Dear Jesus,

How quickly this season goes. And how easily our hearts turn sallow, the colors of Christmas running carelessly off the page. As if we hadn’t just knelt at the manger. As if we hadn’t raised our voices in adoration.

We try. We really do. With each gift we wrap and card we write, we remind ourselves of the reason for the season. We have such lovely nativity sets with glorious kings and immaculately groomed animals. In candle-lit churches, we sing to you with voices full of promise and rich with love. And when we sing, we mean every word of every verse.

But after we return gifts-in-the-wrong-sizes and buy discounted wrapping paper for the next season, something happens. We begin to forget the whole thing: the light, the miraculous birth, and the wonder of it all. We scoop snow, make resolutions, and suffer the long, cold days until spring. We put our noses to the grindstone and plow ahead towards what? Better days? Leaner bodies? Efficiency and resiliency and expediency?

We try at all the wrong things. In spite of ourselves–or perhaps because of ourselves–we mess up. We pick ourselves up, dust off every vestige of failure, and begin again. Sadly, we believe that it’s all about us and all we are willing to do. When we should be carrying Bethlehem in our hearts, we carry intentions in our heads.

So I’m asking for your help, Jesus. I do the things I don’t want to do, say the things I shouldn’t say, and dream such scant and skimpy dreams. Bring me to the foot of the manger. Envelop me in the mystery of your miraculous birth. And remind me of the love that birthed You and nailed You to the cross. Each moment of each day.

This is my Christmas wish, Jesus. For me and for all.

With much love from one of your adopted children,

Shannon

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.   Galatians 4:4-5

Dear Mary,

Kudos to the many artists who have tried to capture you as you held your baby boy and looked into the face of God. But throughout the years and in spite of their talents and devotion to this aim, they have largely failed. Consider the task, though. What pigments, what brush strokes, what vision and sleight of hand could result in more than a valiant approximation of this sacred moment? Knitted together in your womb and fashioned from pure God, how could any artist do justice to the light that shone from this holy child? And what canvas could contain a love that pours endlessly from heaven?

But they try as they might for even their crudest efforts draw us in. Closer then, our hearts take up where shapes and shades only begin. Here in your presence, something inexplicable, something akin to bliss takes over. Color pales here, and vapor-like, floats into the night. Lines lose their purpose and curl helplessly at your feet.

How you bend towards your son. Now this is a line that arcs towards mystery with a grace that defies all. This is a line that intersects with heaven and ends in your arms.

Oh Mary, I want to think that I have loved this way. Cradling my children in my arms, I want to believe that my joy was your joy. And I want to believe that, in the fellowship of mothers, my spirit leapt just as yours had. In the middle of the night as I held my sleeping babies, I have known the peace that passes all understanding. As their tiny hearts beat against my chest, their downy heads tucked under my chin, I knew that there was nowhere I would rather be. Time stood blessedly still as shafts of moonlight fell across their faces.

But in truth, these moments must kneel at the manger. From your son’s first steps to Calvary, you loved a Savior.  A virgin, God’s bride, you faced shame and humiliation, fear and uncertainty, so that your child could save the world. How could any of us really know how this love blessed you and cost you?

But on that glorious night, you treasured up all these things–the light, the angels’ song, the breath of your infant son on your face. On that night, Madonna, you were blessed among women.

¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Luke 2: 16-20

Dear Shepherds:

I have to admit that your role in the whole nativity story blows me away. Absolutely and joyously blows me away. Seriously, who but God would charge a group of shepherds with spreading the good news of the birth of our Savior?

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. God charged a lot of folk–the nondescript, the poor, the cast-off, the untouchable and the unequipped–to do His work. So the fact that he chose you to be His son’s first visitors fits right in with the rest of His narrative.

But still. What a bunch of men you must have been! Men whose hands had only known a hard day’s work, hands coated with dirt and wool wax, hands that gripped the gnarled wood of a staff, and hands who would quake as they reached out to touch the infant king. I’ve known others like you. Women who sat in the back of my college classrooms where they attended, day after day, to better themselves, women who had sent their children to school with cardboard in the bottoms of their shoes and who gave profound meaning to what it means to “make do.” Men with shattered dreams who were beginning again, men who had once lived in cozy ranch homes with two-car garages and swingsets in white-fenced yards and then had lost it all. Men and women who have served me food, cleaned the places where I’ve worked, stocked the shelves of the places where I’ve shopped, taken care of my garbage, my plumbing and wiring, cleared the roads I drive on–all of those people who work to serve. Like you, they are nobodies. And like you, they are truly somebodies.

