Even as I say that, I think of just how Christmas, which is the Reason for the Season, yet it falls so short in actually recognizing Jesus as that Reason.
I finished the last few pages of this book as I lay this morning, slowly waking up. As it ended, I realized that I would like to have been there, perhaps as Emily's friend, although she was a maid in the household... This book had quickly become an addition to my personal selections for 2023... Charlie, my companion these days jumped up and let it be know that she was waiting for her breakfast... How soon she has adopted the living in comfort, warmth and constant affection that she so craves...
Breakfast together has been happening for just a few weeks, but she had learned and now demanded the routine... I turned on TV to watch the news, which, of course, was not there. This was Sunday... I flipped through several Christmas movies from which I quickly exited... I needed something special...and found it!
I had never seen it before and watched it, bawling like a baby for much of it! I was so full of happiness, joy and forgiveness...
And, then, on the same last few minutes of that taping, a reference to the woman in Texas, who had been trying to get "legal approval" to abort a baby who was seriously deformed and that, if he continued to carry it to birth, it would then, soon die...and she may never be able to have another child--a child the whole family greatly wanted... I felt the coldness, the darkness flow over me. It wasn't hate, but it was almost a blind rejection for the white old man who is the AG and, then, the entire Supreme Court of Texas, all men...had refused to allow that medical support!
How can we claim to be expressing God's Bible and yet reject still another woman having to beg, in court, to explain why she needed an abortion quickly because of the pain she was experiencing. And the female Judge APPROVED THAT ABORTION! Only to be overruled... These republicans are NOT acting for God! I found myself pulling back into myself, the horror of the young mother who had to flee to another state just to get the medical care she needed...
So, I began to think about the early life of Dolly, where the 8th child was born, and died... and how, her father, the local pastor, had been heard by her husband, talking about how he kept at his daughter, giving her baby after baby... and, of course, I thought of the Supreme Court's present case coming up about the abortion pills...and one had already talked about overruling the use of birth control pills... Dolly's parents loved each other and wanted to be together. At that time, there was no way to do both! Medical science has greatly improved marital relationships don't you think?
In any event, my heart was now once again heavy and burdened... and I thought of the book I had finished this morning. A book that revealed another kind of discrimination of women in our past--and those brave women who were fighting for rights--rights that had been given to them by God Himself...yet had to be fought for...
And I realized I needed a time away from today's world... I would go to live within Flower's book until Christmas... and, even though it wasn't Christmas there, I would somehow bring forth words of joy, peace, and love from the writers of that time period...
Beginning with Emily Dickinson...whose work was, as explained, never known by others, until after her death...
Christmas poem,Emily Dickinson
’Twas just this time, last year, I died.
I know I heard the Corn,
When I was carried by the Farms —
It had the Tassels on —
I thought how yellow it would look —
When Richard went to mill —
And then, I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.
I thought just how Red — Apples wedged
The Stubble’s joints between —
And the Carts stooping round the fields
To take the Pumpkins in —
I wondered which would miss me, least,
And when Thanksgiving, came,
If Father’d multiply the plates —
To make an even Sum —
And would it blur the Christmas glee
My Stocking hang too high
For any Santa Claus to reach
The Altitude of me —
But this sort, grieved myself,
And so, I thought the other way,
How just this time, some perfect year —
Themself, should come to me —
Before the ice is in the pools—
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow—
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
What we touch the hems of
On a summer’s day—
What is only walking
Just a bridge away—
That which sings so—speaks so—
When there’s no one here—
Will the frock I wept in
Answer me to wear?
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