Happy Birthday ~e ! You sweet thang, you!

15. Yep Fifteen! Hard to believe, isn't it. Why, only yesterday...blah, blah, blah...
You know we love you, ~e --- our SweetBabyGirl. May sound cliche', but you really do fill our lives with music. In so many ways. ~Love, Muth

Poem Sunday: Cowper

When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
Thine arm unseen conveyed me safe,
And led me up to man.

Through hidden dangers, toils, and deaths,
It gently cleared my way;
And through the pleasing snares of vice,
More to be feared than they.

O how shall words with equal warmth
The gratitude declare,
That glows within my ravished heart?
But thou canst read it there.

Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss
Hath made my cup run o'er;
And, in a kind and faithful Friend,
Hath doubled all my store.

Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ;
Nor is the least a cheerful heart
That tastes those gifts with joy.

On Second Thought...

...this poem is worth seeing in its entirety:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Happy New Year! : Tennyson

Ring out the old;
Ring in the new!
Ring happy bells across the snow.

The year is going;
Let him go!
Ring out the false; ring in the true.

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Now Stir the Fire ~ Wm. Cowper

~rachel tsunami

One of my favorite things about the holidays is the company that comes and stays, or drops by for a visit, letting us draw them in to the warm embrace of our home, sharing their joy and laughter, reveling in old memories, making new ones...

We just bid goodbye to the Bruces who arrived almost 24 hours ago. (We spent more of those hours fellowshipping than not. Nome Sane?) In a little while, we'll get to hug the necks of Lauren (Bradley)Wallis and Lacey Madden who will drop by to visit awhile, and this evening we'll light a few candles and heat up the tortilla soup to welcome the three Shafer boys from Stephenville, TX: Raz, Kris, and Jacob, and Evan Ritchie who is traveling with them. Word has reached me that they're bringing several of their 'strings' so I expect Robert and Logan will follow suit and we'll have some jammin' goin' on tonight. They'll backtrack a bit to Memphis for the New Year meeting which starts tomorrow.

What delight! Food, fire, music, laughter, singing, (and probably more food...)

Now stir the fire,
and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains,
wheel the sofa round;
And while the bubbling
and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column,
and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate,
wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

~William Cowper

from ~ A Child's Christmas in Wales

We just listened to a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his classic Christmas prose on Christmas day --- a tradition we began a couple years ago. If you've never heard it, or read it, give yourself a treat. It is rich with luscious literary device and visual language so vivid the images leap off the page.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six...
~Dylan Thomas

Merry, Blessed, Happy Christmas Day ~ from the Greens

Sunday: Pink and Winfrey

They only, who are trusting in His death for their salvation, can truly appreciate and celebrate his birth.
~A.W. Pink


The God that filled the universe suddenly confined to womb! The creator
made of a woman! Immutable God undergoing mitosis! (The spiritual, unchangeable,
indivisible God was growing by the process of natural cell division.) When God
was a man Omnipresence walked! (Think about it. God had always been everywhere.
Now he walked to get there!) Omniscience learned! Limitless strength grew weary!
Eternal peace was troubled! His hands held the world, yet he had no where to lay
his head! The feeder of the birds hungered! The Living Water thirsted! God ---
asleep on a pillow! The Almighty said, "If it be possible." The All-Wise asked,
"Why?" A man-made nail held the hand that none could stay! Sovereignty sighed!
Omnipotence cried! Eternity died?!? Oh, how amazing our God is!

~Elder Jeff Winfrey

Christmas Acrostic

C - carols
H - hot chocolate
R - reading Christmas stories
I - interesting looking packages
S - smells of food and candy
T - tinsel
M - music
A - angels, aardvarks (Christmas aardvarks, that is)
S - singing


(do you have anything to add?)

'Tis the season

**

****

-to laugh
-to sing carols

-to hunt for mistletoe
-to yell "Merry Christmas"
-to recieve Christmas pictures
-to send Christmas pictures out

-to feel the warmth of the woodstove
-to wrap presents in the dead of night
-to bounce up and down in excitement

-to watch a family traditional Christmas movie

-to enjoy the whole family being together at once

-to whip things into hiding if a certain person comes in
-to spend all day in the kitchen cooking delicious goodies
-to snuggle in the warm blankets with a cold nose poking out

-to gather around the fire and play a word game, enjoying each other

-to sit with a cup of hot tea (or hot chocolate, whichever you prefer) and think

****

****

'Tis the season to be jolly!

(what does this season mean for you?)

Poem Sunday - Stevenson

Prayer

I ask good things that I detest,
With speeches fair;
Heed not, I pray Thee, Lord, my breast,
But hear my prayer.

I say ill things I would not say-
Things unaware:
Regard my breast, Lord, in Thy day,
And not my prayer.

My heart is evil in Thy sight:
My good thoughts flee:
O Lord, I cannot wish aright -
Wish Thou for me.

O bend my words and acts to Thee,
However ill,
That I, whate'er I say or be,
May serve Thee still.

O let my thoughts abide in Thee
Lest I should fall:
Show me Thyself in all I see,
Thou Lord of all.

--Robert Louis Stevenson

Poem Sunday: Herbert

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for Thee.

A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye,
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heav'n espy.

All may of Thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean
Which with this motive, "For Thy sake,"
Will not grow bright and clean.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.

George Herbert (1593-1633)


(Anybody recognize the sunset?)

There's no such thing as too many...

1. books

2. black shoes

3. teapots

4. love letters

5. years with my sweetheart

6.


Okay, I'll leave some for the rest of you.

Hmmm... Blogger's nightmare: Has someone done this already and I've forgotten about it and will appear to be pretending to be original?

Poem Sunday: Longfellow

Loss and Gain

When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure gain and loss in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not original with me. The idea of Poem Sunday came from a friend. (Thanks, A.W.) But it's a good thing. Hope it will help me revisit some favorites.

I can explain

blogger's ennui