people of faith engaging creation and justice
It was early afternoon on Christmas Eve. The mood in Buffalo Street Books was cheerful and quiet. I browsed novels and non-fiction, cookbooks and writing. I picked up a book on making macarons, a Peter Tremayne mystery, and a box of cards for thank you notes. And then, in the little aisle between “environment” and “gardening” I had a mystical experience.
I wish I could predict these things, order them up, but you take what you can get. I was looking for a particular title that was scribbled on a scrap of paper and this meant I read each of the titles along the shelf. Most of them were dire: this species gone, that place defiled, humanity on the brink.
I turned around and there were entirely different books – gardening, farm to table, edible landscapes. I found a handbook on home-scale permaculture and right there I felt the difference between the appeal to fear and the appeal to the desire to grow things. Read more of this post
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!
The Shortest Day, by Susan Cooper
Since Greenblade began people have fretted that one of its weaknesses is “competing priorities.” “We believe in what Greenblade is doing, sure, but our lives are so busy ….” This argument is delivered as though it was self-evident and immutable. After years of dropping hints and making (what I thought were) clear statements, I am addressing this head on. And this may not be the last time; it is that important.
We are in a time of such sweeping change that it is difficult to take it in. Weather patterns, cultural patterns, animal patterns, natural patterns – all are changing. The easiest way to handle this is either to shoehorn the data into a pre-existing box that it does not fit or to go into a little fetal position of denial.
The box that Greenblade does not fit in is the box labeled “program,” although that box is the most tempting one to try to use. Greenblade’s mandate is to “heal the human relationship with Creation.” Read more of this post
While too many Christians spend the season getting bent out of shape if anyone else puts a claim on a winter festival, some people simply live what Christmas means. Narayanan Krishnan, for example.
Once I’m in, I’m fine. My body expects the shortened day. I begin a candle-lighting ritual. I grow aware of the winter aesthetic. It’s getting there is the problem.
This year has not gone as smoothly as usual. I’m still a little dismayed by the early darkness. I think it must be close to midnight when it is only 5:00. Elizabeth says she will give me a bottle of Aquavit so I can pretend to be Swedish. Read more of this post
