Patience

Photo credit: tlindenbaum / Foter / CC BY-ND

(Set to music here.)

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day,
That sees December turn'd to May.

If we may ask the reason, say
The why and wherefore all things here
Seem like the springtime of the year?

Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like to a mead new-shorn,
Thus on the sudden?

                                Come and see
The cause why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is born whose quickening birth
Gives life and lustre public mirth
To heaven and the under-earth.

We see Him come, and know Him ours,

Who with His sunshine and His showers

Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

— Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Fourth Sunday in Advent

Today is the fourth, and last, Sunday in Advent.

Photo credit: mschmidt62 / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Spiral dance

Per NASA: "Though the universe is chock full of spiral-shaped galaxies, no two look exactly the same. This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. The arms are lined with pink star-forming regions of glowing hydrogen, newborn blue star clusters, and obscuring dust lanes that provide the raw material for future generations of stars. The bright nucleus is home to an older population of stars, which grow ever more densely packed toward the center. NGC 3982 is located about 68 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major."

Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video / Foter / CC BY

Winter Solstice

Photo credit: Cheng I / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  Where I live, we'll get just over 9 hours of daylight today.

In the very far north, the sun doesn't rise at all in the weeks surrounding the solstice.  This short film shows the new year's first sunrise in northern Greenland, where the return of the sun is an important event.

Heaven and earth

There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare Jesu;

For in this rose contained was
Heaven and earth in little space.
          - English, c. 1420
            Benjamin Britten arrangement

(I love the idea of pregnancy as "heaven and earth in little space.")

Photo credit: nexus6 / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Cherry Tree Carol

One of those lovely apocryphal stories that cast the Holy Family in a more human light: the Cherry Tree Carol.  A pregnant lady with food cravings, an irritated fiance, a miraculous tree, a talking baby: it's got everything.

Joseph and Mary walked through an orchard green,
They saw berries and saw cherries, fair to be seen.

As Joseph and Mary walked through the wood
They saw cherries and berries, red as any blood.


O then bespoke Mary, so meek and so mild:
‘Pluck me one cherry, for I am with child.’
O then bespoke Joseph, with words unkind:
‘Let him pluck thee a cherry that brought thee with child.’

(Ouch.)

O then bespoke the babe, within his mother’s womb:
‘Bow down then the tall tree, and give my mother some.’
Then bowed down the cherry tree unto his mother’s hand;
Then she cried, See, Joseph, I have cherries at command.

Then Mary plucked a cherry, as red as the blood,
She went home with her heavy load
Then Mary took her babe all on her knee,
Saying, My dear son, tell me what this world will be.

‘O I shall be as dead as the stones in the wall;
O the stones in the streets shall mourn me all.
Upon Easter-day uprisen I'll be;
O the sun and the moon shall both rise with me.’

Another take on this carol here.

Snowflakes

Honestly, when I see paper snowflakes I think of the morning last December when I walked into my internship at the mental hospital and found every window covered in paper snowflakes. Mania can manifest in different ways, and apparently one of them is cutting out 300 paper snowflakes.

I still love them, though.  Here are instructions for making six-pointed snowflakes.

Photo credit: miheco / Foter / CC BY-SA