Christmastide, a rambling account of the season from Detroit. OK, to be honest, Advent is our favorite season in the Wylie-Kellermann household: prayers and song around the candlelit wreath, gifts hidden in the making, a small statue of erstwhile Roman prisoner, Bishop Nicholas of Smyrna, standing witness on the piano - an oversized china Bible beneath his arm, and public vigils for peace. I was fasting on juices for the first few weeks of Advent. Actually, it was a thirty day fast during Ramadan, in solidarity with the Moslem community so under attack these recent months. It was also in mindful intercession of refugees and war victims (now approaching the total of those killed in the trade tower collapse) and against that deadly bombing. It will be a long while before any truth of that horror on the ground is publically known in this country. Just to add: Ramadan is a very interesting season. Here in the Detroit, with the largest Arab population outside the Middle East, it’s difficult to tell if it’s a really fast or a feast. During the day the devout undertake this very rigorous and difficult fast, but come nightfall families gather to break fast and party late into the evening. For the restaurants of Dearborn it is really a boom season. Like Advent, a sober joy. For those eager for word on Jeanie, we had an MRI during Advent and received it’s report as Christmas good news in the flesh. The pictures are once again unchanged. At the very least: no new growth. Our various doctors who have all along urged us to continue "whatever it was that we were doing," are now asking for details about this Hungarian chicken virus, which appears to have some sort of miracle afoot. Meanwhile, Jeanie is essentially seizure free for nigh six months. This is an enormous change in our life. She can be left alone for short periods. We don’t need to be constantly within earshot, on edge for the terrifying noise of collapse. She can even be the licensed adult when Lydia makes her permit driving forays. She did most of her own Christmas preparations, wrapping gifts and hiding them away. (OK, she had to have a little help to find some of them - hey, me too). She gave me a Christmas tree ornament: a tiny wooden outhouse, with a half moon cut in its hinged door. (Can someone explain this to me?). I like it. We don’t put up and decorate our tree until Christmas eve (as is liturgically correct). Again this year, we dove up to a tree farm in the Thumb and cut it down ourselves. We always ask permission of the tree and give it thanks. And at least by our lights, they always seem gracious and happy to come along. Our Christmas morning was in Detroit. Many of our gifts were handmade. Lydia was the champ in this regard. For Lucy: a rainbow knitted scarf and a T shirt with all the parts from all the plays in which she’d ever acted, lettered in multicolor paints on front and back. (She gave essentially the same thing to all her Paperbag theater buddies). From both girls for Jeanie and I: a basket full of indulgent supplies for a romantic date - perhaps at the cabin. I made dulcimers for the girls. Walnut and Cherry. From kits. (OK, they still need finishing and hardware - but the smooth unfinished wood is so lovely to the smell and to touch). I suppose gifts are always an intercession of sorts, but with homemade ones, you get to think slowly and carefully on the person, virtually in a detailed prayer of nuture and thanks. I believe I’ve made the girls’ main present every year since they were born. It keeps me praying as it were. By Christmas evening we were at the cabin - Lydia pushing her skills at snow driving in the dark. As the licenced driver at her side, I even fell asleep - a measure of trust or exhaustion? Once settled in with fires lit, pump on, and Jeanie’s childhood French creche set out, we went for a walk. The moon, though not full, was high and bright. The dust of new fallen snow reflected it in a luster of mid-day. Lucy declared it’s jeweled surface, "enough to fool a greedy man!" Shadows from the trees were vivid, as were our own. It was like a crystal dream. We sang Cat Stevens and I recited "Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening" (though I must admit a certain solemn edge was taken off when Lucy imagined aloud the real reason he stopped with miles to go - and got a fit of the giggles). Next morning we cut eight or ten varieties of pine bow to decorate the cabin, in preparation for an overnight visit from godson Luke of Washington DC. He loved the tree house in the cedar cluster, and his Dad, Jim, even climbed to the second floor. His Mum Joy, a Londoner, explained Boxing Day to us: the working class holiday for servants who had to work so hard all Christmas Day to make the gentlepeople’s feast. (Unresolved: does the "box" stem from the boxed meals the gentry had to eat the next day, or from the church breaking open the filled "poor boxes" on the feast of Stephen?). We were also blessed later in the week to have an overnight visit from the family of our Detroit goddaughters, Catherine and Theresa, who spent long hours skating on Lucy’s labyrinth of paths through the marsh. Two noteworthy prayer services. Feast of the Holy Innocents in Port Huron with the small and lively peace community there. It included an amazing meditation on September 11 by zenmaster Thich Nhat Hahn (one by one identifying with each of the persons, and even creatures, structures, and elements, involved) and a street procession chanting and drumming to the four neighborhood directions: How shall we welcome the prince of peace in a time of terror? Our favorite service of the year is New Years Eve at Day House, the Detroit Catholic Worker (our own community). Before the intercessions we go round and people share their "highlights" and/or "lowlights" of the past year. The circle ripples with a rhythm of tears and laughter, of the ordinary and life’s dire extremes. Lucy’s lowlight was the life-threatening surgery during Advent of our cat, Scatters, who had swallowed a knot of yarn which remained tangled around his tongue and so could not pass. Her highlight was that he survived and came home. I had two: Jeanie’s amazing health, of course. But also "Word and World" the movement school which in my experience was seeded by the "underground seminary" which Bill Stringfellow and Daniel Berrigan hatched in my own formative years. There are other streams feeding this present version (freedom schools, base communities, womenchurch, etc.). We are launching it in Greensboro in April. For me it is one of the most hopeful signs of light in the present dark. (I’ve already shared this news with a few of you - let me know if others of you want to know more). Typically, at midnight we are in the midst of the consecration when some move to seats on the floor as our neighbors welcome the new year in a different fashion, by firing off their guns into the night. The week before Epiphany, we spent some days in Wooster, OH helping Jeanie’s mom, Bea, prepare for a move to a retirement village outside Philadelphia. We’ll miss having her close, but she’ll be centered in a Wylie triangle of the other three siblings. My mom is in Florida for the winter, so we rely even more heavily on friends for Jeanie’s companionship in my Chicago absences. I returned from the first of such this year just as Jeanie collapsed with pneumonia and spent several hospital days taking fluids and antibiotics through a tube. In a delirium early in that week she asked me to make room so the angel could step out from behind the bed. Moments later she was reaching up behind her head to hold it’s hand. Question, she replied, "I’m being angleic."A sweet delirium suited to the times and the season. And one I’d trust more than all the random searches, checkpoints, and strikeforces of the present hour. Guardian blessings and love, dear friends. Bill