Hello friends,
This will be my final newsletter before Christmas. I plan to be back before New Year’s with a couple of year-end editions, and probably at least one poem. With joy, grief, and comforts of returning traditions, I hope the next few weeks are full of grace for you and yours.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Christmas, Whidbey Island
(originally published for the Winter Solstice in 2014)
Today is the solstice: the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. I heard a friend say that she loves the solstice, because it means the sun has been flung back northward again. Imagine that: the cosmic ping-ponging of a star so much larger than ourselves, hemmed in, we like to think, by gravity and our calendars.
"It's our turn," says the Northern Hemisphere, and Australia and the South reply, "well, alright, then," and send the sun back. We will trade again in six months when my children's necks are sticky with sweat and the fireflies dance under the trees.
It is fitting that in the darkest days of the year, we celebrate the first advent of the Lord Jesus. The people who have walked in darkness behold a great light, and He makes all things new (Is. 9:2; Rev. 21:5).
He must be made low to rejoice with the Father on high (Phil.2). He was foretold in the Garden, on the day the gate was flung closed and locked (Gen.3). And He would conquer through lowliness, in the form of a man. God in the manger. Creator with no place to lay His head (Luke 9:58).
In the early chapters of Breath for the Bones, Luci Shaw explores the idea of metaphor, word made flesh. She reminds us that the centerpiece of God's creative imagination is Bethlehem, "...site of the Incarnation, flash point of the joining of heaven and earth, invisible and visible reality, transcendent and material."
She shares this poem from her colleague, Loren Wilkinson. May it bless you as you consider the Word made flesh this week.
Christmas, Whidbey Island
Not in the waves, not in the wave torn kelp; Not in the heron by the lake at dawn Nor owls' haunting of the wood, Nor rabbits browsing frightened on the lawn; Neither in the widening whirl Of seashell, galaxy, or cedar burl, Nor in the mushrooms' bursting of the humid ground May God the fathering be found, If not found first in Bethlehem, In thistly hay, on hoof-packed earth, Where a girl, cruciform with pain Grips manger boards in child birth. There in the harsh particular, In drafts, and stench of cow manure The squalls of Christ, Creator, sound; Where God grasped not at Godhead in a child There only will the God of life be found. Now, if we upon this wave-shaped bluff Stand in the straw of Bethlehem Then God shines out from everything; The agate in the surf, the withered flower stem, The fish that gives its body for the seal, The flesh, the fruits that form each common meal, The dance of pain and love in which our lives are wound; Since Christ was flesh at Bethlehem, In all the world's flesh may God be found.
For the Anglophiles
A Harry Potter book sold for £55,000 this week. It was from the first print run, which only had two hundred copies.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Stuff You Should Know did an episode all about the history of diners, which features my home of central Massachusetts quite a bit. Note for the listener: it’s pronounced “Nay-tick,” but I understand the hosts’ confusion.
Here’s an interview with my colleague Carl Laferton on the WTS kids’ site. He’s the author of The Garden, the Curtain, and the Cross, as well as our new children’s Bible. (a tiny highlight of this interview is Carl’s effortless Anglicisms like “on the hoof” and “getting to the nub.”)
I loved this thread on CS Lewis (late edit: it’s now in substack post form). It captures much of my own opinion of the man. “In all things, Lewis presents himself as working them out with Christians, not for them. He writes like a friend who says ‘Here's what I've come up with. It's not everything, but it's a start. Go keep thinking about this on your own.’”
GLORIOUS: a Twitter thread of Jane Austen characters doing quotes from Christmas movies. Here’s the last one: Colonel Brandon (to Willoughby): "Welcome to the party, pal."
Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love...God should be both. If a god isn't, that is no God. ― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue