My Winter Song To You: Sara, Ingrid and Love

This is my wintersong to you. 
The storm is coming soon
it rolls in from the sea

The storm is coming soon. A year ago I sat in my living room on 8th St and listened to the heartbeat of the piano, Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson. I listened to them keep time to my own departure, to the hours slipping by before I had to take the 5am bus to Baltimore, before the hard truth of departure. In so many ways, the storm is always coming: this world is not easy. It is not always simple, it is not convenient. The winter song remembers that some days the storm rolls in from the sea. The piano keeps time with our hearts as we watch the waves, as we hear the wind.


My voice a beacon in the night
my words will be your light
to carry you to me

I wonder this some days. If my voice here, my words here, are light to carry you closer. You, the reader, who live so far away, between the typewriter keys and the telephone wires and the tables in Starbucks where I wish I could sit with you for hours, and tell you about how much you surprise me with your joy and life and story. This Advent, we need to carry each other. We need to be beacons in the night, the words that remember how the light is coming. I hope some of these words here carry you closer to me. But more than that I hope they are beacons to the Light born in that manger.

Is love alive? 
Is love alive? 
Is love

Isn't this the question we're always asking - if any of this is more than a shadow, more than wishful thinking, more than one more daydream? Love is alive. He is moving inside Mary. He is waiting, preparing, so patient with us it almost looks like He has given up. But Love is alive. And because He is, our love lives too. The love among us, that connects and deepens and builds, the love that breaks hearts open and makes you vulnerable. That love is alive. That love is worth it. 


this is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
'cause you're not where you belong
inside my arms.

So I sing to you. I sing in my car from three Decembers ago, when I first heard this song. I sing from the long run between 22nd St and the Capitol. I sing for any and all of you because I don't have the answers but I have hope. I have the hope that someone will hold you close to their hearts and answer that question about love and remind you that you belong in their arms.

I'll be your harvester of light
and send it out tonight
so we can start again.

A year ago I wrote about my soul waking up - about that fickle heart and Mumford & Sons. A year ago I wrote about a song to help prepare the way. And so now, the piano sounds in the office and I turn back the pages of the year. I'll harvest the light for you, Hilary, He seems to tell me. I'll send it out to you. We can start again. I watch Him gathering the blog posts, the advice columns, the letters, the too-tired mornings, the runs around Coy Pond, the questions, the cupcakes, the laughter. I watch Him make them into light. Because Advent is about making our lives lights. Because He's choosing our hearts as dwelling places. Because the winter song is love. 

(mandie sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

And all of mine to you, to carry you closer,
Hilary