I’m in that post-Christmas
catatonic state.  Barely have the energy to move myself from the
sofa to the chair.  Gloomy gray day on top of it.  
Pete, in contrast,  has been overcome with  “putz-wüt” 
(pronounced “pootz voot” and loosely translated:  cleaning
fury).   It makes me tired just to watch him scurrying
around, moving stuff hither and thither.  We never seem to get
simultaneous attacks of
putz-wüt.  Whoever has it not only succeeds in getting stuff
cleaned up but also in giving the other person a massive case of guilt
for being a slug.  Correction:  I feel guilty if Pete cleans
and I don’t.  It doesn’t bother him a bit if I clean and he
doesn’t.  Why is that? 

Let the stable still astonish:


Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,

These words have been ringing in my mind as I think
about the wonder of this marvelous birth.   Perhaps you can
take some time to let it astonish you, too…

A peek out the window this
morning and I was entranced…hoarfrost on every tiny twig and pine
needle!  Extraordinary beauty caused by freezing of a fog last
night.  I still haven’t figured out how you can get a fog when
it’s almost zero out.  Anyway, the world was awash in loveliness
and although it is almost impossible to capture in a photo, here are a few feeble attempts…

Frost on the asparagus fronds!

Even the spider webs got decorated.

A winter country sunrise.

Sugar-coated nature

There’s a certain slant of light
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair, -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,

Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ’tis like the distance
On the look of death.

Emily Dickinson – Could anyone have said it better???

I was reading a book today in
a rare moment of quiet, seated in front of our crackling fire.  A
line jumped off the page at me and grabbed me:  “…and thereby
your wonder has been stirred.”

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about “wonder”. 
Our sense of wonder gets stirred less often as we age, I fear. 
I’ve been trying to work against that.  When I was teaching high
school science I was always trying to help my students see the wonder of some of the things they were learning.  I think mostly they thought I was a little crazy. 

At the risk of appearing crazy, here are some of the things I’ve found wonder-full lately:
1)  bird tracks in the fresh snow.  Every time I go outside I
am enchanted by the incredibly delicate tracks made by unbelievably
tiny feet.  Walking, hopping, suddenly appearing out of nowhere
(the advantage of flight), going in the most apparently-random
directions, creating a whimsical hieroglyphic.  Somehow they just
make me laugh.  I wish they weren’t so hard to photograph.  I
would like to take pictures of them and write stories about what the
birds were thinking and doing.  I do believe, though, that most
birds are pigeon-toed (sparrow-toed? junco-toed? finch-toed?).  My
observations lead me to that conclusion. 

2) the lovely flame that heats our house in the woodstove is really
sunshine that was captured in the leaves of a tree decades ago and has
been held there throughout all these years.  That boggles my
mind. 

3)  the amazing quiet that wraps the world when there is new snow
on the ground.  Sound waves are absorbed and the whole outside
world seems to have cotton in its ears.  How can this be?

4) the wonder of God becoming man to save me.  I will never be
able to get my mind around that improbable event.  Only God could
have thought of that. 

May your wonder be stirred.

Empty-nesters

Waiting for spring

I was looking at the earthquake webpage (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/
) last night and decided to zoom in on a quake that had happened
yesterday in Illinois.  I then MapQuested one of the towns it
occurred near and what the heck?  Something astonishing
caught my eye!  There on the map was a little town named
Beckemeyer!  Can you believe it?  I HAVE to visit this
town.  I think I need to buy a house there.  Yes, I have to
buy a house on Beckemeyer Road (it’s really there!).  Then my
complete address would be:  Becky Meyer, 123 Beckemeyer Road,
Beckemeyer, IL 

How COOL is that?  It would be worth being in an earthquake zone just for that. 

I can’t believe it.  A beat-up banana appeared back in the fruit
bowl.  Becca had taken it in her lunch and didn’t eat it. 
Now it’s a reject.  What can I say???

Someone ate the last banana.  That is a miracle.  No matter
how many or how few bananas I buy, no one would eat the last
banana.  It seems there was an unwritten law that the last banana
must somehow be bad, overripe or otherwise defective.  I have made
dozens of loaves of banana bread from the cumulative last bananas that
ended up in the freezer.  But, wonder of wonders, the last banana
disappeared out of the fruit bowl yesterday.  Definitely a
noteworthy event. 

It was a nippy -1.7 degrees this morning when we got up.  Ivy’s whiskers freeze into little icicles at these temps.