The whole day is your gift:
hold it and read a leaf at a
time, never hurried, never waiting.
Step, step, slide, then turn,
dance on the calendar,
reach out a hand, give lavish
as anyone ever gave- all. – from the poem “Some Days of Its Gift” by William Stafford in his collection Someday, Maybe.
I believe human beings are hardwired to be helpful. To care for each other. To live together in harmony. Don’t laugh. Admit it, you still hum “We are the World” somedays, maybe? That’s what I think of when I read “give lavish”. Give your heart. Reach out a hand. Every little bit counts.
No pressure. You’ve got this.
I know, it’s easy for me to ponder love and kindness here in a cozy cabin on pilings with the tide coming in and the rain tapping on the roof. I’m even drinking coffee with fresh half & half. The store got a delivery on yesterday’s floatplane and I was there just at the right time to buy myself the gift of creamy coffee. I am grateful. Very.
I also was just in time to see the Christmas tree standing securely upright next to the bath house. The lights aren’t on it yet, but the ladder is ready for the stringers. That didn’t stop the children from running around in the rain with great excitement. It might as well have been the arrival of the tree at Rockefeller Center.
The kids didn’t see the gray rain and the wet, dark spruce. The mud. No, they saw lights and ornaments, reindeer and Santa Claus. Hope. Gifts. Love. Snow. The children know for sure something special is coming and that big beautiful wet tree is proof.
But here is the most important part. The adults in this town, the chosen family of these community kids, cut that tree, hauled it down there, and will do everything they can to make those visions of sugar plums dance. Yes, the whole day really is your gift. Give lavish.
Speaking of gifts, a friend scolded me for not sharing all of Billy Collins’ poem about the angels yesterday, so here it is. Another Advent present for you. (And it’s kind of perfect that Chip is playing jazz right now as he tidies up out in the shed.)
Questions About Angels
By Billy Collins
Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.
No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.
Do they fly through God’s body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?
What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?
If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?
If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?
No, the medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.
It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.
She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.
