If I were going to write about hearts and love and Valentine’s Day, it needed to be this week. By next Thursday I’d have missed the moment. In my organized structured way, I was going to offer you some background. That turned out not to be as sweet and lovely as I had wished. The Catholic (the saintly group) website I settled on instead of Wikipedia led me a convoluted chase from decapitation to banishment by the Pope to finally a story one could tell at bedtime to young susceptible children. Just so you know, I’m in favor of the day, wholeheartedly, to make a pun. Who could not love hugs, bright colors, and chocolate except a Grinch and he has already been assigned to Christmas.

I love (the word of choice) Valentine’s Day because for most of my life it involved creativity, individuality, and an acceptable amount of messiness, maybe even some glitter. My mother would put layers of newspaper on the dining room table and give me scissors (oh, joy), red and white paper, colored markers, and glue. The glorious addition was several of the punched, almost lacey, doilies that went on dessert plates the rest of the year. I just needed to leave enough blank space to write the To and From names. More tender messages came later down the road. While the Valentines were drying – an important step, do not stack wet Valentines, I could then move on to the shoe box which every child brought to school. More decorating, and some help was required to punch a starting place to cut the deposit slit in the top. On February 14, cards were delivered to the correct boxes which sat on the corner of a desk until time for cupcakes and revealing the contents.

The day did have up and down moments. I yearned one year for a heart that said, “Love,” with a boy’s name and that did not happen. Situations like that even brought tears in some eighth grade classes. Younger groups I taught wanted to hand over each card with a kiss, and the affirmation, “I made it myself.” One of my favorites was store bought by one of my children and said, “If I promise to always put the scissors back where I found them, will you be my Valentine?” The answer was a definite YES!

I had a waffle iron that could be used on a stove top and turned out six crispy heart shapes. With strawberries and syrup, they started that special morning with a way for me to say, “I am doing this for you.” All through the day the word LOVE needs to echo. To like can create a favorite thing. To love expands, fills space, and moves any relationship to a new level on February 14 or 364 other days. Think of answering the door to receive a bouquet of colored balloons tied with streaming ribbons. Historically, you can look at a man named Valentine from various sides. Just don’t mess with what those floating balloons mean to me.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians13:13

Most of my stories start “When I was growing up” because that’s what went on until I got to where I am now. My first contact with research, a turn around the corner from just not really true narratives, was a bookcase made by my daddy that sat in the cubicle between the bathroom and the dining room. In it were a really old World Book Encyclopedia that must have been in my mother’s classroom before me, a whole shelf of musty National Geographic magazines, and a very thick and heavy Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Perusing these three in a haphazard manner, I gained information about the world from ancient history to about 1930. A issue of National Geographic sent me to the World Book with a side journey to the dictionary which not only provided definitions. It also had illustrations. The next two important steps were a card catalogue, a library’s version of a search engine, and open stacks where I could wander and discover all kinds of books.

That introduction aside, let’s get back to the point of today. For Christmas, my son gave me a hardback book of stickers. They are everything from animals to elaborate alphabets. As the title page defies it, the antiquarian contents are adhesive ephemera. Just looking at the options is a delight. I use them to mark a page in my journal or to highlight the envelope of a handwritten note. In addition to sweet quotes and the young girls dressed as if ready for a Jane Austin novel are also various characters with bird like heads spouting a long beak. These bothered me. I resorted to the technology research available on my computer. YES, that very technology I have complained about so many times.

The origin of the strange costume is a more exotic version of our Covid face coverings. By entering several variations of bird beak faces, I discovered that in the plagues of 1575 and 1630, these were supposedly the protection of physicians who tended the sick. The mask covered his face and the long beak had two small holes on the side to filter the air he breathed. A long robe and a stick to keep evil spirits at bay along with gloves made the final costume. Want to do your own research? Enter “the plague doctor mask” or go to Camacan.com and you can order one of your own.

This was my reminder not to throw out the baby with the bath water. Also this very day, I had trouble getting to my bank account to close out the end of the month. However, I was able to access a medical test and be assured that my bone loss was not in the danger zone. In the years between Linden Ave and Swift Blvd, I have made progress in new skills. I’m sorry for being an old griping fogey. For those who are still a step ahead of me, please keep me moving toward the future if for no other reason than to learn about the past.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. when I became a man (woman) I put away childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11

Back in the years of deciding what I as a woman would be in the world should I not earn a Mrs. degree soon after a B.ED, the next choice would be a secretary, maybe a telephone operator. In high school I took typing and did fairly well on the old Remington hit the keys hard and throw the carriage with purpose to turn up the next line. In fact, typing, or keyboarding as called today, may have been one of my more useful subjects, much better than hunt and peck. The second part of a good secretary was shorthand, a loser for me. I had to work to have a legible handwriting and couldn’t really understand scribbling and translating being progress. So I took the next opening of teaching, found a good match and never looked back.

