This looks like a December day, it looks like we’ve come to the end of the way.
Willie Nelson
A Calendar of Sonnets – December
by Helen Hunt Jackson
The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes Of water ‘neath the summer sunshine gleamed: Far fairer than when placidly it streamed, The brook its frozen architecture makes, And under bridges white its swift way takes. Snow comes and goes as messenger who dreamed Might linger on the road; or one who deemed His message hostile gently for their sakes Who listened might reveal it by degrees. We gird against the cold of winter wind Our loins now with mighty bands of sleep, In longest, darkest nights take rest and ease, And every shortening day, as shadows creep O’er the brief noontide, fresh surprises find.
Here it is, December already. We mutually survived a month of war poetry, easier to stomach than the real news coming out of Ukraine. Let’s pray the madness ends soon and freedom and autonomy return to Ukraine and we can go back to loathing American democracies two year run up to the next presidential election….
I am beginning my annual process of beginning to create gifts for Christmas. It takes me about a month of weekends to keep the projects moving forward. I am keeping it simple this year; a smaller number of hand bound poetry chap books, an electronic playlist of my favorite new songs for the year and peanut brittle for the unfortunate. Peanut brittle has become in my mind my very own version of Santa putting coal in your stocking, with in my case dental jeopardy your holiday wish. Just writing it gives me the willies. I think 2022 is the year to put a fork in the holiday tradition of peanut brittle and transition to caramel corn instead. Or better yet, a mixture of toffee pop-corn dyed bright red and caramel corn dyed a muddy green.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.
John Keats
Bright Star
by John Keats (1795 – 1821)
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
The Flower (An Excerpt)
by George Herbert (1593 – 1633)
How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. . Grief melts away . Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing. Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown, . Where they together . All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. Oh, my only light, . It cannot be . That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night.
A wreathèd garland of deservèd praise, Of praise deservèd, unto Thee I give, I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways, My crooked winding ways, wherein I live,— Wherein I die, not live ; for life is straight, Straight as a line, and ever tends to Thee, To Thee, who art more far above deceit, Than deceit seems above simplicity. Give me simplicity, that I may live, So live and like, that I may know Thy ways, Know them and practise them: then shall I give For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise.
The Christmas Wreath
by Anna de Brémont
Oh! Christmas wreath upon the wall, Within thine ivied space I see the years beyond recall, Amid thy leaves I trace The shadows of a happy past, When all the world was bright, And love its magic splendour cast O’er morn and noon and night.
Oh! Christmas wreath upon the wall, ’Neath memory’s tender spell A wondrous charm doth o’er thee fall, And round thy beauty dwell. Thine ivy hath the satiny sheen Of tresses I’ve caressed, Thy holly’s crimson gleam I’ve seen On lips I oft have pressed.
Oh! Christmas wreath upon the wall, A mist steals o’er my sight. Dear hallow’d wreath, these tears are all The pledge I now can plight To those loved ones whose spirit eyes Shine down the flight of time; Around God’s throne their voices rise To swell the Christmas Chime!
Thou that has given so much to me,
Give one thing more, – a grateful heart.
See how Thy beggar works on Thee
by art.
Not thankful when it pleaseth me, –
As if Thy blessing had spare days,
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.
Luck and fate are not synonymous in my personal dictionary, even if they are in Websters. Luck in my book, is a belief that if I am prepared and open-minded and have a positive attitude, good things are more likely to happen than when I am not. It is the idea that we make our own luck but it is not guaranteed, there is still an element of chance and potential disappointment. Fate then, in a practical sense, is but an extension of time and a justification or excuse for what occurred. It is my fate to gain 5 lbs this Thanksgiving from all the food I will eat, but it was my good luck that I got to do it while eating all my favorite things with my favorite people.
Why explore the concepts of luck and fate on Thanksgiving? Because I think it is an easy jumping off point to a more complex analysis of how do I give thanks in my life. Here’s how I wrap my head around the concept of being thankful versus being grateful. Thankfulness is an action intended to communicate with others my gratitude, while gratefulness is a state of mind, it is a choice, a personal theology, that can be built upon regardless of what happen’s in my life. I determine where my mind dwells and whether I focus on those things which trouble me or on those things for which I am grateful. I choose what side of the bed to get up on each morning.
