mccarthyism

slept through my first class this morning and felt like the lazy, undisciplined person that i am. it's a good class and i respect the professor a great deal. just not thinking.

the night before last after i had dropped jenni off at her house i drove to a park where mom used to bring us when we were little. it was after eleven and very cold but i walked around for a while and tried to think clearly. i feel like i've made good choices lately and have put myself in a good place. but i also know that with every good choice comes another, tougher one and i think that this kind of broadening or escalating describes my experience over the past few months. there is a tendency to try to rush things, to look for God's hand at work where perhaps it isn't, and it takes a constant, conscious effort to instead wait patiently on His best will, knowing always that our slow, painful participation in that will is our salvation.

Advent, 11/17/06
A train, seen but not heard, on whose tracks, further down
We had walked an hour before
In the fading light and deepening chill
Colored over with grey of brown wooded climbing paths
And yellow of lights so far below
We could see the whole town like Christmas in the valley
(And now I felt Christmas in my arms, through the thin jacket)

A Christmas night, thirty-eight nights early,
You wrapped your small right hand around my side
And I felt a pause, wrapped shiveringly,
High in the aching cold above the domed glow of our town
Held by the steadiness of your purity
Afterward we walked down, down
Returning to the transient world we'd left
To my car in the folded hill by the track.

A cold coming, and a bright star to guide
(At times I've lost it, but it sailed again in the clear)
By its white light may I find true the place
In the company of angels, or the lowing of the kine
For I've a gift to bring
Harmed and hurt by my own clumsy hands
(Wrapped in my own tired arms)