Wonder in the winter

A friend in Manchester put this picture on her Facebook page, with a comment beneath it:

I love the picture, which Marijke tells me she didn't take, but I'm giving her the credit for putting it together with the words. I think it's like a modern-day Pieter Brueghel the younger. The words she's put beneath are, “God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men. Yet, they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecclesiastes 3)


It's good to reminded that the snow IS beautiful. Even the non-collection of the recycling boxes in the close outside provides convenient dodging points for the snow-ball fights which are our equivalent of Amsterdam's canal skating! Shame about the utilitarian gritting that took place at midday, creating the dirty pink brown slush - which I'm sure is safer to drive on, but not a patch on the original to look at. 


I won't be able to watch episode 2 of the BBC's Nativity tonight, as it's the time when all our neighbours come round for mince pies and mulled wine. It's a good feeling that we know twice as well as we did last year. I guess it was kindness and politeness that brought them last a year ago; now it feels like friendship. I'm hoping it will be a merry time! (I can smell the mulled wine in the making now!)


Meanwhile Nativity will be recording and we can watch it later. Episode 1 lived up to my hopes pretty well. The characters are beginning to come alive and the political background is being built up. It's not being made over-gritty or over-pretty. You can sense there's a blow-up coming between Joseph and Mary. And we also want to find out how the young shepherd and his sick wife fare under pressure from Herod's tax-extortioner.... It's fleshing out as a human story, a story of "poor ornery people, like you and like I". I wonder! 

Snow Sunday

The Christmas tree is now up in the conservatory - where it looks very picturesque, I must say, surrounded by the snow-covered garden. I hope that people in the street can see it through the living room. The snow is lying deep and crisp and even round here, which means I can't get out and about very easily. A friend of mine emailed this week: "Let it snow...", that song should be banned! I don't quite agree. I know some members of my family who'd like a bit more.... But I can see her point! Perhaps it's an age thing.

Anyway, it was good this morning receiving a phone call from Charles and Mandy, who'd been unable to get to church by car and wondered whether we'd like to "break bread" with them. Great! So they walked over and we celebrated the 4th Sunday of Advent together. I have to say it was among the best "church" services I can remember. I'm really grateful, and was reminded that this was the model of church life in the New Testament. A lot of people seem to struggle with institutional church, including me. Maybe instead of big meetings in big buildings, friends meeting and sharing their lives and faith (and doubts) together is a more "two or three" way of being church. Maybe this is the way forward that I heard about last summer.

Nature notes

The snow and freezing weather have forced birds to leave their comfort zones.  This morning a red kite headed straight for our bedroom window and swerved over our roof, presumably on the look-out for some bits of carrion.  I'm afraid s/he would be disappointed in the estate.  People tend not to leave half-eaten fish and chips around.  And as I sit here this afternoon a flock of redwings and fieldfares have taken up residence in the silver birch behind the dogs in the previous picture.  Jane had seen them in the fields when walking during the week, but this is the first time I've seen them here.  Quite what brings them here I'm not sure, unless our neighbours have rowan or some shrubs with berries - but I'd have thought they'd have stripped them by now.  (Below is Archibald Thorburn's lithograph with a fieldfare at the top and redwing below.  I think this used to be in my first bird book, The Observer's Book of Birds.)

Meanwhile in our garden as well as our regular blackbirds, collar doves and sparrows we're being visited by a robin (Might it be Romeo back?), some goldfinches, a great tit exploring the nesting box (A bit early?) and for the first time a blackcap.  For a few days Jane broke the ice in the pond so that they could get to the water to drink.  Now she's taken to putting water out for them, so that goldfish can survive under the ice.


I have mixed feelings about the snow.  It certainly transforms the landscape and is incredibly beautiful.  On Friday morning I was looking at the sun catching the crystals making them glisten with a bluish light and reflecting on the amazing fact that each flake is unique and a different shape from all the others.  A bit different from our mass production!  I wondered why.  I remember a philosophy lecture I heard in Cambridge from the brilliant Professor MacKinnon in which he talked about 'the infinite variety of creation'.  I seem to remember there's a word for it in Greek for which we don't have an exact equivalent, poikilos (ποικίλος).  We should be singing the ancient poem, known as the Song of the Three Holy Children, or the Benedicite:
'O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord: 
O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord:
O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord:
O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord: / praise him, and magnify him for ever.'  And then there's the enormous fun that children (and adults) have in it.  So in one way I'll be sorry when it melts.  


But Jean, our MNDA group coordinator, was right too when she wrote to me: 'It has been lovely to look out on such a wonderful scene and I am grateful I haven’t had to try venturing forth, with the family taking that on. I did miss being able to go tobogganing with my student children, but they would probably say I’d be a liability whether with MND or not!! I do feel for those who live alone. It must be so difficult, trying to manage and, if carers can’t get in, the situation could become quite serious.'


Which I think puts in perspective the rather peevish interview by Sarah Montague with Hilary Benn on the Today Programme last week.  Rather unreasonably, I thought, she was berating him in the rather aggressive way she has for not foreseeing the severity of the winter and there not being enough salt and grit for the roads - and businesses were losing money etc etc.  She sometimes reminds me of Mark Antony's wife, 'shrill tongued Fulvia', when she's trying to do a Humphrys.