Wading Through Hot Chocolate and Cloudy Skies an Advent Reflection by Kim Balke

Today’s Advent reflection is written by Kim Balke who tells me: I have been a leaf chaser and cloud wanderer since early childhood.  I grew up in southern Ontario near the Great Lakes and my family roots are in Nova Scotia, where I have been a beachcomber for mermaid’s tears (beach glass, especially the blue ones) over 10 years. I now live on the West Coast in a small community, Tsawwassen, BC, surrounded by ocean and river mystery.  I have been married to Tom, fellow wanderer in creation, for 29 years and we have two young adult sons, one dog and a huge family of stick bugs.  I credit their growing years as my unofficial  PhD dissertation in wonder, observation and reflection.  I am an Expressive Arts Therapist in private practice and work with children in 3 schools in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver.

Wading Through Hot Chocolate and Cloudy Skies

Hurting people billow about me,

darkening grays, aging ways,

black and purple-blue hues;

a hollowed out sky before me

in the form of needs, misdeeds,

unkempt, messy vapours diffusing light and tell-tale sight

around my landscape.  Let them go, too heavy to hold.

Falling, falling inevitably down over autumn leaves

in a colour leeching rain; a desired disintegration into ground,

the still, waiting space and time for growing something good … later.

Here and now is damp and cold;

a stick stirring a muck of memories,

a jump in puddles day;

watch the slough carry leaf boats downstream and away,

far away to adventure lands;

catch my breath and here I go

into William Blake’s “eternity in an hour”

flowers, unfolding long forgotten freckle faced smiles

of an incognito princess ship wrecked on new shores;

in the dirt on her tattered sleeves, the gifts of Magi sustain her;

in the wet socks hanging to dry, shepherds guard flocks at night.

She is waiting for…no…

she is wading through hot chocolate!

Her face peers into steam, Anna- like, searching through temple crowds, wondering.

She finds herself enveloped in rainbow, gloria and God given promises

from an ancient red and black letter book

about a baby-king wrapped in rags, hand me down clothes

from prophets to Elizabeth to Mary;

stitched and mended Metaphor of Meaning

for the fullness of time;

for child’s play in the sacredness of this present pregnant moment

seen in cloudy Tsawwassen skies and me.