It's Always Advent

Can one blog their own blog? One entry for two blogs? Why not? Here's what I wrote today somewhere else....

I could not get warm today. Now don't think I'm going to write a depressing entry, but today was about Winter.
I have experienced real-time winter weather while living in New Jersey. Nothing in the world can compare with wind chill 40 below. Or two feet of snow on the ground from December to April. That kind of condition can effect the soul. Empty trees all around for six months.
You start wanting to lay green lettuce from the grocers out just for a change of sorts.

A book I'm reading lately tells of snowy Israel. Could Christ really have been born in winter? Well, whatever. It seems the right time for a Son of Man with no esteem. It seems the right time for a Savior of Sufferers. A pagan day, winter solstice for the marked life of a man cut short. And He changed everything. At least for me.

I know everything about Him from my mother. I cannot ever remember not knowing Jesus. She would tell me stories every night at bedtime about her childhood or mine. But often, she would tell me about Jesus. And there in the dark, usually as she rubbed my back, she would tell me wondreous miracles and mysteries. We would listen to choirs and classic recordings and I would wait for her as she sang for mass in the mission.
Later, I would go with her to choir. We attended at a large old church with a winding staircase to the choir loft and it's spindled railing. Every Sunday for six years we sang the latin words that repeated the Gospel. Up and above the people, out of sight, we stood over the organ and player as it pumped the broad sound to the pipes twenty yards at the ceiling of the alter. And Christ was there. He was in our words and in our grace. He was in our worship and in our questions as we viewed the creche every advent. He was born in the cold and the dark and we were just beginning to wonder. Where is He now? When will He come back? What is He saying to us?
We asked those things of Him together, my Mom and me. She went ahead of me, I miss her and I am still asking Him the questions while she is in the answer.