Anyway, the tv image of the perky young woman at the front desk who turned out letters to be signed by the end of the day mail soon faded. Titles differed according to what was demanded. This cold rainy part of January I really had the need for an IT Support Specialist. This paragon of necessity would know her (or his) computer more intimately than I know my grammar book and understand moves and lingo to create solutions. After having the same e-mail since the 1980’s when I still had to dial up a connection, it began to have weak spells. At some level it was so undependable that the Museum of Fine Arts would not even verify reservations using it. I could only ask to pick up tickets at their front desk. Yesterday the unspeakable came to pass. I was spoofed. or spammed, or hacked. In a word, totally messed up, People on my contact list came out ot the woodwork to tell me so. Thank goodness, my daughter -in -law didn’t hyperventilate at the problem. With aplomb (one spends one’s life waiting to use that word), she took over my computer using Teamviewer, asked me to put my hands in my lap, and began to kill off and bury the defunct contact with society. At times in the process it was messy and not always quick and easy; however, she took what I could never have done and did it.

According to our needs, each of us wants a special skill available in our family. Maybe your wish is for the great-nephew who knows exactly how to lift the hood of your car and tweak wires, or at least how to get it to a dealership and explain the problem. The longing may be for that one who can set a table worthy of being photographed or with seemingly easy effort create a meal out of three leftovers in the refrigerator. Right now I would settle for someone who could separate papers necessary to start saving for 2023 taxes from those that to be useful need to be sent to the accountant for 2022. At the end of a day, I want to be the child tugging at a skirt, searching for a place of comfort to end the day, and feeling assured that place will be waiting for me.

As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.

Isaiah 66:13

Another thought that divides the world into groups. Fifty years ago one of the uncles was the there had to be a picture person. He lined us up and re-aligned us and fiddled with settings and said, “Just one more.” I don’t know where the prints are. I do know I have memories of bending and trying to turn around some child whose face was hidden in my skirts. When we do find a stack of those pictures in a shoe box, the opening words are always, “Oh, I remember when we…” Then the details are filled in to flesh out the moment of the picture.

A friend and I took an absolutely perfect road trip last week-end and somehow snapped not a single picture, not even the one of two of us for the third friend that couldn’t go. You don’t need to reach out your hand to hold a shot, just open your mind to what I say. The afternoon was a pleasant drive directed by our phone’s GPS, The ultimate destination was Fulton/Rockport, designated as south. I kept having to shake my head over that direction because the Gulf that is normally directly south of us when in Houston had followed the curve of the coast and was now a few blocks to the east. A friend I had taught with welcomed us to a lot with landmark trees, the live oaks. Other lots were crowded with trailers to house those inhabitants designated as ‘winter Texans.”

For two small coastal towns, Fulton and Rockport abound in preserved history. My friend is a par excellent historical archaeologist and gave us a show and tell for adults. We wandered the Maritime Museum and I re-learned about LaSalle’s ship La Belle that sank off Matagorda Bay and is now in the Texas Historical Museum in Austin, offering the possibility of another field trip. Friday morning we went to one of the older houses that had been moved and will now be used for various exhibits. The quilting ladies of the town were training docents for a next day opening,

Friday afternoon was the jewel in the crown. We went on a boat tour to see mostly Whooping Cranes in their migration moments. We sat in a cabin with our small binoculars. Hard-core viewers braved wind and lined the deck with larger magnification and cameras mounted on tripods. I could spend several sentences on geography and controlled burns because that area is my minor in college. The gasping sights were seven families of cranes: two adults and a motley teen delicately stepping and swooping down for a succulent meal. We were delighted the javelina was on a far bank away from the boat. White and brown pelicans and settled gulls welcomed us back into the harbor. Around a supper table that night no phone was passed around with pictures. Instead, we who were visiting bubbled out what our day had been like while the listeners who lived in those midsts daily nodded in agreement. On the drive back home, the pondering of the trip provided our delight in the going.

Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.

Psalm 111:2

People make their living writing an article a week on technology – changes and how to manage them. I, along with others, am caught in the backwash of how at ease I want to be with that which is new. However, while moving forward, I do try to keep having to be au courant to a minimum. Change is the word for the ages from horse drawn carriages to horseless carriages. My mother who lived in three centuries moved from a party line, to an operator, to a dial phone and even saw long distance after 6 p.m. on Sunday disappear.

After several false starts and one scarey one, I am doing quite well with a QR, those lines and turns that lead to Quick Response. Some have been aware of their possibilities since 1994 when they were invented, if that is the correct term. The amazing part to me is that, supposedly, ordinary people can create one. In 2011 I shared teaching with a younger woman. She taught our students how to attach a QR to a paragraph. This way, a picture of one’s house in the morning could appear along with the writing explaining the sequence of leaving for school. My job was to staple to the bulletin board and be amazed. Even in our low income school each child had to cell phone to create and view.

Step 2 was more pleasant yet not more intuitive. A local music group attached QR’s to various stops along a nature trail. A friend and I could walk, sit, copy code, and enjoy a piece tied to that place. Again, it was her expertise and phone that made it happen. All I did was read about the possibility in the paper and make a suggestion.

Then I got caught unprepared. I came up to a parking garage and the sign where I usually just punch a button said USE QR CODE TO OPEN BAR. I froze. Cars lined up behind me. No one honked, yet it was not a comfortable place to be. A young woman knocked on my side window. “Just take a picture. It’ll work. There are signs inside.” A minor miracle and I moved ahead with, as the saying goes, the faith of Abraham. Another hurdle was taking another picture and being able to enter my license plate and my credit card. After tending to my business, I timidly asked if I would be in the garage all night. The secretary assured me that all was captured in the proper place and would allow me to leave. Sure enough, as I approached the exit bar it rose, as if we were good friends and it had been waiting for me,

Yesterday I realized I had crossed into a capable zone. The day had been long. At 3:00 lunch had not happened. I walked to a nearby casual eating place to have my favorite soup/sandwich combo. I paid and went to my table. In the center was a QR code. I snapped the picture and entered the number of my ticket. Sure enough, in a reasonable time, the young waitress found me, outside under the shaded overhang. I had not even considered that this might not work. You’re right. The Bible is sparse on technology, yet there is always the promise that something new is waiting to happen.

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and a river in the desert. Isaiah 43:19

This is a phrase that matters only to some people depending on location, age, and occupation. On the surface, it sounds like a seasonal happening, like when to sow seed or harvest the crop. Yet, in Houston, my place of most knowledge, closet adjusting is almost a non-event. Closet changes are even a non-gender non-occurence Let me speak for men I have know and observed. Boys I have raised and those I have taught wear short parts all year in most areas south of 40 degree north latitude. It depends on whether the line is in California or maybe in mountains of Tennessee. A favorite jacket they consider heavy might come out, especially if the lapel is cool in the vernacular meaning of the word: an attention drawing plaid or a fuzzy under collar resembling the fur of some animal. In pre-Covid days and suits were worn to work, a wool suit lurked in the back corner with its vest and hopefully a cover to provide a protection from moths. When the temperature dropped to near freezing, that usually counts as winter, that coat hanger was moved to a more accessible spot for the two days it was needed.

In spite of my realizing that for the most part, a heavy cotton cable knit sweater or a lightweight but lined jacket would be sufficient for most cold snaps, I have amassed a variety of sweaters. Double knit black pants or polyester ski pants with accompanying long underwear take care of my bottom half. The cloudy nippy days seem to call for sparkling colors and extra warmth. Single garments usually have a history that I remember fondly as each makes its appearance: annually, bi-annually, or once a decade. The most revered and cherished is a Ralph Lauren vest with a reindeer in cross stitch on the front. In high school, our daughter eyed it through Neiman Marcus sales until price matched budget. It lives in the box of once in a whiles and came out for me with its reds for Christmas this year. In the same box is a forty year old Norwegian Dale Classic sweater I ordered from the factory. It has wonderful silver buttons with snowflakes. Age comes to play when I want warmth and various turtle necks fill the bill. I love pulling them off at the end of the day to realize that a slight chill was kept at bay.

We live with the illusion that after Christmas warmth is on the way. So, the term organizing is limited to the moment something else is needed until that day in spring when we realize nothing is required any more except a long sleeve cotton shirt and maybe a light shawl for air-condition moments. I don’t do sleeveless, so Target tee shirts and Land’s End denim shorts do about 86% of the time. And yet, we are required to live prepared. I drained pipes before THE BIG FREEZE and cut down a tree before a hurricane. One son needs a new snow blower and California is putting sandbags in place. As our needs are, so may be those of someone else. I’m giving three verses this week. Organize as meaningful to you.

“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat,
And summer and winter, And day and night
Shall not cease. Genesis 8:22

She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
For all her household are clothed with scarlet. Proveers 32:21

 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? Matthew 25:40

Since I not making money from printing the words, hopefully I’m not violating a copyright. Writing this on the 61 occasion of my wedding day, December 28, 1961, the marriage song from Fiddler on the Roof seems appropriate.

