winter

winter
Originally uploaded by brookejared.

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden 

Sundays too my father got up early 

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 

then with cracked hands that ached 

from labor in the weekday weather made 

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 

When the rooms were warm, he'd call, 

and slowly I would rise and dress, 

fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

speaking indifferently to him, 

who had driven out the cold 

and polished my good shoes as well. 

What did I know, what did I know 

of love's austere and lonely offices?

I have loved this poem for a long time. I am in the process of writing an essay about my experience as a nurse, mostly about how much I have struggled to love my job.I know this poem is about a father and a son, but the words have been on my m ind this week. Sometimes the work we do out of love is lonley and austere. As for the photo, it is not mine, but I liked it.

blue candle for a blue day

books

Some books I like.

The moviegoer by:Walker Percy
Blue like jazz by: Donald Miller
The Annie Dillard Reader by: Annie Dillard
Expecting Adam by: Martha Beck
Traveling Mercies by: Anne Lamott
Girl meets God by:Lauren Winner

It is good for us to read. It is good for us to get outside of ourselves. It helps us re-learn how to imagine-to have someone tell us a story as we try to picture it in our head. It is good to abandon the television at times and discipline our minds to engage in the written word. You might look at the world in a different way. You might even like it better. You might just be enchanted.

naked tree

I feel like I need to write something happy today. This is not because I feel happy. The pretty tree outside my apartment that was adorned in orange leaves is naked. The wind and the rain has washed fall away- not to mention Mr. Day Light Savings who has taken away my sunny evenings. This transition into winter is a hard one for me. I do not like to bundle myself up, It feels constricting. I like t-shirts and blue-jeans and a cool breeze. My friends laugh at me because in the winter I become attached to my goose down thro. I roam around the house, wrapping it around me like a toga. But alas- this is not the end of the world. Winter comes and winter goes- and I should try to see its glory- and perhaps be thankful I have a warm blanket.

Why do we feel burdens on some days more than others? I suppose with elections and war and cold weather, I am due. Burdens have a way of drawing out my longings- that longing to fight against the brokenness.

Annie Dillard- helps me.

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them..."