Karl Petersen author
  • Home
  • Books
    • Stars Beyond the Veil
    • The Kingdom of What Is
    • Reformed
    • Urban Fits
    • Bellowing in the Common
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Advent joy

12/12/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
​You look back on another full year,
stilled, regretful , unfilled. You've yielded to the
impossible self-imposed expectations, to the
intoxicating allure of more of everything
 
because less means less, you're told, 
but more needs more needs more, you know.
After misadventures, failures, paralysis from loss,
the crash, the crush, the cold, you find                                                        
 
you’ve forgotten exactly what joy feels like--
a bygone emotion you hung up and left behind 
somewhere in a childhood Christmas tree.
Just when you’ve settled for the endless malaise,
 
you return home from a family outing,
gone longer than you’d planned because
the kids demanded ice cream for Christmas.
And when you open the door to a dark house,
 
your dog Jimmy greets you ecstatic, barking,
the long-awaited orphans come home. Bursting
down the hall and back, he rounds the table twice,
twisting, twitching, flipping—the pack is back intact! 

Unable to contain himself, he smiles up
at his beloved regathered, wagging, as jubilant
as the dog in the Bethlehem stable. And just then,
in the re-membering, the joy you’d forgotten returns. 

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I started writing these posts thinking of them as interruptions of grace in the ordinary and mundane events of life. 

    But after writing a few, I realized that grace wasn't interrupting but was there all along. I just had to have the eyes to see it.

    If you find these musings worth reading, pass them along.

    - Karl -

    Archives

    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

(c) Copyright 2022 Karl Petersen
Photos used under Creative Commons from Mellicious, jdg32373, Creativity103, symphony of love, goingslo, ouhos, BobShrader, anoldent, thewebprincess, memsahib 313, thezartorialist.com, Manitoba Historical Maps, ben.fitzgerald, Kelly Short6, todbaker, RICO24h, jamingray, Philip Ed, JohnSeb, PhilipRobertson, Wildpuck, jillyspoon, tomooka, digiensemble, fontplaydotcom, Vitorio Benedetti, hahatango, Eric.Ray, jvree, Olivia Harmon, Softness
  • Home
  • Books
    • Stars Beyond the Veil
    • The Kingdom of What Is
    • Reformed
    • Urban Fits
    • Bellowing in the Common
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact