Merry Christmas!
Well! The
‘weather outside is frightful,’ but it is not exactly ‘beginning to look a lot
like Christmas,’ at least in terms of frosted evergreen trees and snowflakes …
No, instead we are having a true Pacific coastal Christmas: ‘let it rain, let
it rain, let it rain!’
But, inside it
is beginning to look like Christmas … I’m taking a break from wrapping presents and writing this greeting to you …
We wanted to
thank you for your kindness, support, prayers, and the long-suffering friendship
that you’ve shared with us, especially in the past year. Two-OH!-Fifteen has
been quite the year for Vincent! As you know, winter into spring, Vincent went
from immobility due to an injury, to a below-knee amputation, to living days as
the bionic man and evenings ‘rollin, ’rollin,’ rollin’ … it’s a difficult road
to adjust to the far-from-perfect technology of prosthetics. There are many,
many frustrating moments and painful steps along the way. It takes courage,
patience, and initiative to continue on that road, and we thank you again for
your ongoing supportive friendship and keeping us in heart and mind.
Our animal
kids, Puck, Arael, Janna, Maggie, and Gabriel, were such a blessing to me while
Vincent was in the hospital, and continue to encourage Vincent to increase his
mobility … and daily they make us laugh! Their cheerful steadfastness,
persistent good will, and present-moment engagement are a huge gift to us.
Toward the end of the summer, our herd grew by one: Tivio, a Quarter horse
retiring from Timberline Ranch, joined Puck and Arael, rounding out our little
herd nicely. We are blessed, and are grateful for the gifts we have been
given—including your friendship.
Blessings on
you and yours during this Holy Season,
Faith & Vincent Richardson
Word
It’s all in a
word.
It’s all in our
heart: soul-center and mind choosing the mundane, madness, or more …
The mundane sees wet dirt as mud;
The madness fears a sucking quicksand.
The more seeks more
and finds amphibious earth bursting with life, restless and resettling.
Words and
heart—faith if you will—wait for the life we grant them.
The “dwarves
are for the dwarves,” CS Lewis wrote as Narnia ended.
Instead of a
king’s banquet, they saw a half-eaten turnip and manure-laced straw.
It’s all in a
word; it’s all in the heart.
What if we
reframed ‘upsetting’ to ‘setting up’?
If typhoon
winds, warm with wild wet,
Powered roots to burst from soil,
Unburied rocks to see the stars,
And lifted fathom-deep ocean currents to salt the
air?
What if wisdom
rode hard across the sky righting the night?
Clearing a clinging fog of fear,
Scattering splinters of ice rage,
Blowing high dark wells of sorrow, geysers of guilt
and gloom releasing like springs, flying far...
What if faith
drove night to flight?
The dark stretching like an inky balloon,
Thinning, weakening, straining to
hold the void,
Bursting in a myriad of stars.
Would we then
see the celestial diamond hanging in the stable air?
The wild
migrant Child cloaked in the gold of cattle?
The
misunderstood mother tired and pleased and tired?
The waiting
spouse, listening, wondering, reckless with his open heart?
Would we hear
the singing of trees, valleys, stars, and sheep?
Drink in the
fragrant wind of angels rushing to greet the homeless on the hills?
The
one-dimensional line curved across a page is flat, still, soundless until read
aloud.
It is in the
lungs that life is given to words in a book; Emmanuel.
It is in the
soul-heart that life is quickened, stirred; and in the heart-mind where life is
chosen.
The Child, wail
arrested on a Christmas card Nativity, is frozen in December, trapped in a
gilded envelope by the mundane and madness of a fearful world.
But blind
faith-eyes see more.
Three winds of
Wisdom ride hard on that night.
Up-setting the whole world to holy.
FSR
Christmas, 2015
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