For you see, there has always been much shepherding to be done. In lonely fields, in early morning stock rooms, after hours in hospitals, schools, and office buildings, shepherds work. And sadly, when we look down upon them and send our condescending words and pinched smiles their way, they go about the business of tending to whatever it is they are to tend. As they have and as they always will.

When the angels appeared to you, I’ll bet you looked away at first, believing the words to be for someone else, someone worthy and important. It is a mistake, you probably thought, certainly a huge mistake. For after years of fields and rocks and sheep, days and nights of wary solitude, you could not have imagined such a night as this. And on such a night, this is the part that really moves me: how wisps of air from angel wings softened your weathered faces, how the light of all lights flooded your watchful eyes, and how your hands flew into the night air, awestruck having taken on lives beyond themselves.

The fact is that we need shepherds today more than ever. Most of us simply need tending to. Because when our toilets break and shepherds show up with spud wrenches, pipe sheers and stem pullers, we stand back sorely amazed. And when we’ve scraped a night’s worth of ice from our windshields and find the streets plowed and salted, we count our blessings. Indeed, it takes a whole lot of tending to make the world go round.

So here’s to you, shepherds, tenders of wayward sheep! Take your place among God’s chosen. And when the nights are long and cold, take heart in this: we couldn’t have done it, and we still can’t do any of it without you.

From one who’s in constant need of tending,

Shannon

⁸ And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.  Luke 2:8-20

Dear Innkeeper,

You didn’t even get a name. In the Bible, that is. Actually, you aren’t even identified as innkeeper. There is only your implied presence at the doorway that night in Bethlehem. Still, in churches all over the world, someone always takes up your cause, dresses the part and delivers the single crucial line: There is no room at the inn. No respectable nativity pageant would be worth its salt (or myrrh, if you prefer) without an innkeeper. A bit part, but a necessary part nonetheless.

Actually, I’m a big fan of bit parts. Consider the world without those of us who play bit parts for most–if not all–of our lives. Behind every leading role–say a cancer researcher or a legislator or a New York Times best selling author or a Savior–there has always been the implied presence of some nameless individual: a parent, a friend, a teacher, a mentor. These are bit part people at their truest and finest, those who inauspiciously go about the necessary work of guiding, redirecting, encouraging, criticizing, and loving, always loving.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: But I wasn’t a supporter or mentor or friend. I just opened the door and told a desperate young couple that there was no room for the night. Then–and this is the really sad part–I offered them  shelter in a stable. A stable! For a woman about to give birth, I gestured toward a stable and closed the door. 

But this was your part, you see.  God sent his Son into the world as a baby to be born in the lowliest of places. The baby and lowly parts were absolutely crucial, for this birth was going to turn the world on its head, ushering in a kingdom with a king no one expected: the King of Kings born to common parents, a Son who would grow and live in an ordinary home, a Savior who would live, love, and suffer among ordinary people. God with us, God within us, and God through us. And you were there at the very beginning to play the part you were destined to play.

So when the curtain call comes, take your bow. Your fellow bit players are waiting in the shadows to give you a quiet and long overdue ovation.

From one bit player to another,

Shannon

Dear Joseph,

There is no one quite like you. It’s true that if you lived today, Jimmy Kimmel would not be knocking your door down for an appearance, and Anderson Cooper would not be scheduling you for an interview. What was scandalous in Nazareth just would not play well today. The sheer goodness of a man like you simply would not result in ratings.

An angel of God who visits a common carpenter to verify that his betrothed was chosen by God to carry His son? Even this would not be newsworthy, I’m afraid. Finding no means of corroborating such an angelic visit, reporters would chalk this up to a lunatic’s ravings and set their sights on stories they could confirm.

But still, there is no one quite like you. And I mean this in the best possible way. As your life spilled out before you, days of wood and dust and prayer, could you have imagined yourself as father? Parenting is hard enough, but to parent the son of God? I can’t begin to imagine this. But you held that baby boy in your arms, and you gave your heart to him. Not flesh of your flesh, nor bone of your bone, but yours all the same.

Joseph, how we need men like you today. Our land is parched for lack of them. So many of our men are mere sperm donors who turn away from their sons and daughters, choosing other, easier pursuits. So many of our men lack heart and soul, and lacking these, they bluster their way bullishly through the world. It’s tragic, you see, for their women and children are left wanting and waiting for men who will show up. Every day in every way.

In the streets of Nazareth, on the road to Bethlehem, in that dank stable, and all the days of your life, you showed up, Joseph. And because of your great love, I know the greatest love of all.

