wanting what i have
Happy Christmastide! Blessed Feast of St. Stephen!
I hope these images convey to you the peace and light and joy and delight that has saturated and continues to permeate our holidays so far. We are so very, very accustomed to celebrating holidays with just the seven of us (and a visit from grandparents a day or two later) that we have been able to bask in the peace of it all. We will have company for the next week, so much of today was spent in preparing for their arrival.
The little boys left letters for Santa Claus along with the traditional cookies, milk, and crudités for the reindeer. G's just about broke my heart; of course Santa Claus fixed that ornament. (It will probably break again because it was just that kind of break.) Santa Claus also finds all of the hidden Christ babies for all of our Nativity sets and adds to our special Ostheimer one. This year he brought the ox and the ass, which were not quite as exciting as last year's angel.
On Christmas Day we went to Liturgy in the morning and came home to a large and non-lenten breakfast. Our family does love eggs, especially after Liturgy! Dinner was our usual, boeuf Bourguignon with potatoes and green beans provençale. Next year we may need a new meal so this one doesn't lose its appeal. I'm starting to plan now.
On Boxing Day, we had an hors d'oeuvres party--all of our favorite party foods that we don't get to eat at parties during the Nativity fast--while we watched It's a Wonderful Life. Growing up, we had a similar party with my family on Christmas Eve, and I miss it! It's a perfect Boxing Day tradition now. Z requested a cheese ball, and Father G requested a different kind, so we wound up with two. (Do you see all the goodies laid out on the trash-picked table Father G refinished and shortened for a new coffee table? It turned out so well!)
Some favorite gifts were:
These coloring books for my little boys, who are enamored with all things Greek this year. They're both reading mythology for their school work, and T is reading Plutarch's Life of Alexander with me. Linothorax has become a daily word in our household; the little boys plan to make their own as soon as I will give them access to copious amounts of linen and rabbit glue. (Santa apparently doesn't deliver rabbit glue.)
The other extra-favorite special gift was a set of sponge rollers for our little darling M, whose straight hair is her one shame. How can a five-year-old already be acutely aware of her straw straight hair? And pine after curls? When we took out the first go-around with the curlers, her eyes were as big as her face, and she walked in a way to maximize the bounce. Oh, joy!
My brother and his wife are wonderful chefs, and gave me this cookbook, from a local (to them) baker. They recommend the scones, and I am already eyeing the chocolate chip cookie recipe.
That reminds me...I'm need to go mix up the pâte fermentée for this bagel recipe. Our visitors love bagels. And maybe those scones for breakfast for all my loves? My heart is so full!
The last book I finished this year was Perelandra, and it was excellent. One passage in particular has been haunting me since I read it. I'll put it below.
“What you have made me see,' answered the Lady, 'is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet is has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, may it be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before–that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished–if it were possible to wish–you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.”
***
“I thought,” she said, “that I was carried in the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent me drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming. I feel as if I were living in that roofless world of yours when men walk undefended beneath naked heaven. It is delight with terror in it! One’s own self to be walking from one good to another, walking beside Him as Himself may walk, not even holding hands. How has He made me so separate from Himself? How did it enter His mind to conceive such a thing? The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths—but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.” “And have you no fear,” said Ransom, “that it will ever be hard to turn your heart from the thing you wanted to the thing Maleldil sends?” “I see,” said the Lady presently. “The wave you plunge into may be very swift and great. You may need all your force to swim into it. You mean, He might send me a good like that?” “Yes—or like a wave so swift and great that all your force was too little.” “It often happens that way in swimming,” said the Lady. “Is not that part of the delight?”
-- C. S. Lewis
Praying our hearts want the good we have.
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