O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree....

I had a touch of insomnia in early morning

and so my tree got decorated and fully trimmed between 5 and 8 in the morning.

I love doing my tree, seeing all my decorations again and

remembering the kindness of so many.

I am missing at least one though, a beautiful golden ball that was handmade

by a librarian in Ottawa and given out to us all at a meeting.

Well, hopefully it will be found again, someday, by me in some box 

that was put wrongly away from all else. 

I had a long nap later in the morning. Boy I needed that nap!

I managed to make lunch for us and we enjoyed the cookies I baked

yesterday, my Husband I am happy to say, had 4 while I had 2.

They are quite delicious! I bought more cranberries tonight to use DV 

for more of these later! 

If you look at the progression of these pictures, you will see Cleo the Cat,

The Cutest Cat once of all of Canada, 

comfortably asleep on the Christmas Tree Skirt.

Then later you will see that same Tree Skirt on the armchair and the cute

decorative boxes on the coffee table.

Well. Cleo probably at a stray fake pine needle that I failed to clean up

and she nearly got sick on the Tree Skirt which I whisked from under her

right before the damage would have been done.  

Poor Cleo. :) 

She's fine however, begging as normal, eating dry cat food as I type these

lines and looking as cute as ever. 

I tell her every year that if she even thinks about harming my Tree

that she will come to no good end herself. 

So far so good ;) 

***

So one of my IRL (in real life) friends wrote me asking where that quote was from that 

I had put up on my blog.

I put it again below so you know what I am talking about.

The above paragraphs are from 

The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983

Fr. Schmemann talks a LOT about JOY.

Also he talks about, at least in year 1976, the changes in the Anglican Church

and the decision to allow women into the priesthood.

I had no idea, to be honest, that this happened so long ago, when I was yet,

literally, in my Mother's womb, to be born a few months later.

I am thinking about this a lot... I had about ten years of my life

(age 17/18-26/27) where feminism perplexed, beguiled, enlivened, confused 

and left me haunted with questions of what it means to be a woman, 

what it means to be a man, what gender means, what is nurture, what is nature,

what does everything before and after 1968 mean.

I keep thinking it would be nice to write some essays on that. 

Short version though is that Kathleen Norris' books helped me out of this 

quandary of perplexity and a bit of the Church Fathers that I discovered 

when researching Milton's Eve showed me very quickly that a lot of 

what I read about the past and esp the Church Fathers was wrong,

that feminist theory that I was reading lied to me, 

simply and baldly put. 

***

Well. 

This week I am thinking a lot about the St Nicholas lunch I am hosting

and how to have it go smoothly.

I am excited about it.

***

I have begun reading again the biography of Elizabeth Goudge 

Beyond the Snow.

It's lovely.

***

I fell asleep thinking about how wonderful it is to think

of God as father and that the traditional view of man and women,

the goodness of it, the way it really was to be,

deep fatherhood, deep motherhood,

still is.

I find this world deeply alienated from what really comforts, sustains and

gives life. Including in this. 

But to just remember that while the world is full of confusion, 

noise, pain and more noise,

with God there is no confusion, and that a deep loving Father and a deep loving

Mother is a real and abiding reality

and that it is not lost, not lost in God, not ultimately lost in people,

as everyone still has the seed, the image of God, in them.

***

Well, on that more reflective note, I better end as it is late

and sleep is needed.