Earth stood hard as iron

While the rest of the northern half of the country has been being socked with massive snowfall, we have been cold cold cold but relatively snow-less. The boys have been making due with the drifts that cover the ground, but their snow angels are poor specimens with bits of grass peeking through.

Tonight however, upon leaving church after the advent program, Lessons and Carols, we walked outside to find we were being snowed upon with large lacy flakes, the kind which meander down, twirling. It was a wonderful sight; the car was blanketed in the hour we'd been away from it, the trees reaching with full arms. Tomorrow I will take the boys sledding, we will have cold noses, we will pack snowballs and make hearty, grassless angels.

Lessons and Carols is one of my favorite services of the church year. Year to year it is the same: nine readings interspersed with carols. We sing some of the most beautiful hymns in the book, the ancient "Of the Father's Love Begotten" written by Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-410), the modern "A Stable Lamp is Lighted" written by Richard Wilbur (b. 1921), a former US poet laureate, a 15th C. German carol, "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" and the 19th C. "In the Bleak MidWinter" written by poet, Christina Rossetti.

There is something about each of these, a line or phrase, that keeps me coming back to them. In the Rossetti poem it is the whole of the first stanza "In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago." In the German carol it is the repetition of the words, "when half spent was the night." In "Of the Father's Love Begotten," I love the words "he the source, the ending he." And in the Wilbur poem it is the beginning of the final stanza: "But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high." There is such richness to these words, I could walk the hard freeze of my winter landscape all day and never wear through Rossetti's image: "frosty wind may moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone."

We have been busy this week with holiday things: Botanie's christmas party (our first year with enough employees to warrant a party!), our friends' annual white elephant exchange (we got a pocket screwdriver set, but missed the yodeling pickle) and several trips to the post office to mail off packages. The boys slept by the tree with Tim on Friday evening, a special holiday tradition that I remember seemed so magical, so wonder-full when I was a child, cozy in my sleeping bag by our glowing tree. This year, it was fun to come down to make my tea in the morning and find all three of my boys still fast asleep around our beautiful fir.

And in case you were hoping, as I was, that the Montana Grizzlies would come up with a National Championship, it was not to be. They lost (badly) to the U. of Richmond Spiders, who wrapped them up 24-7. The restaurant where we watched the game was not so jovial as last week when the Griz took the semi-finals. This time the cheering was replaced, for the most part, by groaning and other noises of exasperation. And Corin was duly pleased with the change in the decibel level.

Only a few days until Christmas, the snow continues to twirl and drift outside, and I wish you each a season that is full and bright. I'll leave off with the first stanza of the Wilbur poem:

A stable lamp is lighted Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry, and straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven. A stall become a shrine.