Figuring Out Life While Aging
I almost wake as I lumber
lurching on sleep-stiff ankles
and return to my night-warmed bed.
In the east, out the window,
I watch the pine boughs shift
and sway and still and shift.
Resting on the next street’s roofs
a pale gold light bleeds upward
behind the narrowing pine,
at the window’s top,
the sky’s grey-white
hints at blue.
My red lipstick is annoyed,
muttering behind my mask,
wanting an escape.
Blessing
We live
In all our messy glory;
Trapped in time,
Suspended in place.
Waiting
For the next stage,
The next hope,
The answer that eludes us.
Hold out your hands.
Cup them together
To receive this grace:
You are already holy.
Another Blessing
Stand where you are,
Reach out your arms,
Throw back your head,
Open your mouth.
Listen:
There is silence under.
Open your eyes:
Light bleeds into the dark.
Do not forget this moment.
The Third Blessing
There is no time solitary
Or gathered together
Where you are absent
Or alone.
Breathe,
Grasp,
Release,
Bow down.
Reach out,
Pull in,
Let go,
Rest.
In Death’s waiting room, I watch
The receptionist checking files, and
I tell her it’s not me. I don’t
Have an appointment
Yet, I hope.
This one here beside me,
Who is looking away and
Doesn’t know it’s time,
Who doesn’t want to go
Into the next room.
It’s not me, I tell her,
Not me yet, I hope.
Midwinter is a time of darkness, a time when the light lessens and disappears, a time when we mix hope and fear. The worldly powers compel many, but not every detail of our lives. We can, as this Christian story asserts, face our lives with faith, with belief that out of our struggles, meaning will emerge.
This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” – Matthew 2:15
by Joan Vinall-Cox
It was a dark time –
Mary had wanted to be glad
Joseph had chosen her
but that strange dream …
and old Elizabeth, swollen with child,
calling her blessed, saying a
Child was growing in her
too, yet she’d never…
except in that strange dream;
and she had swollen
and Joseph,
angry and sad and puzzled,
had planned to hide
her disgrace, but he dreamed
too,
and married her but slept
apart
and would not look at her.
It was a dark time.
It was a dark time –
the rulers had decided
to count them all where
their ancestors had lived
so Joseph and Mary must walk
for days, weeks, and her so
large and tired, and both so
puzzled and hopeful and fearful.
Could the Holy One really have chosen
them?
Still they must walk,
as the rulers
demanded, in the cold,
in the darkening time, they must
walk into Bethlehem, this ancient
town, filled with others obeying
the rulers who wanted to count them and did not care
about walking, or a room for a
young woman with her time
pressing on her,
with the Holy One’s Gift demanding
His time on earth,
and no room for this family
It was a dark time.
There was light at His birth –
light in Mary’s eyes and
light in Joseph’s smile and
light flowing out, pulsing out
around the wondrous Child
light that brought the amazed
shepherds,
and star light that
brought the Wise Ones from
afar to worship
Him
and light that the eyes in
the dark could see, whispering to
a man with too much power
that he was nothing
beside such Light,
and the Holy One sent another
dream to guard the Light, to
hide it in a foreign land
and Mary and Joseph fled
into Egypt, carrying the Light
away from the darkness of
Herod’s massacre of babies.
It was a dark time.
It was a dark time –
waiting in a foreign land,
watching Him grow, and learning
patience and trust, waiting
for a new dream, yearning for
home
and then
out of the dark time,
the dream came.
Georgian Bay's landscape is elemental, fantastic …
The beaver dam
http://animoto.com/play/Qnr7kWJMlwWXBsuNv0MQiw
Joan Vinall-Cox, 
Learning Living 