So stark the dark of this year’s ending
burned black and silent when birds should sing
but here and there are bright lights burning
friendships soft as feathered wing
and through the night the lights are shining
stars and owl song flutter bright
to frosty dawn the world is turning
perhaps some peace this year will bring.
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Jane Dougherty Writes 
“but here and there are bright lights burning
friendships soft as feathered wing”
Happy New Year, Friend!
Happy new Year to all of yours, and especially to you, friend and alter ego 🙂
❤
wishing you every happiness in 2020.
Thank you, you too!
so well-said and, yes, let’s hope for peace
friendships should show the way
happy new year!
I don’t go in for the peace and love stuff. The Creeping Jesus’s who claim they love everyone are just a bunch of hypocrites, or else they have no idea what love means. Most of them wouldn’t even forego one of their fourteen weekly doses of meat to help the planet and it’s impoverished.
Happy New Year. Friendship is far more attainable.
Too many see love as selective (those we like and agree with) and the evidence of love is everything being pretty, sentimental, and easy. Real love is strong and difficult and so much more than only feeling.
I agree, friendship is attainable and preferable.
Not eating meat to save the planet. Highest consequences on the table, so why not take meat off? I guess I know why, and yet I don’t. The planet!
It’s hard to see how you can equate the sentiment you feel for your partner or your child with what you feel for a convicted serial killer or child rapist, yet, those who claim to love everyone must be able to so it. Unless, of course their idea of love is more what some of us would call bare tolerance.
Well, if we’re supposed to love everyone–and maybe we are–beyond some foundational responsibility and investment it can’t be the same for everyone. If that’s bad or insufficient, then it is. I agree, how can we love the rapist as much as we love the child? We can’t. I can’t.
There’s a sort of self-righteousness in this loving business. Like turning the other cheek, go on, do it, hit me again, I defy you, then smiling smugly because you’ll be going to heaven because you’re the victim, at the same time, you have encouraged the abuser to be even more abusive. Perverse.
Perverse is the word. Turning the other cheek is a good example. The one struck thinks now some reward is due, and the one striking feels empowered. If that’s love (how could it be), that’s twisted.
There seems to be a widespread misunderstanding by Christians that they invented and have the monopoly on compassion and selflessness. Leaving aside all the millions of human beings who have shown just those qualities before Jesus was even thought of, have they never seen a mother monkey weeping for her dead baby, a cow running after her calf, a cat going into a fire to rescue her kittens one at a time? Pass the popcorn.
Is this why Christians think they are the only ones who are good? A belief to have invented goodness? Is this why ecumenism (an intense interest of mine) isn’t happening more or better or at all? How many good Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists do we know? I’ve known many. Jesus didn’t claim to have invented anything. If anything, his interest was in being a good Jew. Not to mention, as you so rightly note, all the selflessness in nature: the love and sacrifice of parents for children, the monogamy and community devotion of wolves and many other kinds. Yes, the way animals can mourn.
Sheesh. I’ll make the popcorn.
Yes, it does seem to be a self-awarded decoration. I saw some vitriolic stuff on twitter the other day about how awful and barbaric Pagan religions were before Christianity. I suppose they weren’t thinking of the Christians who forcibly converted whole nations by threatening to murder them all if they didn’t, or just murdering them anyway for blasphemy. The early monks were good at that, and Cromwell in Ireland, he did a lot of good work too.
The Inquisition, the Crusades, the conquest of the Americas. All done as a matter of Christian faith. And there are many Christians now ready to hate and promise violence in God’s cause. Only God would have to wonder where their cause came from and missed God’s own on its way to serving hell or hellish impulse.
Christians can claim peace as an aim of contrition. Not because of being good at peace through the ages.
The pagans weren’t exclusively barbaric, not to mention those who weren’t at all.
All that is very true, which is why I get angry when they protest vociferously over ethical issues that aren’t conform to their religious gold standard, like the teaching equality in schools or tolerance of differences, or boys and girls practicing sports together, or access to pregnancy terminations or contraception. They believe that the legislature should listen to their diatribes because they are the purveyors of morality in our Judeo-Christian society. I suppose that means an eye for an eye too and about another million other little deadly details.
What beautiful words for the new year!
Thank you! It deserves words at least.
One can hope.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you too 🙂 And yes, hope.
Beautiful! Wishing you a happy, healthy, and bright new year!
Thank you! All the best from me too for a happy and productive year 🙂
Thank you, Jane.
🙂
That’s a good wish. May it burn brightly. (K)
Just the light. Not the fires.
Fire is a double edged sword.
It’s running away with the planet.
Seems like it.