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Every year when there's snow I enjoy the snow covered coffee table – it has about 9 inches of snow on top. I wanted to lift it into the living room snow and all, and sit there with a coffee while my photo was taken. This was not seen as a good idea and was not countenanced by the House Management. Pity. Might still do it if I'm in by myself. Anyway I rejoice in gently fallen snow that settles in carefully considered peacefulness, an accumulation of crystals of unique specificity, acting together in an informal architecture that is beautiful to contemplate.

I mean contemplate. I've sat looking at the snow several times this week when I've been home, letting its peacefulness slowly penetrate a mind at times like a mental tumble drier, allowing the cold to penetrate and heighten awareness of heartbeat and rhythm, grateful for the dazzle of reflected sunlight, and gazing at the soft edged shapes that invite touch, but which I refuse to spoil by doing so. 

The spirituality of snow would be a good title for a thin book exploring the theological significance of snow – miraculously maintained snow flake uniqueness yet transience; accumulated whiteness that dazzles to make us see; covering a multitude of sins yet also giving new shape to the landscape; and the capacity of snow to contain in crystallised geometry the water of life. And the latent opportunities for fun, snowballs, snowpeople (snowman is gender exclusive), sledging and skiing and snowboarding.

Such a book might be entitled after Job 38:22  "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow". By the way that verse provided the title idea of Elizabeth Goudge's autobiograpy "The Joy of the Snow". It is a strange, beautifully writtten, gently interrogative account of her upbringing and writing career. 

The photo below was taken of Smudge enjoying apres-ski hospitality.

The time-changing revelation of God’s love comes to us not in the form
of a doctrinal missive, but as the Incarnate Word, expressed not as an
inanimate form or lifeless concept, but as a living, breathing speaking,
acting, feeling, thinking person.  The only way to comprehend this
subject is from the perspective of encounter – to behold the glory of
the flesh-becoming Word, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

Judith A Diehl, Review of Paul Anderson, The Riddles of the Fourth Gospel, (Fortress, 2012).

I know. I cheated. TGwo sentences. But Diehl's point is too important to truncate it.

Life is a pilgrimage of learning,

     a voyage of discovery,

          in which our
mistaken views are corrected,

               our distorted notions adjusted,

                    our
shallow opinions deepened

                         and some of our vast ignorances diminished.

John Stott, Mission in the Modern World.

                                                            H W Longfellow

( The photo taken on Tuesday morning around noon – the forecast was for sunshine!)

Whom God loves He loves to the end;

and not only to their own end, to
their death, but to his end;

and His end is, that He might love them
still.

John Donne.

Before all greatness,

           be silent—

                      in art,

                             in music,

                                   in religion:

                                                    ………..silence.”

Baron Friedrich Von Hugel, Letters to a Niece.

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”

Mary Oliver, Evidence. Poems 

I did this once before.

To try to say each day, in one sentence, something worth saying, reading, hearing.

This time with something worth looking at as well.

The photo was taken 3 miles from our house, looking over Loch Skene. on a sunny day – yes we do get them, now and again…..

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other,

                     but in looking outward together in the same direction."

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince).