Faith, Folklore, and Friends

We were in Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg for a few days last week to enjoy all the Christmas festivities there.  On Thursday night, the Weather Channel said there was zero percent chance of precipitation.  The local news said maybe a dusting of snow.  When we got up on Friday morning, it had started to snow, and it snowed all day.  The temperature stayed around 32-34 degrees, so there was none on the roads.  It was a rare treat for us to be in and out of the snow, which was sometimes blowing like a blizzard. All these photos were taken early Saturday morning. The photos above were taken from our balcony at Mountain Loft resort in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  The ones below were taken on the road going from Gatlinburg to Pigeon Forge.  You can see in some of the ones below that the sun was breaking through the clouds. We have been blessed to enjoy Christmas in the Smokies many times, bu...

             Nativity of Jesus, by  Botticelli Arise, shine, for your light has come,      and  the glory of the  Lord  has risen upon you. 2  For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,      and thick darkness the peoples; but the  Lord  will arise upon you,      and his glory will be seen upon you. ~Isaiah 60:1-2

We wait in lines, at work, at school, in traffic. Always waiting, our vaporous time on this earth dictated by clocks, buzzers, lights, ringing. Life around us constantly flowing, everyone about their business, everyone running and waiting, hurry up and wait. Isaiah waited for a Savior while preaching of His majesty, His healing. David waited as he sang psalms and adored the one he had not seen with fleshly eyes. They knew the promise.  The Messiah was coming. We celebrate the Advent, this season of anticipation, and we tend the sheep in cold silence, wonder about the star in the east, wonder when this promise will walk among us. The Word, which always was, took on flesh, flesh that laughed and cried, flesh that needed food and water, flesh that felt cold and heat. Flesh that awoke, worked, rested, slept. Flesh that walked among us. Divine flesh that died for our redemption.                       ...

Our Christmas tree is lovely this year. It is well lighted and adorned with a variety of ornaments, some of them forty five years old.  It has been in the living room for a while, and it  hasn't shed one needle. It probably never will, because the people who made it used fine machines and glue and paint to construct it, giving it the general shape of a tree. The closest it ever came to a real tree was when it was in a box in the back of the truck, coming home from Hobby Lobby.  It smells like. . . nothing.  Back in the day, Christmas trees smelled like excitement, like company coming, like the most wonderful time of the year. As soon as our school dismissed for Christmas break, my lil' ole sister and I went to the woods in search of a Christmas tree. We ambled in woods not our own because we wanted to find something we hadn't seen before. A few times, it is possible we wandered onto government land, but it has been over fifty years and we don't fear prosec...

There is within all of us an instinct to go home, the place where we began, the place where we belong. We hear stories of lost dogs returning home, worse for wear, after traveling for miles and miles, across rivers and busy interstates, after weeks of being lost. Banding hummingbirds has proven that some return to the same feeders in the spring, after they have wintered in South America, hundreds of miles from the plastic red feeder that feels like home to them. Each year, the swallows return to Capistrano. Pacific salmon return to the stream where their life began.  The circle of life sometimes ends where it began, and somehow, we find comfort in that. Some terminal patients, knowing that their days on this earth are few, beg to leave their hospital beds and go home, to their place, to spend their final hours. Wounded soldiers on blood-drenched battlefields write of their desire to just make it home, to be surrounded by family, to be burie...

Love, love this courthouse! The  Dicken's Christmas celebration in Tuscumbia had several snow machines, and it was fun watching it.  Not too realistic, though, since it was about seventy degrees while we were there. Here is something I don't see everyday...a white bunny with a Santa hat on.  He/she/it seemed to like it.