Immanuel: It’s a Feeling

I remember singing those very verses in my childhood! In the autumn of my life, November still comes with a feeling of binding together and bringing comfort to home and hearth. Hearty feelings of kinship come when the largest contingent of family members who live afar are able gather. The act of supping and regaling about times long gone while crowding around the harvest table stirs feelings of fulfillment and nostalgia.

With the passing of both our matriarch and patriarch in March, the holidays will be oh so very different. My parents were outstanding inspirational family leaders, nesters and uniters. We four, my two brothers, sister and I are ultimately charged with regenerating the way future  holidays will be. I can’t yet say “mirror, mirror on the wall,” and begin to tell all what they’ll look like.  Reflections and new ways to begin the next chapter of our family story will come while we are stuffing, trussing and basting the turkey and sowing new traditions. We will see what remodeling comes into the picture!

So for now, these images of things of beauty and autumn’s nature as well as words from Lucy Maud Montgomery help to conclude what in my viewpoint Thanksgivings of the past have felt like.

Do return to SowtheHeart.com after the Thanksgiving Holiday on November 28. A story very important to my heart will be featured, and then we will move forward into the month of December as we celebrate Advent.

Pile high the logs till the flame be leaping,
At bay the chill of the autumn keeping,
While pilgrim-wise, we may go a-reaping
In the fairest meadow of memory!

~ Lucy Maud Montgomery