No Expectations
This year I am approaching Advent and Christmas with “no expectations.” I am grateful to be here, to have enough food and a warm place to live.
My mother always loved Christmas. We would gather at Thanksgiving–eat a wonderful meal prepared by her and then take walks around the pond and land. The next day my younger sister and I would drive the grandchildren to Pittsburgh. First stop was the Andy Warhol Museum. Kids love Andy Warhol–brightly colored paintings, lithographs and Mylar balloons to bat around. Next we visited the Christmas fair on Forbes Avenue. In my spending days “full of expectations,” I bought many ornaments and they remain some of my best.
We would return home and cut a fresh tree. The next day we would play Christmas music including Johnny Mathis, as well as Carols. Slowly we would decorate our parent’s tree and open small presents that we had wrapped for each other. I don’t know why this was so special, but it will always remain in my mind as some of the best Christmas’s ever.
Advent, and even Christmas, can be times for brokenness. I can remember my mother telling me about finding her Christmas present early– a doll– and it was taken away from her. There weren’t many presents for a farm girl growing up in the Depression–money was scarce and most food was grown. I shed a tear for her and that Christmas she had long ago. Maybe that is why she cherished our happy, but not perfect times together around the table and tree.
Advent is, indeed, about a birth coming, but something has to break first. We are broken this year and our country certainly is very broken. How can I sing Carols, when so many people have suffered and will suffer. It is a strange land we live in right now, but we must sing even as the Jewish people sang in Babylon in captivity. My two amaryllis are planted and it may be weeks before I gaze upon their red beauty. Above the photo is of my first year in Asbury and the joy of that tree. I do feel a kind of peace within — I may be alone, but there is still a seed of joy in the midst of the darkness.
If you can, try singing with this celloist:
1. What is the crying at Jordan?
Who hears, O God, the prophecy?
Dark is the season, dark our hearts
and shut to mystery.
2. Who then shall stir in this darkness,
prepare for joy in the winter night.
Mortal in darkness we lie down blindhearted,
seeing no light.
3. Lord, give us grace to awake us,
to see the branch that begins to bloom;
in great humility is hid all heaven
in a little room.
4. Now comes the day of salvation,
in joy and terror the Word is born!
God comes as gift into our lives;
oh let salvation dawn!
6 Comments
Rev. Marjorie Lipari
Thank you for going that extra step to communicate your hearts
thinking. Love to you this Christmas and into 2021. May the Holy Mother bless you and keep you safe.
With affection,
💕💕💕Mudra
Linda Stormes
Thank you, Mudra. Hope you are doing well.
Love to you. Linda
Linda Webb
Dear Linda,
I’m just now catching up on my personal emails which often get lost in the hundreds of unwanted emails that accumulate in my inbox. I’m so glad to have found yours waiting for me to read.
The picture of your first tree in your Asbury Park home brings back fond memories and what a great time we had decorating it, putting gift packages under it, and keeping it from falling over. Ha!
I appreciate your sentiment in the brokenness of this year, and send you my love for a peaceful time of Advent as we ready our hearts to receive the blessing of Christmas. I will miss spending that glorious day with you this year but hopefully we can at least do Face Time.
Love to you always,
Elle
Linda
Elle, yes I remember 2016. Full of hope and promise. Asbury Park was new and I was discovering everything. It was a small and magical town. I’m sure I will return to those days, but for now I am clamoring around and seeking inner peace. I am at work on a new blog and it involves “muck” which is earth or rubbish. I am growing my amaryllis out of the muck and hoping for bright red blossoms. This is also what I am hoping for my life… that out of the “muck” will come new life and hope for this year and in the years to come. “Yes” was all I could say the other day, but this is a more hopeful “yes.”
To you in your new home I wish you a blessed Advent and a Glorious Christmas. You made this move magnificently and may you live there in joy. Merry Christmas.
With love, Linda (aka Clara Lou)
Ann Fallon
Linda,
I think your tree looks lovely to me and a little magical as well. Maybe the magic comes from my own experience at the Andy Warhol Museum as an adult. It was a special moment in my life as it was written up in the Pittsburgh Gazette since it was related to my presentation at a psychiatric nursing conference in Pittsburgh. I can’t wait to explain it all to you in person and I now know we share a special place in our memories.
Thanks for your reflections on Christmas,
Ann
Linda
Ann, Nice to know of our common connection to Pittsburgh and the Andy Warhol Museum. We must talk about it.
This is actually my 2016 tree which was magical. It was my first year living in Asbury Park and I was very excited.
Hope to see you soon.
Linda