I love ...

 I love wreaths on front doors

and soups in crockpots 

and tabletop trees

and Santas on break.

Speak to Me Sunday: Where is Baby Jesus?

“People, look east. The time is near

Of the crowning of the year.

Make your house fair as you are able,

Trim the hearth and set the table

People, look east and sing today:

Love, the guest, is on the way.”

One of my favorite Christmas carols is People Look East because it calls forth images of hearth and home and Christmas anticipation. The repeated theme of looking ahead, of seeking and preparing, is an integral part of an Italian presepio, or nativity scene, and having just returned from a trip to Italy the song immediately transports me back to Naples when we explored Via San Gregorio Armeno, known as the Christmas Alley. 

This pedestrian street in Naples' historic center is filled with artisan workshops and hundreds of nativity scenes, each one more elaborate than the next. The nativities are busy, meant to reflect everyday life, and as your eyes wander over the scenes the question arises: Where is baby Jesus? 

A traditional presepio in Italy includes so much more than the figures of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus. There is often a water feature, and dramatic lighting mimics the transition from day to night and back again. There are mountains, valleys, caves. Entire villages are constructed, as are farm fields and barns. There are shepherds and villagers and children. It is a busy scene, incredibly elaborate and detailed, so much so that it takes a few minutes to even find the infant Jesus. He is not front and center, as one would expect, but hidden. 

The fact he is not immediately spotted is precisely the point.

In the nativity story everyone is looking: the Wise Men studied the star to guide them, the shepherds looked for the babe in a manger, and even Joseph searched for shelter as one Inn after another closed its doors. And in a presepio, the viewer is invited into the tableau and, like the shepherds and villagers and children, is meant to look for Jesus, to seek him out, to look up and down and around the villages and fields and barns until he is found.

As we head into the final week of Advent, that is the theme that keeps emerging: one of seeking, for a presepio does not depict a legendary event from ancient Palestine, but is instead a mirror of the known world today. 

Reminding us to look for Christ in our every day life. In our homes. At church. Among crowds and the homeless. Even amidst our busyness. 

He is hidden in plain sight, waiting. You just need to look. 

night thoughts

last night I had a dream

but ... 

night thoughts

ephemeral

cannot be something one has

Or had

 

so I lived a dream

a brief moment

as an artist

swirling colors on canvas

with bold strokes

and feathery ones

 

in my dream

with paint on my hands

I saw what I created

and could touch, smell, believe

the night thoughts

until …

 

where did what I had, go?

 

the swirling colors

bold strokes

and feathery ones

in the morning light

stick figures

on college rule

The Birthday Presents from Christmas Past

Sometimes you do something dumb because you are having a dumb moment, and sometimes you do something dumb because you don't know any better.

And sometimes … yeah.

So, in early October Jonathan sent me a small wish list for his birthday and Organized Me got right on it. I went online, placed an order, and when the items arrived, I wrapped them. I gave myself a high five because I was two weeks ahead of schedule. Go me!

When Jonathan came home, I placed the wrapped gifts in front of him. He opened gift #1.

“Thank you. I can always use another game controller,” he said.

But he had a funny look on his face. He opened gift #2, a book. Again the funny look.

“Um, I got this last Christmas,” he said.

When he reached for the third present, I had a bad feeling. Sure enough, he had already received present #3 last Christmas.

“MOM!” everyone protested.

“But YOU sent the list!” I protested.

It took some investigating.  Jonathan did send a list, and I saved it a file. However, when it came time to order the gifts I had opened an old file. One from LAST CHRISTMAS.

The result? Jonathan’s birthday gifts were repeats.

Now, I am sure you are wondering why I didn’t realize this. In my defense, I did think it through. For example, I knew Jonathan received a controller before, but I thought he needed another one; I did recognize the book, but I thought it was Part II. Or something.

Sigh.

Sometimes you do something dumb because you are an idiot.

Anyway, I leave you with this photo only because Jonathan's expression then was Jonathan's expression the other night while opening his birthday presents (which were really his Christmas presents, on repeat). 

Speak to Me Sunday:

A few weeks ago, I came across the photos from Simon Roberts’ exhibition, Beneath the Pilgrim Moon (2021), featuring sculptures that were wrapped in plastic during the refurbishment of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The fact that the photographs were taken during the second Covid-19 lockdown (while the museum was closed to the public) makes the images reflective of a world that stood still during a pandemic.

A world trapped by fear and ignorance, hemmed in by borders, trapped by the unknown.

The images are haunting, beautiful, sad.

Life as we know it can change in an instant, casting us onto unchartered waters in a rowboat that heaves to and fro with the current. There is so much that can bring us to our knees — grief, addiction, unemployment, death, self-doubt, illness, divorce, disability—all of which, like the plastic covering those statues, can leave us feeling trapped.

And yet … the images are also hopeful.

I look at those trapped images encased in transparent plastic and realize all those things that can paralyze us do NOT prevent God’s light and grace from shining through to us. And when we dig deep to our faith, we can see through the circumstance, whatever it may be, to see beyond to that light and grace. To receive it.

And to find the hope.

in the morning i faced the day

in the morning i faced the day

buoyed with a quest

to find poetry

in the ordinary

and extraordinary

to embrace wonderment

face-to-face

mesmerized in the now

chocolate swirls in a puddle

and rain plip-plopping on a roof

rainbow wings on a fly

caterpillar eyebrows

graffiti street art

and plants in terracotta pots

the cuddle of a crying baby

or the cry of rusty door hinges

slides that go down, down, down

and balloons that float away

a snoring dog and a purring kitten

croissant flakes and coffee dregs

wordless poetry

highlighting and celebrating

observing and shadowing

thought seeds planted

for later reflection

life poetry, lived

savored

at night i fell asleep

on pillow clouds of

poetry swirling in my dreams

and in the morning …

a poem in my notebook

-from the files of very bad poetry by bia

I love ...

 I love Swiss uniforms 

and sweet signs 

and striped pots 

and words on stairs.