Lift up your heads, fling wide the portals

Adorned with joy

There are trials that await me when I make a trip to visit my Mom and my Aunt.  But I must say, their trials are more difficult than what I deal with while I am there.  Both of them confront daily the war that is old age – loss of vision, hearing, muscle, friends, energy, motivation.   For one whole day during my recent visit, my Mom felt too awful from nausea to get out of bed.

When I visit, it’s easy for me to hang my head and see only the sadness and difficulty my dear ones face.  It’s easy for me to rage at the illogical world that exists within the confines of the retirement home.  Yes, I do need that glass of wine at the end of a day spent there.

There is a decent piano in the common area right outside my Mom’s room.  I had brought my hymn books, and so spent about an hour playing and singing Advent hymns and Christmas carols.

“Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates!” says the Advent hymn.  I’m not a mighty gate, but I would do well to lift up my head and notice the moments of joy.  

Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates,

Behold, the King of glory waits;

The King of kings is drawing near;

The Savior of the world is here!

At first my Mom wasn’t singing, but then I started to play Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light, and Mom said, “Oh, that’s my favorite!”  And we were off and singing together – joy!  

More joy: some cousins came to visit for a few hours, and we had a blast reminiscing about our ancestors.

Even more joy: My brother brought a small Christmas tree, a small tinsel garland, and some ornaments from our childhood.  My aunt has vision problems, so my Mom looked over the ornaments and selected which ones to put on the tree.  My Mom has problems lifting her arms up, so my aunt put the ornaments on the tree.  It was so good for these sisters to have a purpose and a task to work on together.  The ornaments sparked fond memories of family times spent together. 

Fling wide the portals of your heart;

Make it a temple, set apart

From earthly use for heaven’s employ,

Adorned with prayer and love, and joy.

Visiting the retirement home is crazy-making, and parts of it this time were the usual craziness, but I lift up my head and give thanks to God that some of our visit was adorned with prayer, love, and joy.

Just to finish out my hymnal's version of the Advent hymn:

Redeemer, come! I open wide

My heart to Thee, here, Lord, abide.

Let me Thy inner presence feel;

Thy grace and love in me reveal.

This Advent hymn is one of my favorites, and not just because it is based on Psalm 24, which my father read at our wedding.  I like it because it's got instructions for me.  I've got to open the portals of my heart, I've got to see the joy, and then turn it around and, with God's help, reveal grace and love.    

(For those not familiar with the Advent hymn Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates, here it is, sung by a large choir with a really impressive organist.

Jumping Back In

The first Morning Note of 2016,
featuring animal stickers we got
 in the mail. 

This first day of school after the new year (for our high schooler) greeted us with a mini snowfall.  I offered to drive Younger Daughter to the bus stop, which earned me the title of “The Best Mom in the World.”  I think that awards committee was not quite awake.

 

The pre-dawn view of our front walk this morning.
Not enough snow for the snow fairy to appear.

Since the last time I looked at my work e-mail was December 23^rd, I had 328 work e-mails to greet me today.  Fortunately most of them say “AUTO:  Random Co-worker’s Name is out of the office.”  But still, it takes time to delete those.  In the end, there were 18 e-mails that vaguely pertain to my work.  Deleting e-mails was a good way to get back into work mode.

This past weekend we added four feet to our Advent/Hanukkah paper chain.  One of the suggested activities is to “make a gingerbread creation.”  Alas, we did not do that this year.  But we did get to “give a gift to someone,” “pray to God,” “give someone a hug,” and generally tried to spread good cheer, or at least solace, when good cheer was not appropriate. 

Now is the time of year when we have to surf along in the wake of the good cheer that was bandied about leading up to the winter solstice.  I am grateful for hot tea and a smidgen more light added to each day.  While I don’t set much stock in the secular new year’s celebration, I do wish you all Happy Random Passage of Time!

Adjectiveless Sunday

Apparently there is no adjective to go with today.  Last Friday was Black Friday, followed by Small Business Saturday.  Tomorrow is Cyber Monday, and in Pennsylvania, more importantly, it will be the first day of deer hunting season.  Tuesday has been named Giving Tuesday.  I’m beginning to understand why people want to go hunting – to get away from the incessant requests to empty their pockets of money.

For some, today is the First Sunday of Advent – Hopeful Sunday.  We had holy sights and sounds at church today.  There were decorations hanging high on the wall, installed by one fearless member of the congregation. There was the lighting of the first candle of the Advent wreath, which reminded me of this passage:

Your sun shall no more go down,

    or your moon withdraw itself;

for the Lord will be your everlasting light,

    and your days of mourning shall be ended.

