Three Trees on the Low Sky
love, Christmas
Dear Subscribers,
Thank you for following me on this journey and taking the time to read my newsletter, as it’s called. It’s not really a newsletter, per se, yet a journal I’m keeping of how the wind blows around in my head.
I have grown stronger in 2023, especially since October 7th. I am more convinced than ever that a great revival is here and will continue to grow, silently, as we head into 2024. The reason I say “silently,” is the majority of us do not have loud or popular platforms. We are listening though.
My journey in the crap-storm of May 2020 began with a great canceling of what I loved the most.., my family and my work. Could it get worse? yes indeed. Many people were shoved into the storm “in the name of tolerance.” It ended in 2023 realizing I was definitely not alone.
So between then and now I’d like to shout-out a few people I read and follow:
The revival tours of “Let Us Worship,” with (extremely personal and life-giving to my soul).
Substack Newsletters: at “Courageous Discourse” with John Leake. What is there to be courageous about you say? when it comes to a conversation? well…. a lot I guess. Takes courage to think and speak. Crazy stuff, but I already knew that...
from Unreported Truths. Can we talk about pot, the vaccines and facts? We actually matter.
The “honest and factual” ex-New York Times writer Bari Weiss started and it is beyond refreshing to have good solid journalism back on the planet. As complicated as it has become (but that is nothing new as I have preached throughout my writing)… the cancelers keep working their minions 24/7 however readership is “quietly” getting stronger…
A special shoutout to “thinker” . Another “putting-her-canceled-life-to-work-warrior” in a great newsletter here called “Sey Everything.” She is currently leading the charge in anti-group think and has been fund raising for an upcoming documentary about the terrible effects of school closures during Covid.
, former queen of rock journalism (and someone I’ve kept an eye on for years) is now the all-in queen warrior for the right fight against the evils of Hamas. She was made for a time such as this and although she’s brutally honest, she’s committed til death does she part.
Also in search of truth, is musician/writer
.I read a wide variety of works and enjoy several Christian writers, artists and poets, as is subjective to ones own heart and style. I adore , and all of who move and keep me in the line of light so to speak.
Not one of us living in America or another modern European nation are alive to speak and act because someone, some hard worker or soldier didn’t lay down their life for us. And that’s how this whole Substack of mine began. We have the absolute luxury of irresponsibility with our words and actions when many living in other nations do not.
We have walked on and driven over those who gave so much, so that we may live… starting with Christ on the Cross.
As Israel battles the evils that have oppressed the Palestinian people for so long, while seeking peace and justice for its own nation, may we weep for and understand the sacrifices of all innocents in historical wars that have laid down their lives for paramount human rights. It's all, and always will be, devastating to all sides. I pray for the pain of war to end.
We need Jesus first, beyond any thing. We need the Christmas Story. We need gratitude, hope and love.
I am saved by Jesus, our magnificent earth, it’s gifts of nature, truth, art and music. Although the journey can seem agonizingly long for many, 2024 is about to bring on more thunder.
The time is now to look up and know that you are Loved…
Merry Christmas,
love, deb ox
Thomas Stearns Eliot had a long habit of using the dramatic monologue – a form he inherited and adapted from Robert Browning.
Life is very dramatic.
As I was driving through mom’s tiny town in Oregon last night, past wide open pastures, fog and icy rain, squinting red and white lights through the windshield, bright stars blinding, guiding me home — I thought about the journey.
The galaxies, oceans, rivers, mountains, forests, vast deserts. The earth is dramatic.
We miraculous creatures time travel in miraculous Creation.
In 1927, T.S. Eliot published a poem, from the viewpoint of one of the Wise Men, on his trek to see the baby Jesus. It is delivered to us by a weary elderly man, as a first-hand witness.
To him, the birth of Christ was the death of the world. Of himself.
The death of magic and paganism. The death of sin and idol-clutching.
The devil sure has a way with the world and isn’t this a seeming reality described above as the Magi searches for this baby King. For such divine beauty and goodness is better gone unnoticed for the preoccupation of one’s discomfort and surroundings.
And aren’t we always there pleasing this devil?
Why would an elderly “scholar” carry so much misery for the arrival of a little baby in this poem? Perhaps Eliot thought it was he who brought the Myrrh? “A premonition of The Crucifixion.”
“This birth was hard and bitter agony for them.”
Who said believing would be easy?
As with historical change, he who seeks to rise above the moment, is just a man who, despite material wealth and prestige, has lost his spiritual bearings…
The poem begins with five lines adapted from a passage in the "Nativity Sermon", preached by Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester, before James I on Christmas Day 1622.
I share this today, before Christmas, not only because I have loved T.S. Eliot most of my life, who was a contemporary of C.S. Lewis, (whom I also adore) but because it spoke to me about our culture, specifically the elderly forsaken, in our fast moving technology.
The devil so hates all that is good that even a Magi, a Wise old man, could have potentially missed the true meaning, the importance of the journey, as the world around him was so obscene and dismal. He would just “await another death.” His own.
It’s deep.
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
- Journey Of the Magi by T.S. Eliot, 1927
Deb, gosh, thanks for the mention here, especially among such other wonderful writers. I am honored, truly. I am only coming around to catching up so I apologize for the delay in response. I look forward to reading your posts! Happy New Year, friend.
Dear Deb, you've got quite a roundup here, and included a wide array of all the parts and pieces of 2023. I appreciate the mention along with my friend Kris as one of the Christian writers you enjoy here on Substack. Thank you for including mention of the Eliot poem, Sean Johnson on The Daily Poem podcast read it yesterday.
Merry Christmas, friend. Here's to a new year centered on Jesus!