What Do You See When Your Mind In Solemn Stillness Lay?

What do you see?  We see one image a night of outer space produced by the Hubble and James White telescopes.  It is a part of our Advent celebration.  These two images are from the night before last and last night.  What do you see?  I see a declaration of glory so unfathomable it demands worship.  True worship.  I cannot turn away from this.  I cannot toss it aside like so many images.  It stops me cold confronts me with holiness. How can I believe in something so beautiful beyond all beauty I have ever known?  But the answer to this question and all life others is so simple as to bring my mind to solemn stillness.  It is the Christ Child, the I AM, the one who is said of, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”  It is like seeing the sculpture of David and thinking it’s amazing instead of Michelangelo.  The amazing Christ Child, my mind “in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angels sing.  Still through the clovern skies they come with peaceful wings unfurled, and still their heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world…”  

     

 

21,535,200 Seconds of My Normal

21,535,200 seconds ago, 358920 minutes ago, 14955 days ago, 41 years ago this morning, I felt terribly sick. It was bitter cold, spitting snow.   My brother took me to the emergency room of UT Hospital.  The doctor laughed at me, said there was nothing wrong, gave me a B12 shot, and sent me on to my wedding.  If you had sat me down and told me all that would happen to me in the next 41 years, all the children and grandchildren we would have, the place we would go, the people we would meet, the things we would see, the adventures we would have, I would never have believed it.  The Three and her and me has been the greatest adventure I could have never imagined.  Bad times and great, deaths and births, mountains and valleys, life has been as real as I would have never hoped for or imagined it could be.  I married my lover, and to this day, she is her.  I have never grown tired of her, never thought she was anything but drop-dead gorgeous, never not longed for her, felt fulfilled in her, desired her.  From the first time I saw her, I loved her and wanted to be with her, and all these feelings and infinitely more have never gone away.  Is this normal?  I don’t know.  I hope so.  But the truth is…it is my normal.  God be praised.  I have never gotten over her.      

 

Ten Days Out

Ten days out.  Ten more days of Christmas.  Ten more days to see if The Spirit of Christmas stirs in our hearts, minds, and actions.  Most of my Christmas Spirit comes in nostalgia, Christmas past, those childhood days, mine and ours.  My Christmas present is also filled with Christmas past, Advent, the remembering of another Childhood, the God Child coming to be with us.  My Christmas future, although a mystery now, will be filled with more of the same wonderful memories of this Christmas and all the Christmas past, present, and future. If Christmas is anything, it is a thing of remembering, remembering long ago and far away, over the hills and through the woods, God came to be with us, forever and evermore.  Memory is the gift of remembering.  How kind it is that we can.    

The other evening it was snowing as a tug 
slowly pushed a barge up river.  

 

God's Visitation

It is my habit to rise early, start the coffee my lover has prepared the night before, push the coals from the long night into a pile, lay tinder upon them, and pick up The Ancient Text.  After a while, as the Spirit is moving in my heart and mind, a sudden coming occurs, lighting up the darkness in a Godly glow of hope and meaning.  Fire has suddenly sprung to life as if some angel had slipped into our home and, brightly appearing, announced, “To God be the glory!  Great things He hath done!”  I sit and marvel as I stare at the fire and think how many times this miracle has stirred the hearts of men and women, giving hope, warmth, light, and renewed love for a God Who not only conceived of fire but, in an unfathomable act of kindness, shared it with us.  Yes, to Him, The Fire Maker, be the glory and honor forever and evermore. 

 

 

The Worm, Me, and The Omniscience

I saw a long worm on our porch crawling along the wet concrete.  He didn’t know the concrete was deadly to him, and when the sun dried the concrete, the concrete would leach the moisture out of him, leading to his demise.  My lover and I are worm savers, regularly saving them from our porch by tossing them back in the yard.  I got up, went outside, picked him up, and tossed him into the yard.  If he had half a brain, he would have thought some hand of a monster had grabbed him and tried to kill him by throwing half a country mile.  He didn’t.  Have half a brain, that is.  I had actually saved his life.  If I had half a brain, I would have tried to explain to him what I was doing.  But I don’t either.  Have half a brain that it.  I have a whole brain and knew there was no reason to explain to someone without half a brain that I was saving his life.  He couldn’t understand it anyway.  I came back in and continued my quiet time with The Omniscience, the maker of the worm, and me, me saved, and the worm as well.  

