“But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures
Dec 10, Sunday, 9 am. Chilkat River Beach. 22 degrees, north wind, snowing lightly, high tide.
Before I walked I listened to the news a bit, read my Advent devotion from Marsh Chapel in Boston, and listened to The Tabernacle Choir sing Handel’s Messiah. ( I wake early, and the music played while I pedaled my bike to nowhere upstairs. Also, a friend told me the choir no longer is called Mormon, since that is considered a derogatory term by the members of The Church of Latter-Day Saints.) The needle on my emotional meter moved from despair to hope. Someone wise once said that we are what we read, and I would add, what we listen to.
This morning on the walk, there was a backbeat of ice chunks bumping along in the river, and a pair of eagles– they must be the same ones I keep hearing — called to each other up in the trees. The gulls were silent, flying low and looking for something they didn’t find. The cold wind convinced me to duck into the woods where it was quieter– quiet enough to notice a happy little tree all dressed up for Christmas.
