Poem - In Winter - Michael Ryan

At four o’clock it’s dark.
Today, looking out through dusk
at three gray women in stretch slacks
chatting in front of the post office,
their steps left and right and back
like some quick folk dance of kindness,
I remembered the winter we spent
crying in each other’s laps.
What could you be thinking at this moment?
How lovely and strange the gangly spines
of trees against a thickening sky
as you drive from the library
humming off-key? Or are you smiling
at an idea met in a book
the way you smiled with your whole body
the first night we talked?
I was so sure my love of you was perfect,
and the light today
reminded me of the winter you drove home
each day in the dark at four o’clock
and would come into my study to kiss me
despite mistake after mistake after mistake.

Quote - from a poem by Jane Kenyon

"If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant."

from "Taking Down the Tree"

Poem - Your Luck Is About To Change - Susan Elizabeth Howe

(A fortune cookie)

Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won't give in
to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,
or even the neighbors' Nativity.
Their four-year-old has arranged
his whole legion of dinosaurs
so they, too, worship the child,
joining the cow and sheep. Or else,
ultimate mortals, they've come to eat
ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,
then savor the newborn babe.

Poem - Lines for Winter - Mark Strand

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Video: Reading by Mary Louise-Parker

Read the day after Christmas while listening to "May I Suggest" - a song with words and music by Susan Werner

"May I suggest that this is the best part of your life."

Sermon on joy - Rev. Katie Templin Culbert

 

12/12/20021

Be with yourself in your feelings. Empathy for yourself. Mindful feeling. Experience the moment. Be here with now. If we are here. Being awake to the present is a conduit for joy. Cultivate and express joy.

Sympathetic joy. Delight in others' joy. 

Elephant and 3 men. Not wrong. Perspective is right. But incomplete. 

Thinking of Ross Gay's quote...

Rini Death Self paintings

The more perspectives we have, the more it all makes sense - the wide view. Interdependence. Not despair and independence

Vimeo video

Opening to joy...

 Sermon by the Rev. Angela Herrera on 12/5/2021

• The man and the tigers and the strawberries
• The study in 2020 of happiness among different ages
• Woman seeing Jupiter

Vimeo video

Me: 

• Joe vs. Volcano: "some things take care of themselves. They're not your job; maybe they're not even your business."
• Kristen in college, after taking anti-depressants, noticing the breeze for the first time, de-centering herself and her pain, able to experience the world, open for the first time to joy
• Me in college, feeling depressed and suicidal but noticing the sunset one evening and realizing my feelings are beside the point. My job is to be here to witness and worship the world. 
• Alice Walker, pisses god off when you walk by the color purple and don't notice.
• Mary Oliver quote - standing still, noticing the world, and being astonished.