It's a beautiful Advent, cold, clear evening here at Lagom Landing.  I took a walk behind the barn to the clearing where we had fires this summer, and watched the treetops silhouetted in the low light of the setting sun and rising moon.  Their skinny limbs, relieved of summer's leaves, clicked gently together in the breeze.  I held a tree limb, overcome with the peace of wild places.  The particular stillness that is always here in these woods, while we humans bustle around and shop and bake and overindulge during this Most Wonderful Time of the Year, hit me, yet again.  I heard the faint sound of cars driving on 390, and I thought about where I too often am instead of these woods, burning fossil fuels as I run from some important thing to another.  

I walked back to the house, my path lit by the moon.  The blue lights I had just attached to an extension cord glowed on our front porch.  I smelled the wood mulch I'd been spreading earlier this afternoon over slabs of cardboard.  We're sheet-mulching our yard, a technique used in permaculture, which I'm just learning about.  As I spread the mulch, I thought about how long it has taken to acquire the cardboard, to load up pickups full of wood mulch from a neighboring town dump, and to spread the mulch around at least one acre of land.  I thought about how long it will take for the yard surrounding our house to look welcoming and settled, as permaculture relies on the slow processes of nature.  I thought about Lagom Landing, and how these now more than two years have been.  I've had times of great anxiety that Rock and I don't have what it takes to start a nonprofit and host 10 students for a year--their meals, the program, the bills, the accidents, the conflicts, the liability, etc., as well as coordinate our service in the community and all that added complexity.  

But for the most part, Rock and I have received the slow, gentle message of one who is far greater than ourselves.   "Of course you are not enough," we are told; "None of my children are ever enough."  And we go back to trusting that a power is working in us and with us and despite us that will allow Lagom Landing to be what it is to be.

And so I think of Mary.  A child.  So frightened.  So overwhelmed.

But somehow, in her terror, saying, "Let it be with me according to your word."

Willingness is all we ask of our students.

At our better moments, it's all we ask of ourselves.

It's all we really need.