     

 

It Is Christmas Time

It is Christmas time, the Christmas season.  Which means what to me?  A grasping at the marvel of it, God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”  That Person came from heaven, and became a baby on earth and grew up here, and became a man, and is our Messiah, our Sinless Savior, Who we killed, but He raised Himself from the dead, “And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”  This is the Who I am trying to grasp.  This is Christmas.  This is us trying to grasp His birthday.  “What will we do with this Man called The Christ?”  God bless everyone in grasping this meaning of the season we are all experiencing.      

Hounder looking at a deer looking at her.  

 

 

18°, 98.6°, 800° All Have Their Place

18°.  That's the temp outside.  That’s cold.  I like cold better than hot.  Or, I should say, I like getting warm better than I like getting cool.  One, my lover can get me warm but never cool.  Fire, one of my favorite things, can do the same thing.  And better still, I like the process of getting warmed by both.  I am confident enough in my manhood to admit I like snuggling, and I also like building a fire.  I like getting up in the dark, banking the coals in the fireplace, and setting tinder, which, later, while I sit in the dark reading The Word and drinking coffee, will suddenly, as a heavenly visitation, burst into flames, filling our home with glowing light and the promise of coming warmth.  It is 18°, my lover is 98.6°, and my fire, Google says, is 800°.  I keep 18 outside, 800 in a steel box, and my lover in my arms.  I like getting warm. 

       

 

Humbly Home

We had been on the road a few days.  Returning yesterday in the bitter cold, we unloaded, and I sat about making a fire as Betty put our traveling gear away.  Soon, we were reclining with our dog in front of the fire as the sun set over the Tennessee.  All was calm, all was bright.  Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home. 

 

 

The Realms of Glory

Yesterday, I wrote to encourage you to participate in Advent as a means of experiencing Christmas in a more meaningful way.  One of the great treasures of Christmas is meditating on the Virgin Mary being with child, God with us.  In the Christian faith, we also experience the same condition.  At salvation, God comes to dwell in us as Spirit.  We are the new Temple for Him (1 Corinthians 6:19).  For some of us, this is a great treasure, for others, a great troubling which might cause us to say, as Mary said, “How can this be?” (Luke 1:24).  All of life is based on faith including our sincere celebration of Christmas, for it is all about Christ being with us.  Not just a man named Christ but the Son of God Almighty.  Advent is a help to our belief and our unbelief (Mark 9:24) because we all need help to believe in Christ, Whom the Angels from the Realms of Glory sang of.    

 

Will You Join Me and Mine?

Advent begins today.  For you who read this let me encourage you to join me and mine and celebrate Christmas by observing Advent.  Christmas can often seem lost on me, like standing outside looking into something I never quite am a part of.   As if the greatest party of the year is happening but I never seem to be invited or at least never seem to be as affected as the whole world seems to be.  Advent is an invitation to your heart to come in and join in the true meaning of Christmas that causes all the other fanfare.  It also adds some liturgy to my life and I long for personal liturgy.  Liturgy is a physical act of worship, it is a doing to commemorate, celebrate, and observe deeply held Christian truths; it is religion being performed.  The liturgy of Advent is 5 candles, (you can use any you have) one lit at the beginning of each of the four weeks of Christmas and one on Christmas Day.  There are many Advent guides you can access online which give daily prompts for each day of Advent.  My lover and I use The Atlantic Magazine, Hubble Space Images Advent along with one our daughters-in-law, Britt and Allison shared with us, which I have posted below.  You don’t have to be a follower of any religious tradition to find some meaning in a holiday that never seems to live up to its hype.  But celebrating Advent can be a way to be a better you, and to be a part of something bigger than the hype of Christmas, to actually be a part of understanding the meaning of Christmas.  Merry Christmas       

https://ccca.biola.edu/advent/2024/before-the-fall-living-in-a-sacred-sanctuary  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Q8ByNT1m8V4