One Small Face

This is a responsive reading out of the Unitarian Universalist Hymnal that sums up my feelings of the season:

With mounds of greenery, the brightest ornaments,

we bring high summer to our rooms,

as if to spite the somberness of winter to come.

In time of want, when life is boarding up

against the next uncertain spring,

we celebrate and give of what we have away.

All creatures bend to rules, even the stars constrained.

This is a blessed madness in the human need to go

against the grain of cold and scarcity.

We make a holiday, the rituals as varied as the hopes of humanity,

the reasons as obscure as ancient solar rituals,

as clear as joy on one small face.

Margaret Starkey