should I want it to.

Just as I don’t want salmon carcasses left to decompose along my running route, I don’t want to cling to the old things that are no longer meant for me. I need to let go, and I need to embrace the sometimes ungainly, unlovely helpers I encounter along the way.

While I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, there are things I have to let go of to embrace the year ahead. Can you relate?

My wish for you (and me) is this:

May we let go of what must be left in 2014. May we embrace the coming year. May we encounter gentle paths along the way. And yet, when we encounter the inevitable rocky paths, may we embrace those, too, knowing that they help us stay sharp, they help us develop compassion for others’ rocky paths, and they challenge us to become a stronger, better self than we would be if all our paths were calm. Most of all, may we flourish.

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I’ll leave you with a scene I’m blessed enough to see every day. The dog is settling in well, and we both enjoy stopping here in the mornings to watch the river teem with birds. I couldn’t ask for a better way to greet each morning, and I wish you many moments of calm and serene beauty as you start your year.

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My dog and I run the trails and stop by the river each morning, becoming more “local” every day. 

 

All the best to you in 2015!

PS—Thanks to some crazy VAT law the EU passed, the price for my ebook will go up tomorrow. So buy it today before the price increase! (I think it’s a steal at $3.99.)

New book, old posts, part 4

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Merry Christmas Eve!

While I want to be here in this space with you, you wouldn’t get my best right now. After a cross-country move and all the fun (and by fun, I mean chaos) that accompanies such an “adventure,” I’m taking some time away from blogging to continue unpacking but also to be fully present for Christmas and to reenergize for the year ahead.

So I’ll remind you that my book is available—in paperback and as an ebook through Lulu. Each week of Advent, I’ve offered a popular repost from Christmas 2012. The one I’m sharing today looks at Christmas through golden glasses. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas! I hope you’re enjoying time with your family and friends, as well as taking time to ponder the great gift of Christ’s birth and promise of His return.

Today, we continue the colors of Christmas series with gold, and there’s even a golden little brain teaser for you at the end of this post. I’ve got Burl Ives’ “Silver and Gold” going through my head, as I picture Yukon Cornelius failing time and again to find gold. (If “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” isn’t a must-see on your list of Christmas TV specials, then you probably won’t know who I’m talking about, but trust me, Yukon Cornelius is the worst gold prospector in the whole world.)

In the song Ives sings, he reminds us that the hunt for material gold isn’t the most important way to celebrate Christmas: “Silver and Gold, Silver and Gold/ Means so much more when I see/ Silver and Gold decorations on every Christmas tree.”

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This gold star tops our Christmas tree.

It’s hard to imagine Christmas without gold decorations, especially stars to remind us of the one that appeared over the manger in Bethlehem where Christ was born, the same star that led the wise men to Jesus.

So it’s only natural at Christmas to think of stars and halos and even a box full of gold given to Jesus in honor of his birth.

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I hope you enjoy Christmas Eve today, and may tomorrow be a truly special time with family, friends, or wherever you may be.

New book, old posts, part 3

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I hope your Advent season is going well. I know what a busy time this is and appreciate you taking time out of your day to stop by and rest with me.

This is my third week of insane busyness with a cross-country move. If all goes as planned, I may actually get some rest today, in between pulling out Christmas decorations and unpacking boxes and finding a place for everything in my new home.

While I want to be here in this space with you each week, you wouldn’t get my best right now. So I’ll remind you that my book is available—in paperback and as an ebook through Lulu—and would make a great gift under the tree (there’s still time!). Each week, I’ll also offer a popular repost from Christmas 2012.

Advent isn’t always full of good cheer, especially for those who have lost a loved one, and this post from 2012 tackles the grief that can sometimes mar our expected joy in the season.

I promise to reply to your comments as soon as possible. Thanks for your grace and patience during this transition. Happy Advent!

“O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches!” If you’ve missed the other posts in this series, you can go back and read all about white Christmases and red poinsettias. But today’s color is one of my favorites: green.

This little green tree decorates the table where we put all our Christmas cards.

This little green tree decorates the table where we put all our Christmas cards.

That green is one of my favorite colors shouldn’t surprise you, given the title of my blog and the fact that I write so frequently about trees. And unless you walk around with blinders on these days, you can’t go far without seeing some green of Christmas: trees, elf costumes, candy wrappers.