Your people shall all be righteous.

                        - Isaiah 60:20-21 and similarly in Revelation 22:5

Given the behavior of all-us Americans lately, it seems ridiculous to hope that all the people could be righteous, and that days of mourning could be finished with.  I do little to make it happen, except to hope against all odds. 

We also had wonderful music, with some ol’ favorite Advent hymns and a new one called “Almost There”.  Then, without drawing attention to it, the music director snuck in some J.S. Bach, including “Wachet Auf” (pronounced “Whack It Off,” which means either “Sleepers Awake” or “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying”) with its great moving lines of harmony.  I love me some Johann Sebastian.

Here in the Common Household, today should probably also be called Recovery From Past Excess Sunday.  Our guests have gone home, our students have gone back to college.  The dining room table has shrunk back to its original size, inversely proportional to the expansion of us from turkey and pie. The roasting pan has crept back into its box in the basement to wait until next year. The leftovers are all gone (sob!) except for the yams, which I will not make next year, as demand for them is not high enough to merit that space in the fridge. 

What adjective would you attach to today?

I leave you with gobs of photos of our lovely day last Friday.  We took four teenaged girls ice-skating downtown.  I had a lovely time not skating but watching the skaters.  We also got to see the gingerbread house display, but I will put those photos in a separate post.  

The pears did not get eaten, but all the pies did.

Me with the Ketchuposaurus

Skaters at PPG Place

Excellent skating socks

Three teenaged girls would rather watch the horse-drawn
carriages than skate.

Giant Christmas tree outside, plus a rare
spot of blue sky.  It was cold, though!

Holiday Home Tour

Thanks to Jen on the Edge for inviting us to participate in the Holiday Home Tour.  This is my first time, so I'm a bit nervous.  Here goes...

Welcome to the Common Household holiday tour.  As you come down the front walk, you will see our stunning lopsided light display, which consists of one net of blue lights, one string of white lights, and our wood gingerbread man, home-crafted by my husband's colleague.  Since I am the only one in the household with the interest and energy for putting up lights, this is the light display we get.  It is now too cold and snowy to put out any more lights.

But do not be so dazzled that you miss the tree limb hanging low over the front walk.  The Tree Man never came last week, claiming it was too cold for his truck to start (!).   If you are tall, watch your noggin.

His smile looks a bit lopsided (just like
 this year's lights) because one piece
of his smile fell off. Nevertheless, he has
withstood the winter elements quite well.

Now that you are in out of the cold, please, come in the living room and take a close look at our Advent/Hanukkah paper chain.

We have used this in lieu of an Advent calendar since around 2003, saving the chain from the previous year and adding to it each year.  I am guessing that the chain is currently about 60 feet long.

It currently reaches about 2/3 of the way around the living room.

To make the links, we use scraps of wrapping paper.  On the plain side, we write various family activities, such as "Eat potato latkes" or "Read the Christmas story in Luke" or "give a gift to someone" or "pray to God."  During Hanukkah and Advent, after we do one of those activities, we add that link to the chain. 

This is the first year we get to add the link that
 says "make a gingerbread house."

This year I decided to also put up some of our origami ornaments.  Several years ago, my son was making new origami every day.  I decided to sew a loop of thread in some of his creations so that I could hang them up.  Since we don't usually have a Christmas tree, I just hang the ornaments from the curtains.

He made stars with various numbers of points and in various colors.  Each star is made out of one piece of paper, folded, but never cut or taped or glued.

My favorites, among his origami creations, were the geometric shapes.  These were often made out of several pieces of paper, but still only folded, not cut or glued.  I did apply some glue to the outside so that they would stay together when they were hanging.

Let's move into the dining room, and take a look at what's on the table - from right to left, a gingerbread house, gingerbread sleigh, and gingerbread lab equipment.  There are a few more photos of these at my previous post.

I also love Christmas and Hanukkah cards, and put them out, unless we need to actually use the dining room table for, say, dining.

And now our holiday home tour will take a step, not into another room, but back in time, to the end of November, when we celebrated Hanukkah.  This means getting out our hanukkiah (menorah), our felt hanukkiah, and some dreidels.

And that is the end of the Common Household holiday home tour.  To see the rest of the tour, go here.  To read my hope for this Christmas holiday, go here.  Merry Christmas!