So gratefully,

Shannon

Dear Women of Nazareth:

How quickly you turned your backs on one of your own. This unwed mother, this girl gone wrong, you presumed her guilty and wrapped her in shame.

In the marketplace, you bartered for the best cloth and grain, you spoke of family and friends, and you didn’t give Mary a second thought. You sent her to the shadows as you gave yourselves up to sunnier things, pulling cloaks of respectability around you and counting your blessings.

Even as she stood in the shadows, how could you not see the Light of the World piercing the city, piercing the world? But then, you had no eyes to see that the greatest blessing was right there in your midst. God chose the very woman whom you cast off to carry His son. That’s how He works–with the least, the unexpected, the shamed and shameless.

And you missed it. You might have fallen to your knees in adoration, humbled by the presence of the living God growing inside this hometown girl, but you busied yourselves with such trivial things: what you would wear, what you would eat, when you would sleep.

We have women like you today, and they send their accusations and presumptions into cyberspace with the touch of one finger. Unfiltered and unexamined, their words shred the reputations of others and leave their victims mere shells of their former selves. Like you, they have no eyes to see and miss the greater light that shines inside each of those they accuse. They miss the miracles–blooms discernible to only the faithful–that unfold around them. In truth, they miss it all.

Like you, they delight in playing God, believing their throne rooms to be impenetrable and their judgment to be unimpeachable. I suppose they find it easier this way, believing themselves charged with the work of sorting the sheep from the goats. But do they ever stop to think that all this sorting and judging was never their business?

It’s easy for me to say that I would have befriended Mary, perhaps even defended her publicly. Sadly, I’m really not sure. I may have walked the dusty streets, smugly and wholly unaware of the miracle in my midst. I, too, may have missed it all.

With both scorn and empathy,

Shannon

Dear Elizabeth:

Just yesterday I was making an Advent calendar with my granddaughter, and she said, “Grandma, look at all the days until Christmas! 24 long days!” Twenty-four days, indeed. A blink, a blip on time’s radar screen, a proverbial drop in life’s bucket.

Not so with us. I waited for years, you for decades–our arms childless and our hearts expectant. In season after season of fruit cake and divinity, I waited for God, for anyone to ring my door bell and place an exquisitely wrapped plate in my hands. On it, the frankicense of family, the fragrant assurance that two would become three would become four. . .

But you! Your expectation spooled out before you, skeins of your heart’s finest fibers in piles at your feet. You were an expecting mother far beyond what is expected. When a child called Mother, you stopped, turned, and watched as your arms left your sides, reaching, yearning, and stretching into the space that spanned the years between child-bearing and old age. Not a day–or night–went by when you did not see the child of your dreams in the faces of other mothers’ children. And not a moment passed when you did not feel the absence of the sweet weight of a sleeping child on your chest.

Day after day, you sent your prayers heavenward like eager doves, their wings beating the darkness around you. You baked the bread to feed your empty womb. And when your skin loosened from your bones, thin and mottled with sun and age, you began to settle into that singular space of childless women.

And then! God spoke: Behold Elizabeth, wife of Zecahriah and mother of John, a righteous and faithful man who will make ready a people prepared for the Lord. And in that barren space, your child grew and leapt for joy.

Oh Elizabeth, I have been an impatient woman. I have worked and worried through most of my days, believing that my will alone might bring me the blessings I so desired. I have stood before my life like a child before an Advent calendar. Twenty-four long days! As if my urgency were God’s. As if counting the days might make the answers to my prayers come more quickly.

Now, as my skin loosens from my bones, I want to settle into a space of expectancy into which I might loosen the binding of my will. Here, I might settle into faithful waiting, trusting that neither worry nor work will ever bring God’s blessings. Here, I might settle in beside you, sisters in waiting. And here, in the shadow of our son’s love, we might come to know God from whom all of our blessings flow.

With love and expectancy,

Shannon

Luke 1: 12-18

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. ¹² When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. ¹³ But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. ¹⁴ He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, ¹⁵ for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. ¹⁶ He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. ¹⁷ And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.¹⁸

On January 30, 1945, a military transport ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, was torpedoed by a Russian submarine and sank in the Baltic Sea. The Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying an estimated 9, 343 people–mostly German civilians and mostly women and children–seeking escape from the approaching Red Army.

The ship was built and equipped to carry approximately 1,900 people, but desperate times called for desperate measures. And desperate these civilians were, most traveling for weeks to reach the port in Gotenhafen. Many left the roads and took to the woods to hide from Russian soldiers who were relentlessly pushing eastward.