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I leave off today with a wish and a blessing for you as we head toward the shortest day of the year and into the last week before Christmas. May you be blessed with moments of peace, deep rest, authentic calm, the healing presence of God, abounding light, and moments of joy to delight you in the frenetic days of this season.

New book, old posts, part 2

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This is my second week of insane busyness and being in limbo with a cross-country move. I say “limbo” because one house has been packed up, but the movers haven’t arrived at the new house with all our stuff—including my computer. And so I haven’t caught a plane yet to make the move official.

While I want to be here in this space with you each week, you wouldn’t get my best right now. So I’ll remind you each week that my book is available—in paperback and as an ebook through Lulu—and would make a great gift under the tree (there’s still plenty of time!). Each week, I’ll also offer a popular repost from Christmas 2012.

And I promise to reply to your comments as soon as possible. Thanks for your grace and patience during this transition. Happy Advent!

Last week, I began a series for Advent on the colors of Christmas. This week’s focus is on the color red, one of the most traditional colors associated with the season. I remember a few years ago seeing a friend at church in November wearing a beautiful orange sweater, and she said she was trying to wear it one more time before December fashionistas dictated red as the “must-wear” color.

In Western culture, the color red has widely varying associations: blood, passion or love, danger, stop (like the color of most of the traffic signals I seem to see these days) and many things Christmas (candy canes, Santa’s suit, Rudolph’s nose, bows, holly berries).

Even our expressions use the color in varying ways. You don’t want to be “in the red” (in debt) at the end of the year. The parking deck at the mall may have you “seeing red” (feeling angry) as you struggle to find an open space.

“Red-letter days” are ones we anticipate for their celebrations and importance. We “roll out the red carpet” to celebrities and dignitaries. And we can even “paint the town red” on a fun night out. But we don’t want to get caught “red-handed” (in the act) when we’re snooping to discover the contents of our wrapped Christmas presents.

For Christmas reds, there is no end in what we can find in red. Let’s start with what blooms during this season:

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A profusion of nandina berries in my yard

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Alas, while 2012 was a mild autumn and left me with beautiful geraniums (the ones I photographed for that post) to grace the front porch well into December, 2014 was harsher and forced me to chop off the geraniums even before the movers came to put the pots on the truck. I’m looking forward to planting geraniums at my new home, and maybe with a milder climate, they’ll last even longer than in my old home state.

New book, old posts

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When I was in girl scouts oh so many years ago, we had a song we sang in rounds: “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, and the other gold.”

For the next few weeks, I’ll be insanely busy with a cross-country move, and while I want to be here in this space with you each week, you wouldn’t get the best I have to offer. So I’ll remind you each week that my book (the new friend) is available—in paperback and as an ebook through Lulu—and would make a great gift under the tree. Each week, I’ll also offer a popular repost from Christmas 2012 (an old friend).

And I promise to reply to your comments as soon as possible. Thanks for your grace and patience. Happy Advent!

Tis the season of Advent, a joyful time in the calendar as we prepare for Christmas. My husband and I got an unusually early start on our Christmas decorations this year, and our weekend of stringing up lights and hanging stockings on the mantel has me pondering the colors of Christmas.

In the coming weeks, I’ll focus on a different color of Christmas, starting today with the color white.

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One of my favorite Christmas decorations: a white ceramic angel holding a book and lit from within

In our western culture, white represents many good qualities: innocence, purity, light, goodness. We sing songs dreaming of a white Christmas and get a little excited (at least in some parts of the country) if the weather forecast calls for snow to blanket everything in its stillness and quiet on that magical day.

White is the color you get when all other colors get absorbed. I think the Christmas season is a bit like that, absorbing all of our prayers and dreams and hopes and expectations, even our fears and sorrows.

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I have Enuma Okoro to thank for opening my eyes to this color of the season. I’m reading her latest book Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent. The simple white cover drew me to the book, probably because I’ve found myself craving simplicity more than ever this year.

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What I didn’t point out to you two years ago was the crack in the angel’s right wing. When I was packing her away the year I bought her, I was being careful to support the wings in bubble wrap. So careful that the whole thing slipped out of my hands as I was putting it in a box. Her wing snapped off, and I superglued it back on. I found myself thinking of her recently, wondering how she will fare in the move from North Carolina to California. Here’s hoping she arrives with her wings still intact!