day 27: praise

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

‘Praise Song’

Barbara Crooker

The more I let Reality touch me, the more I welcome Your Advent coming into my life as it is right now today, the more I move towards seeing Your face.

I long to see.  

I long to focus on You in the world around me.  

I long to learn how to respond with thanksgiving.  

I long to learn how to praise.  

I long to learn how to consecrate.

I long to see.

To be alive is to look. But not merely with my mind—I am not naked intellect. If I am really to respond to the real, my whole being must be alive, vibrating to every throb of the real. Not only mind but eyes; not only eyes but smell and taste, hearing and touching. For reality is not reducible to some far-off, abstract, intangible God-in-the-sky. Reality is pulsing people; reality is fire and water; reality is a rainbow after a summer storm, a gentle doe streaking through a forest; reality is a foaming mug of Michelob, Beethoven’s Mass in D, a child lapping a chocolate ice cream cone; reality is a striding woman with wind-blown hair; reality is Christ Jesus.

from Tell the Next Generation: Homilies and Near Homilies

Walter Burghardt

when You are near. Canon 7D. f2.8. 1/640. ISO 500.