#adventapertures2025: day 23

Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and let your angels protect those who sleep. Tend the sick. Refresh the weary. Sustain the dying. Calm the suffering. Pity the distressed. We ask this for the sake of your love. St. Augustine So the Wise-Ones were directed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Continue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 23”

#adventapertures2025: Blue Christmas

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the soundContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: Blue Christmas”

#adventapertures2025: day 21

Silence has its own notation: dark Jottings of duration, but not pitch,  A long black box, or little feathered hitch  Like a new Greek letter or diacritical mark  Silence is a function of Time, the lark  In flight but not in song. A nothing which  Keeps secrets or confesses. Pregnant, rich,  Or awkward, cold, theContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 21”

#adventapertures2025: day 20

Sometimes, when we’re on a long drive, and we’ve talked enough and listened to enough music and stopped twice, once to eat, once to see the view, we fall into this rhythm of silence. It swings back and forth between us like a rope over a lake. Maybe it’s what we don’t say that savesContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 20”

#adventapertures2025: day 17

To reach the place just ahead of you, what do you do?             The shortest way between two points- that straight line, the most straight of greatest renown. You put one foot in  front of the other and carry on, repeating yourself. Until you  reach the point ahead, assuming initialContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 17”

#adventapertures2025: day 16

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the pointContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 16”

#adventapertures2025: Sunday 3

‘It was said of Rabbi Simcha Bunim that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha’olam – “For my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’aefer – “I am but dust and ashes.”  He would take out each slip ofContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: Sunday 3”

#adventapertures2025: day 14

…darkness reaches out to offer whatever helping hand it can, calling us to trust it, saying, “Sometimes only the darkness will do.”  We owe it to the darkness to reach out and grab that hand, to respect what it has to offer, to join it to the hand of light. Catherine Bird, The Divine HeartContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 14”

#adventapertures2025: day 13

Last thing each night, go out for the moon. Pull on old coat, shut garden gate. Roll up old sleeves. Swing arms. Poor soul. Think moonset. Moonrise. All running to schedule. World black and white, Walk up the lane. Last thing each night. Look up for the moon. No sign but rain. Almost back home.Continue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 13”