Christmas Sparkle

Glitter - I love the effect -  particularly after dotting my artworks with glue and then sprinkling them with glittery fragments and holding them up to the light.  Glitter poster paints are almost as satisfying: as I add red and green to silver and gold.  It doesn't matter whether you are five or fifty-five; glitter is a good thing.

And this season's Christmas card manufacturers agree.  At the last count at least five or more friends and relations have sent us cards with glitter on the Nativity, glitter on snowmen, glitter on frozen trees.

Christmas Sparkle says the card from our Essex cousins. 

Sparkle makes things special.  Little girls love it.  Big girls searching for party-wear want it.

On Sunday evening, coming back from the carol service, I noticed the sparkle on the snow. 

Today, as I walked in my wellington boots to the post box I wondered if I would be able to see the glitter again.  Is it only in the dark, under street lights or moonlight that we are captivated by those icy crystals?  Should we switch off the electricity and find God once a year and that only by candlelight?

There they were.  All along the unbroken snow of the avenue, under clear midday skies were those scintillating temporary diamonds.  As long as the snow blankets the ground, white as wool, they will be there.  As long as the frost holds and the sun shines and you have a mind to look.

The final reading at the carol service is always the beginning of John's Gospel.  John writes about the one and only, the verifiable Light.  Why not have a mind to look?

Quiet Sunset

On winter days like these I draw the curtains at the front to see if the cars parked outside the flat are iced over.  I draw the curtains at the back to see if the sun is rising above the freezing fog.   The sun climbs the sky, afternoon comes, and I make a decision.  Walk down the hill and through the gate.  Out there the pavements were gritted and moist.  Here the grass is crisp underfoot, the old bins we use for waterbutts are still frozen over and the soil is beginning to crumble nicely under the impact of the frost.  It is cold to the touch, with miniature ice crystals.  No digging then.

Manure: nature's insulating blanket, weed-suppressing, worm-feeding, nutritious manure.  I unlock the shed and heave out the wheelbarrow.  Three or four trips and some light weeding and raking and the time has gone.

I cannot begin to describe a winter technicolour sunset.  I would have to be a painter render the luminescent oranges and reds that fill the sky, a poet to pile up the meteorological metaphor.

But I can tell you what a quiet sunset feels like, as the birds fall silent. The earth turns.  By degrees, the invisible sun begins its descent behind the clouds.  You feel the motion.  A light wind springs up, a small chill wind and it is time to turn for home.

Wordsearch

Did your teacher ever try to improve your spelling by playing about with words, setting you to split words to make new ones?  Find one animal in rational, two animals in battalion, and something you can eat in belfries.  Now give me a sentence about a rat, a bat, a lion and a portion of chips (for British readers). You may also like to rise to the challenge of the entire words, if you so wish... 

Emailing a friend, as new bloggers do, I looked at my title and saw it.  It was a kind of nudge, a jog to the elbow if you like, that underneath all the jokes, wordplay, bargains and bric-a-brac, allusions and alliteration - parsley, sage, (it didn't do very well on our plot), rosemary and thyme (seem to be surviving so far in sub-zero conditions); there is a hidden word.  Put your hand up if you find it.  Now give me a sentence, look, I'll start it for you:

"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."