Nine hours afer leaving Gotenhafen and 70 minutes after being hit, the Wilhelm Gustloff sank. Only 1,293 people could be registered as survivors, making this the largest maritime disaster of all time.

This disaster was six times deadlier than the Titanic’s sinking, but it has not been profiled in most history books or feature films. As a matter of fact, until I read Ruta Sepetys’ novel, Salt to the Sea, I had never heard of the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy. And when I quizzed others, they, too, reported that they had never heard of the ship or the disaster.

Why is it that some people, places, and events are duly memorialized through monuments, in print and film, while others fail to register at all on the collective conscience of the world? Why is it that we see keenly at times and through a glass darkly at other times?

Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel writes:

For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

If forgetting the dead is akin to killing them a second time, what about failing to see the dead at all, failing to identify their role in our collective memory? Is this like killing them a third time? Or worse yet, is this failure akin to these people never having walked this earth, never having lived or loved? Is this failure an act of undoing that is even more tragic than forgetting?

And if  we have failed to see the thousands that perished on the Wilhelm Gustloff, how many others have slipped through our collective conscience, never to become a part of our collective memory? How many others suffer and have suffered the human condition–individually or en masse–leaving marks that should be indelible but disappear as vapors?

We need fresh eyes. Eyes to see into corners. Eyes to see below the surface. Eyes, like drones, programmed for human sacrifice and suffering. We are fortunate to have those with fresh eyes who spread light into dark corners and cellars, dredging up souls who deserve to be seen, even years after they have lived, suffered, and died. These are the artists and writers, the historians and journalists, the descendents and filmmakers. Through their eyes, we see what we have not seen before.

Having failed to see and remember a tragedy the magnitude of the Wilhelm Gustloff, it is no suprise that we fail to see individuals and acts in our ordinary lives. We tell our children, our students and athletes to work hard and commit themselves to the pursuit of excellence. We coach them to persevere and encourage them with words like, “Your hard work and commitment will pay off–if not now, then later.” And we believe these words, for failing to believe them would leave us unmoored and drifting.

But what if those for whom our children, our students and athletes are working do not see them? What if all the hard work and grit simply goes unseen? The eyes of parents, teachers and coaches may be on others, and so fixed, they never see the efforts of those who are paying their dues and who yearn to be seen. For these individuals, hard work, commitment and even talent may not really pay off. Not now, and not later. The unseen sit in the backs of classrooms, on the sidelines or benches, in the shadows. Often, they wait expectantly to be seen. And then, after months or years of waiting, many resign themselves to invisibility.

They deserve to be seen. In truth, they may not earn the highest marks or win a spot on the starting team, but they should be seen. In defense of those teachers and coaches who work with students and athletes daily, I know how difficult it is to see each one. Most days, it is nearly impossible, for there are always those individuals whose presence looms so large, that all we can see is what is right there before us.

Still, failing to see some is as much a choice as choosing to see others. If our eyes have become clouded with cataracts, we need fresh ones. Through such eyes, we can honestly say, “I saw what you did today when you. . .” Ultimately, seeing is affirming. Fresh eyes say, “In this moment, in this particular place, you matter.” Too little? Perhaps, but seeing is a start.

Sadly, there were too many moments in my home, my classroom, church, and community during which I failed to see. The Wilhelm Gustloff could have been sinking in my midst, and I would not see the mothers throwing their infants to strangers who stood with outstretched arms in lifeboats below. I would not see the desperate men and women chip and claw at the ice that had frozen the remaining life boats to the ship’s side, nor would I see the multitudes standing at the rail, looking hopelessly down into the black sea that would soon take their lives.

In these moments, I did not see my own children. My nose in a book or a stack of student papers, I waved them off with red pen in hand and muttered, “I’ll be with you in a minute.” In these moments, I did not see many of my students. My eyes were on one whose continual disruptions threatened to undo us all, and I did not see those whose eyes and ears were always on me. In these moments, I did not see the parishioner who slipped from her pew early, a wadded handerkerchief in hand. And in these moments, I did not see the neighbors on every city block who wanted to lock eyes with someone, anyone.

I need fresh eyes. I need authors like Ruta Sepetys to help me see people and events beyond my time and place. And I need a passionate prescription for daily living, a reminder that fresh eyes are–at the very least–life-affirming.

Late autumn, southern Iowa

What green is left

lies muted beneath a veil of frost.

Its voice, caught in the throat of autumn,

is silent.

The wild parsnip and chicory are gone.

