Second Sunday of Advent

Amor (Love)

 

 

 

Advent
Thomas Merton 

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect! Fly, vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
And disappear.
You moon, be slow to go down,
This is your full!

The four white roads make off in silence
Towards the four parts of the starry universe.
Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.
We have become more humble than the rocks,
More wakeful than the patient hills.

Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent,
holy spheres,
While minds, as meek as beasts,
Stay close at home in the sweet hay;
And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.

Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our solemn valleys,
You skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,
Toward the planets’ stately setting,
Oh white full moon as quiet as Bethlehem!

Will Elk Ridge Lose Its Magic?

A Spell for Midwinter's Heart, Morgan Lockhart
Thank goodness! A romantic novel with adults who act like adults!

Years earlier, Rowan Midwinter desperately wanted to save her grandmother's home from developers. Her hometown, Elk Ridge in the Rockies, is a haven for many magic users who follow pagan traditions, and she was to help cast a spell to save it. She failed and quit using magic that day. She won't even use it to help persuade people to invest into a worthy solar power franchise. But she promised her mother to come home for Yule; on her path home, she re-encounters her old school rival Gaven McCreery, whose father is now hell-bent on selling out the whole town of Elk Ridge to some big city developers. And it may happen, because Elk Ridge makes its biggest money at their winter festival at Yule—and this year's may be a bust because there's no snow.

The two storylines develop in parallel: Rowan and Gavin's rediscovery of each other as well as Rowan and her friends and family trying to keep the specter, of cookie-cutter commercial development from taking over Elk Ridge and its unique inhabitants. Rowan must come to terms with what she saw as her initial failure that just let her into a downward spiral in which she sees failure as her only future, and learn to love herself as Gavin also begins to love her, and she him.

This book includes a great supporting cast, including Rowan's brother, mother, and father, and her best friend, Zaide, and Zaide's lover Naomie. I really enjoyed this one!