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

This week of the year always reminds me of a constant of life – change. That variance can be as simple as night falling and a new day coming or as momentous as a toddler pulling up next to a coffee table and then letting go to be transformed into a walker. In three more days, hands will lift to tear off Saturday, December 31, and we will have to pay attention to using 2023 as the final number on checks and contracts. Across the country, all have faced THE BIG FREEZE: in most places the temperature was a detriment to plants and, in some cases to lives. People who thought it was safe to travel again have ended up away from home, and worse, separated maybe forever from their suitcases. In the flow, almost without being noticed, December 21 heralded the Winter Solstice, the sun slowly moving toward the northern hemisphere beginning the line saying one season following another.

Laden is a very poetic word to provide an antonym choice of emotional provision. By definition laden means weighed down or even burdened. The tears I understand; however, can you imagine being burdened with having to face so much happiness. A good symbol is the one for yin/yang, curved and joined, offering balance between competing forces. Looking at what has been, the comment on the days has been true. Some memories are pulled out when I need a reminder of sheer joy. A few others need to go in a box with a tight lid. The new year coming up seems to stretch out with the vastness of 365 days. I face them with words to another song I cherish and you may have to look them up, the hymn “Day by Day.” Or, as a five year old friend says, “You go with what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised. The LORD is exalted over all the nations, his glory above the heavens. who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?

Psalm 113:3

This is the fourth year I’ve spun words around not just Christmas as the world knows it . The Thursday before four Sundays named Advent in the liturgical year, I’ve tried to define how December opens again for me a familiar foundation for the rest of the year to build on. Some years I’ve written about decorations and what they mean or don’t mean to me, about those words that are used in various order of hope, peace, joy, love. I’ve remembered music that has colored special times. I’ve regretted that even with the softness of candles filling dark corners light is not the focus of one Sunday.

The words for this year have no choice but to be personal. I had to put the whole month of December on hold after eye surgery. Thankfully, the procedure went well. I did not have the dailiness of readings because the term blur was more than descriptive. That and appearance hindered going to choir or church. I’m not driving and have had to accept with humility what help was offered in love. For the first two weeks, bending at the waist was not allowed and all decorations are stored in the bottom of chest. Just now, though, are some of the demanding restrictions being lifted and I am lately entering celebration. Along the way, moments counted.

How did the moments come? Hooray for living in a technical age! Each Sunday I have been almost more a part of a service than when seated behind a tall youth and craning my neck to see around the broad shoulders. Church families with children I teach light a candle for each week and carry that light into the world at the service’s end, and little faces and voices seemed close and clear. Video cameras panned the choir. The music surrounded me and I could also see faces of fellow choir members filled with the the blessing of that message. My private drivers took me to hear a high school choir at the Fine Arts Museum and to marvel over a collection of creches in a nearby church. Best of all, I can re-enter the group that was virtual and will be able to be a part of Christmas Eve with music and that special story and finally the lighting of the Christ Candle. Mystery means influencing the course of events by using supernatural forces. When the whole congregation, each holding a candle, spills out on the church steps to sing Silent Night, the mystery of the moment becomes foundational reality, and I join Mary after journeys, angels, and shepherds.

But Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often.

Luke 2:19

A grammatical moment. If you had been so fortunate as to have had me for English you would have memorized the FANBOYS, those conjunctions that tie complete ideas together. The most commonly used is and. In Luke 1, and starts 41 sentences. We move through Luke’s reason for writing, to Zacharias’s words from God, to the annunciation to Mary, to a visit to Elizabeth, to the Magnificat, to the birth of John the Baptist, to the final word that the child John grew and lived in the desert.

Then then is a long skip with no details, just the pronouncement to begin Chapter 2: “and it came to pass in those days,” From undoctorial research, no definite proof exists that these officials sent out such a decree or how it went to “the whole world. ” Yet – use of another important conjunction,-this was the tie that moved prophecy to fulfillment. The child who will be the Son of God will be born in Bethlehem. That’s not where the mother-to-be is at this moment. Spend some time thinking of your family getting ready for a journey. Packing up, Joseph gathering tools he might need, Mary’s mother offering advice about preparing for a birth, and probably a week long trip of 90 miles. Anything you want to know about food or accommodations along the way has to wait for a Bible class in heaven.

Getting to Bethlehem seemed to create more problems culminating with Luke 2:6 , “and so it was.” The final complete ideas are put together, tumbling into an amazing story drawing in stars, shepherds, angels, songs of wonder, and viewing a new-born on a bed of straw. Our choir sang Christus Paradox which moves through a series of unlike ideas that are drawn together in what this babe became. Lamb and Shepherd. Peacemaker and sword bringer. Gift and cost. Everlasting instant. Through the coming twelve days, continue your way to Christmas, paying attention to the ands that direct the way.

²⁶ And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,

2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

⁶ And so it was, that, while they were there, 

That stole blogs is on the loose and wasn’t letting the publish this morning. However UPS had promised ot help. One always hopes the cavalry arrives on time.