A Tidings of Magpies

Sacred spaces surround us everywhere--from stables to coffee houses, prison cots to sick beds, even ordinary living rooms.

Have a few minutes before I need to start wrapping and cooking again this morning. Hubby is at work for 12 hours, Grrrrls are over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house, and I have a few hours unencumbered to finish wrapping gifts, walk the dog, clear off the dining room table, find where I've hidden the stocking stuffers, cook up a little Fazzoletti coi Funghi (Little Handkerchiefs with Portobello Mushrooms), attend the evening mass (Sister MaryMartha), and drink bucketfuls of coffee. I'll be spending the next two days with my other loved ones in Neurodramaville so our little family at home will share Christmas wishes this evening. Hopefully before 9pm so I can load up on the beauty rest:>) Wishing all of you and your loved ones much love and joy. Enjoy. "...Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the house...

"...Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs where the gas meter ticked. And I remembered that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house...' please note: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

"...For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all their buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the side board and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what migh...

This is a season when FoodBanks across the country are asking for help and donations. I'm sure your local one is, I know our FreeStore is, and our neighbors to the northeast have also been hard hit. Cups of Kindness is offering beautiful artwork and pottery with monies going to the Foodbank of the Akron/Canton area. Rather risky items for the herd of hippos living in this household, but I see several things that look perfect for the aunties and grannies in the family. Take a look when you have time.

The Guest House by Rumi This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. please note: poem gleefully stolen from Blissful Bohemian . Thanks Annie.

Trees are being lighted and the preparations begin. "In goes my hand into that wool-white-bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes." please note: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands into the snow and bring out whatever I can find." please note: photo by Estonia Tallinn, A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas