Entry tags:
Adoration of the Magi
Spain (1465-1480)
Book of Hours, MS M.854 fol. 90v - Images from Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts - The Morgan Library & Museum
Entry tags:
Entry tags:
Entry tags:
Xmas tunes
And the season of Christmas song posts begins.
Eeee, and I just realized it's officially Xmas icon time!
Eeee, and I just realized it's officially Xmas icon time!
Entry tags:
a different metaphor
Those who’ve known me for quite a while, might remember the delight I took in Advent Calendars. That’s fallen away over the last few years, but this year I’m taking an interest again. Sadly, my good dozen calendars are in storage in Virginia. I did pick up a Peanuts calendar and found a couple online.
Loyola Press’ calendar doesn’t start until tomorrow, Dec 2nd. Apparently the Christian Advent works differently from the secular Advent that I'm used to, but I started looking at it today. The commentary on Kadinsky’s Last Judgement is interesting but I didn’t find it particularly engaging.
The related exercise, a guided visualization, which they call an imaginative prayer, didn’t work for me at all. At first it reminded me of Tonglen, a meditation practice out of Tibetan Buddhism. In the Loyola Press visualization, you imagine all the conflicts in the world coming in to your mind. But then, instead of creating light from yourself in the darkness, you imagine that light coming down from above. So I tried rising above the earth to feel all the conflicts and it quickly shifted in my mind to looking for the helpers. Instead I was searching for all the people’s small acts of goodness that were making a difference.
Looking back on my response to their exercise, I’m reminded of the time Barbara Marx Hubbard was trying to work out why she was so in favor of space exploration while her friend wanted to stay on Earth. I don’t recall the exact details but I do remember Hubbard’s insight: Oh, you have a different metaphor. She continued that neither way of viewing the world is right or wrong. They are just different perspectives.
The Catholic metaphor just isn’t my metaphor although I will continue checking out their Advent Calendar. I do want to acknowledge the season and there might be something that speaks to me. I think it’s time to figure out my metaphor.
Entry tags:
A Rocky and Bullwinkle Christmas
Kat's watching something that sounds like Boris and Natasha in a Christmas special. Apparently that's not as out-there as I'd thought.
[little tree] by E. E. Cummings
[little tree] by E. E. Cummings
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"
Nativity by Li-Young Lee
In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.
How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night's darling?
Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,
this night, the near ground
every reaching-out-to overreaches,
just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,
each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.
How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night's darling?
Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,
this night, the near ground
every reaching-out-to overreaches,
just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,
each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.
Entry tags:
Fairbanks Under the Solstice - John Haines
Slowly, without sun, the day sinks
toward the close of December.
It is minus sixty degrees.
Over the sleeping houses a dense
fog rises—smoke from banked fires,
and the snowy breath of an abyss
through which the cold town
is perceptibly falling.
As if Death were a voice made visible,
with the power of illumination...
Now, in the white shadow
of those streets, ghostly newsboys
make their rounds, delivering
to the homes of those
who have died of the frost
word of the resurrection of Silence.
toward the close of December.
It is minus sixty degrees.
Over the sleeping houses a dense
fog rises—smoke from banked fires,
and the snowy breath of an abyss
through which the cold town
is perceptibly falling.
As if Death were a voice made visible,
with the power of illumination...
Now, in the white shadow
of those streets, ghostly newsboys
make their rounds, delivering
to the homes of those
who have died of the frost
word of the resurrection of Silence.
Entry tags:
My favorite Christmas song
My favorite Christmas song is Loreena McKennit's Dicken's Dublin
Fringe - Running Back To You
More geeky Christmas - I recently rewatched the first season of Fringe. It's still awesome although I'm understanding it better now that I know what's going on. ;-)
More geeky Christmas
More geeky Christmas
Alien for Christmas!
Dr. Who vid to I Want an Alien for Christmas - interestingly I saw a reference to this song in comments just yesterday