I have had the good fortune to know several people during my lifetime as friends that seem to live in a permanent state of gratefulness. I am sure they have bad days but I have never observed them having one. Their expression of gratefulness is not superficial or artificial, it is not syrupy, nor are they verbose in their gratitude, rather it resides as a consistent deep well from which there outlook is shaped such that when they offer an opinion or observation it seems to always be shaped from within a context of gratitude.
When I meet someone with this quality, I am instantly drawn. I am curious to get to know them better. I want to find out what good luck must have happened to them that they are so grateful. For the two people I am thinking about specifically, I was shocked, as I became better friends with them, to hear their personal history of challenges, tragedy, death, sickness and loss that are well beyond my own experiences. Their lives were not shaped by good fortune or luck anymore so than mine. If anything they have faced greater adversity, yet they have made a choice to find gratitude during the course of their lives, not cynicism. In both cases, they are devoutly religious. I don’t feel that belief in a Christian God is a requirement for gratitude but I have come to consider the question whether belief in ourselves is a prerequisite?
People who have a sincerity of gratitude in their perspective are like magnets. A person who exudes gratitude in a quiet, confident way has a wisdom that others seek out and want to be around, they are truly old souls. Gratitude is something everyone is inherently born with the aptitude and ability to feel, but it is a learned trait as a consistent behavior, it is a skill, in the same way that trust can be a learned trait and a skill. Infants inherently trust their caregivers. Lack of trust is a learned behavior based on human experience as we grow up. The exact opposite is also true. Stephen M. R. Covey’s book the Speed of Trust, lays out a set of principles and ideas on how to increase trust. If I can build trust with another person by consciously attempting a consistent set of actions that increases the ability of another person to understand who I am and how to interact with me successfully, then why can’t I build gratitude in the same way? The answer is I can.
Giving thanks is not the same as being grateful in my mind, they are not completely interchangeable. However, one builds upon the other. On this Thanksgiving I will give thanks to all my loved ones for the gratitude I feel in sharing my good life. And I will remind myself to seek out gratitude as the foundation of my world view in the hope that is contagious in my thoughts and empowering.
George Herbert was born into a wealthy Welsh family and had the good fortune to attend Trinity College in Cambridge. His writing and speaking ability attracted the attention of King James I and he served in various roles as Anglican Priest and community leader. He suffered from consumption and died young at the age of 39. His poetry was entirely religious and a complete anthology was published in the year of his death under the wonderful title The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. In Christian piety, an ejaculation, sometimes known as ejaculatory prayer or aspiration, is a very short prayer (poem) often attached as a form of pious devotion.
Herbert writes in first person from a perspective of true belief in the Anglican church’s vision of Christianity. His poetry helped shape the artistry that flourished during this period in literature that resonates to this day.
I took the liberty to share a shortened version of his poem Gratefulness above. It is one of the few poems I have memorized and I generally use it as a prayer of Thanksgiving each year. It is the first and last stanzas of his poem. Check out his complete poem on-line if you have more interest. Herbert, in addition to being a poet and Priest, apparently was a talented lute player and lyricist. Here’s a selection of Lute Music from that period to be a back drop for reading his sonnet below. I am particularly attracted to the lines in his sonnet:
Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and layes
Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love
Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise
As well as any she? Cannot thy Dove
Out-strip their Cupid easily in flight?
An interesting idea – what are sonnets and all poetry made of, if they are not made of something beyond ourselves?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sonnet I
By George Herbert
My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee,
Wherewith whole showls of Martyrs once did burn,
Besides their other flames? Doth Poetry
Wear Venus livery? only serve her turn?
Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and layes
Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love
Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise
As well as any she? Cannot thy Dove
Out-strip their Cupid easily in flight?
Or, since thy wayes are deep, and still the fame,
Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name!
Why doth that fire, which by thy power and might
Each breast does feel, no braver fuel choose
Than that, which one day, Worms, may chance refuse?
Fourteen Lines 