Taking Time To Follow the Star

It is the first Sunday of Advent. Although I no longer make the Advent wreaths that the kids and I made together when they were young, I will try to take time during each day to follow the Star. I will go to my bedroom and turn on the small tree that is the first Christmas thing I decorate each year and the last thing to pack away. It is a white flocked tree that son Defee and daughter-in-law Wallace gave me, and it will go to their little Nora someday when she's old enough not to break the vintage pink ornaments I've collected over the years.

I'll sit down in my old reading chair where books are stacked everywhere and baskets are close by holding my current writing project. This is my sanctuary and I want my things around me. This corner is for me-time. No bills get paid here and no blogging. The laptop rarely comes into this room.

Here is where I sit and read and pray and scribble. Here is where I'll have my own Advent devotions. This year I'll be using a new book recommended to me by a fellow blogger. Maureen, when I read this book of Wisdom from G. K. Chesterton, I'll be thinking of you there in Devon, England. I won't link to you here as you've been taking a bit of a blog break, but if you happen to read this, I miss you and hope you start again soon.

After I read and pray I'll read one of the old Christmas books from my collection. This is the first one I'll read, an old 1928 book by Temple Bailey called The Star in the Well. Here is a link to some I found, in case you're interested.

This is a beautiful book in almost mint condition, in it's own pink box. It has deckled edges, a tissue paper covering the title page with frontispiece etching of Paul Moschocowitz's Madonna and Child.

Mary-Alice's parents are typical of the jaded jazz age, especially her father Michael who brushes aside his wife's concern that they have "lost the Star." It takes a life-threatening illness for Michael to return to his southern home place and search for the values taught him by his parents when he was young, where he can teach them to his little girl.

Does this book seem too naive, too simple and old-fashioned? Most of my old Christmas books probably are just that. I admit to being from the Norman Rockwell school of thought when it comes to books, more so the older I get. I think like Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie in this respect:

"Isabel thought about this. It was just too easy to say that adults did not like stories that were simple, and perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps that was what adults really wanted, searched for and rarely found: a simple story in which good triumphs against cynicism and despair. That was what she wanted, but she was aware of the fact that one did not publicize the fact too widely, certainly not in sophisticated circles. Such circles wanted complexity, dysfunction and irony: there was no room for joy, celebration or pathos. But where was the fun in that?"

I can't read books anymore that leave me upset and unsettled. I don't want to be disturbed in spirit when looking at a painting or picture.

Maybe I'm just an old fogey but I bet I'm in lots of good company, truth be told. Here's someone you might recognize who must have agreed with me:

"I dream of an art of balance, purity, tranquility,

devoid of disturbing or disquieting subject matter…

something akin to a good armchair."

Henri Matisse

Henri, I'll just sit in my armchair and read a good book and read the Good Book while I listen to Christmas carols, glancing up every once in a while to look about my sanctuary.

And this month of December I'll try to follow the advice of another man:

"Every day look at a beautiful picture,

read a beautiful poem,

listen to some beautiful music,

and if possible, say some reasonable thing."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Isn't that what we attempt to do on our blogs? I could type a list here of blogs I follow for those things, but I don't have to do that. Just scroll through my blogroll and you'll see a long line of them that are there for that very reason.

May this be a blessed December for each of you reading this!