Winter Sun

Hoorah! I have just finished my first semester of grad school! Here is a poem I wrote this week, which I'm afraid is very much in the rough. I didn't have time to improve it. Perhaps I will someday soon.


Winter Sun

A pale white gleaming circle
glowing through a crisscross of branches
the presence of that burning orb
made known to this world of cold grays.

Watery light penetrates
cold dry air
a last dead leaf trembles on a branch
which ever leans upwards to that light

Snow is in the air
the white disc fades to a glow
and then vanishes
yet still through the gray sky that unseen light filters down

"comprehended by what it cannot comprehend."

So it has happened. I forgot to post on Sunday evening. The thought crossed my mind once, but it then kept going and didn't come back until Monday night, well after my electricity and magnetism exam was over.

This week I have come to this conclusion about advent: it is celebrated in community, and not isolation. The people of Israel waited together for hundreds of years. We, the church local and global, wait together.

I started reading Wendell Berry this week (thanks to my writer-sister for lending me the book!) , and thought I'd share one of his Sabbath Poems. The second to last stanza really struck me.

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed y us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Wisdom from Wildflowers

I am back from my little vacation from posting. One of my mini projects this summer has been learning about the wildflowers I see. This has given me a new love and appreciation for them.

I think that knowing the name of something - or someone - is important. I don't feel that I can really begin to know someone until I can call them by name. It's difficult to speak affectionately of a particular place without knowing its name. (On a side note, that is why I wish more people in this country named their houses, as is traditional in the UK.) Speaking God's name is powerful. Naming is vital to knowing and loving.

I'm going to let you experience the delight of being able to name flowers by sharing with you the names of some of the common flower names. The photos were all taken within a few minutes walking distance of my house.


Lady's Thumb
Polygonum persicaria







Bird's-foot Trefoil
Lotus corniculatus







Crown Vetch
coronilla varia







Daisy Fleabane
Erigeron annuus







Spotted Touch-me-not
Impatiens capensis








Chicory
Chicorium intybus







Red Clover
Trifolium pratense







Wild Carrot
Daucus carota
known in Canada, at least, as Queen Ann's Lace






Carolina Larkspur
Delphinium

Observations

This week I've been thinking and doing a bit of research on a couple of topics. Those posts, however, are not yet ready, so this week I will share a few observations I have made recently (you can take this preamble as a warning for the slight chaos of this post).

I noticed in May that the red maple tree outside my window was performing an autumn-in-reverse trick: the deep red leaves were turning summer-green.

As I played the piano this evening, I found myself once again reflecting on the relationship between time and music. Music, more than almost anything else, makes a person loose track of time. Yet music is distinctly bound to the limits and structure of time: it is art and expression that only exists in time. Thus it both frees from time and is bound by time. There is a little clock that sits on my piano. Within a year after I got it, it stopped ticking. It seemed somehow appropriate and I have left it that way ever since.

While walking through the woods and along the roads last week, I saw these beautiful wildflowers with large clusters of purple-pink flowers on tall stalks which give off a fragrance reminiscent of lilacs. I learned that these flowers were the milkweeds I was familiar with from my fall walks. It was almost strange to think that those green meadows and roadsides would be full of rattling pods and silky seed-parachutes by September. Funny how I never knew that before, and how it has changed my perception of that fascinating plant. I know there is some parallel to people in this.

Perhaps it's just the way that some people are different from others, but I have a strong suspicion that those who do art see things differently. I am convinced it is because they look at the world differently.