The linden and cottonwood loose their hair,

sending mounds of russet strands to the ground.

But what of this fodder?

What of these silos of dry bones and song?

In a season soon to sleep,

how now shall we live?

In a season soon to sleep,

who will speak the truth of green?

For white is not absence;

its presence is a crushing thing

that runs its mouth with colder claims.

So who will speak the truth of green,

its blooms and dreams,

its primrose promise of return?

Shannon Vesely

Painting by Paul Vesely

Singing A Bird’s Song

Begin.

Never ask where a call ends

and a song begins.

Before the sediment of the west

pulls down the sun,

sing until your feathers burn.

So you have only five notes:

try purity of tone.

Sing the weight the moment

of a single branch can hold.

Don Welch

There’s is much to be said about purity of tone, about singing the weight the moment of a single branch can hold. I’ve seen this truth play out in many ways, through many means. The painting above gives testimony to the weight of a single-haired brush and the purity one can find in the remarkable tone of oak and paint.

My husband paints ducks. With the tiniest, finest brush imaginable. One stroke of oil paint at a time, each stroke laid lovingly beside and layered purposefully upon others until a mallard drake and hen take shape. He knows the anatomy of a duck: the particular way a wing looks folded or in flight, the just-right green and iridescence that plays around the neck, the browns that hunker down into the brush, and the watchful, wary eyes. There are no details he misses as he works from blank oak to duck.

Here is a love that passes understanding for most of us who can appreciate a fine piece of art–a creature so keenly captured in paint–but who cannot begin to know or feel the very essence of all that makes a duck. But herein lies one paradox of purity: in its singleness, it speaks largely. Paul understands this, for his ducks take on the weight the moment of a single branch can hold. And yet, they take on a larger life that speaks of beauty and movement and instinct.

Native American poet and journalist, A. D. Posey, writes: At the end of your story, you get down to the purity of it all. It’s like distilling something. In a world gone macro, a world in which most move quickly, washing theirs and others’ lives with broad strokes, the distilled thing has become increasingly rare. To get down to the purity of it all? This would suggest that there is something precious to be found in distillation. And sadly, many have turned up their noses at such work, preferring instead, the quicker, easier work on the surface of things. The purity and depth to be uncovered with single-haired brushes is foreign to such folks.

When you can only sing five notes, however, for some, purity may give way to obsession. Yet another paradox of purity is this: that the love of a single thing or person can be both wonderful and terrible, both life-giving and life-taking. In Old School: A Novel, Tobias Wolff writes:

Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity – its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

Purity’s roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self? Such is Alymer’s love of Georgianna in Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark.” Alymer is an older, reclusive scientist–clearly not ideal husband material for the young and beautiful Georgianna.  Her beauty is nearly flawless, but for a tiny hand-shaped birthmark upon her cheek. Alymer is fortunate to win her hand in marriage. That is, until he comes to regard her birthmark as a slightest possible defect, a visible mark of earthly imperfection. 

Preoccupation with his wife’s imperfection leads to obsession. Hawthorne writes:

. . . he [Aylmer] found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamped ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain.

And so it is that Aylmer, armed with obsession for purity and devotion to science, offers to remove his wife’s birthmark, her fatal flaw of humanity. Out of love and unwavering belief in her husband’s scientific prowess, she consents. Ultimately, Aylmer prevails, and the birthmark fades completely. But so does Georgianna. The death of his now-perfect wife leaves him awestruck and alone. Hawthorne leaves readers with this insight into Alymer:

Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.

Alas, to find the perfect future in the present! The pursuit of purity demands a profounder wisdom, a wisdom that, tragically, Aylmer and Adolf Hitler did not have. Their eyes were locked on the perfect, Aryan future, and in pursuing this, they forsook their hearts for their heads. Committed to a single purpose, they pushed towards a pure ideal, leaving lives in their wake.

This profounder wisdom is one that Olympic runner and missionary, Eric Liddell, understood as not crushing the instincts but having the instincts as servants and not the master of the spirit (The Disciplines of the Christian Life). Both Liddell and Henry David Thoreau understood that the master of the spirit was not man, but God, and, as Thoreau writes, that man flows as once to God when the channel of purity is open (Walden).

If you only have five notes at your disposal or you only desire to sing five notes, there can be wonderful, life-giving purity when your eyes are fixed on the master of the spirit. And whether this comes from a stroke of a paint brush or a word, this distillation may reveal the essence of something both singular and universal.

Bring your best eyes and ears, bring your heart and soul. The channel of purity is open for those who will enter.