Peace. Peace Cranes. Peace, Peace, Peace.

... my wish for the new year....

Christmas Has Come !

Splintered and fractured

in human form

comes the savior, the christ, the babe...

and love is born

to bind us to loftier realms and reconcile

us to our better selves.

A tiny, helpless infant

inspires our care and our kiss.

Worthy or unworthy,

bidden or unbidden,

alleluia,

he has come.

C.M.Carroll

Christmas in the Classroom

Traditional Amarylis

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

Paul Winter Consort

Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

New York , New York

Dec. 17, 2011

Thanksgiving

Now thank we all our God,

with heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things has done,

in Whom this world rejoices;

from our mothers’ arms

has blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love,

and still is ours today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NSQLMPUK-8&feature=related

Silent Saturday

In My Hands Today

( Need more berries....)

Birthday Harvest & I Stand Corrected

I spent a good deal of my birthday in the woods. I have been eyeing these berries and these vines for... well, years. I found my clippers and I retraced all the places I had seen them. I filled the back of my car with twisting vines of bittersweet. Before dark, I sat near the hatch and patiently twisted until it was cold and I could no longer see. No one told me the berries would stain my hands. This fact kind of negated my whole purpose, as I had intended the wreath to be hung indoors. I am pleased in spite of the required adjustment of intention. The day was beautiful and blustery and blue. I cannot dismiss my sorrow, but my gratitude eclipses it. Oh! And my husband informs me it was the thirty-first anniversary of our first kiss, not the thirtieth. I stand corrected with berry-stained fingertips....

~

://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DX224epZT7Wk%26feature%3Drelated&h=TAQG_VHoyAQEWyNciRGSe5ydpzj5SxNmyYn0anA3yO3Re5A

Breaking Silence

bit·ter·sweet
noun \ˈbi-tər-ˌswēt\
1
: something that is bittersweet; especially : pleasure alloyed with pain
2
a : a poisonous Eurasian woody vine (Solanum dulcamara) of the nightshade family that has purple flowers and oval reddish berries and is naturalized in North America b : a North American poisonous woody vine (Celastrus scandens) of the staff-tree family having clusters of small greenish flowers succeeded by yellow capsules that open when ripe and disclose the scarlet aril


On the eve of my new year...I am tossed to the four winds. That feeling keeps me from writing here sometimes. I am breaking my habit of silence tonight. What can I say? At school I joke that it isn't my birthday so much as the anniversary of my retirement. At home and in hushed conversations I think and say that I don't really care. I am so overwhelmingly sad these past few weeks that it is hard to become very excited about much. It happens to be my husband's birthday as well... but he doesn't really get very excited about watching the numbers flip over in this case, either. I could concentrate on the fact that it is the 30th anniversary of our first kiss... a chaste birthday smooch to his cheek whose electricity seemed to hurl me backwards across the room in such a way that I saw my life had suddenly, irrevocably and forever been changed. I could concentrate on the benevolent good fortune that graced us today: brought my car in for its yearly inspection today and the repair bill tallied in the hundreds and not in the thousands.

I will say this: I dreamt of Chris earlier in the week. We were on a long walk/shopping excursion. We laughed and talked... and it was wonderful! One moment in the dream, I glanced at the bags in his hands and clearly could see the ingredients inside would come together to become my birthday cake. Sometimes I walked while looking down at my feet... and sometimes when I looked up, I realized I was walking with his sister, instead.

I woke with the memory of the happiness of that walk... but have became increasing sullen in the hours and now days that have passed. What can I do when this grief sweeps over me? What can I do with the added losses that pile up as time goes on (because clearly the recent loss of my dear Jewel is weighing and wearing heavily as well) ? And the answer is I do not know. I just keep going. Lately the grief goes with me more often than not. I try to focus... like the photograph of the branch above... look passed the berries and there's that lovely sky. So tomorrow is THE day... think I will order a cake that is covered in those roses (my husband's favorite part). Think I will take a drive to the beach in the morning. Think I will try to look past the bittersweet and into the blue.

~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diyhd4AMAhA&feature=related

All Souls

All Saint's Day

happy halloween !!!

Saving the Blooms

It was 6 am, dark and raining. I was loading anything flowering and potted into hefty bags and then loading them into my car. I couldn't bear to have all those blooms go to waste. It was quite a job getting them into my classroom from the parking lot. But now that they are there, I am so glad I did! My classroom, lunch and paperwork partners are all enthralled with the lush green display. I am as well --- there is something very different about it all in a close, confined space. We sit and stare and feel our pulses slow to a more managable rate! It seems that I performed the mission just in time, too! Forecasters are calling for snow tomorrow --- the earliest snowfall in more than 60 years!

~

All photos taken indoors !

As always, click on photos to enlarge.

Click again to enlarge further !

In His Pavilion

Jewel Shares the Psalms

For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion:
in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me;
he shall set me up upon a rock.
Psalm 27:5


Thirty years ago I met her.
Coltish and cool, with a certain
agitation always propelling.
Scanning any crowd,
instantly identifying
both broken heart and broken soul.

Midnight or morning whisperings
revealed pain and personal recipe for remedy;
laying bare was her habit.
I watched her cycle through the crash, burn,
and cauterization of too intense, too loving,
too much.

Her hands always in flight, eyes flashing,
laughter quick, fumbling through
belief and dream trying to find a walk
that met her desire, faith and zeal.
She lived and breathed close integration
of intent.

Tempered through the decades,
a certain softening had settled into her edges
but ever friend, confidant, defender and servant.
Not one to keep anything for herself, "Imagine this,"
she said, "the promised pavilion. That's where I go.
I leave the door open for you."


C.M. Carroll