Today we're celebrating orange, but I had to post this photo of my first snowdrop of the year, opening on this warm January day (54 degrees today).

So here are some oranges, to brighten up a dreary winter day, even if it is a warm one.

October seems to be the month for orange -- and one last one that begins to shade into yellow.

We've been having bipolar weather around here -- snow for a day or two and then temperatures rising and acting like spring -- but, no, there aren't strawberries at the farmer's market already.

I'm still pondering some of the pieces in my last entry, especially Goethe's claim that colors are the deeds and suffering of light. If they are, let's rejoice in them. And doing a week's rainbow of color seems an appropriate way to celebrate them.

So here are some photos from the archives, with the glory of red.

I've been listening to a podcast of one of Krista Tippett's On Being broadcasts, an interview with Arthur Zajonc. He's a professor of physics at Amherst College, a long time meditator/contemplative, and was diagnosed with Parkinson's a year ago. He had some interesting observations on how the latter two interact, but the pieces I wanted to pick up here are some of his observations on light and color.

He quotes Goethe, who in addition to being a poet and a standard name in German literature classes, was also a scientist who explained his interest in studying the nature of light through accurately observing color with this poetic line: Colors are the deeds of light; its deeds and sufferings: this considered we may expect from them some explanation respecting light itself.

Zajonc adds that we learn about light and darkness -- that "through studying the action of light in darkness, and darkness in light, we come to sense the "deeds and suffering" that are color". I'm quoting from a page or two I found on the web, from his book Cacthing the Light: the entwined history of light and mind, which looks like an interesting one to explore further.

He also talks about light and shadow -- that light is only visible when it falls on an object. We don't see light as such, just the effect when it lights up the objects around us. Seems like there could be some interesting connections to be thinking about as I take photos of light and shadow and color.

Today's photos are some of the ways light and shadow were interacting around the house this afternoon.

My schedule today was such that I wasn't able to head out with a camera -- and it was a dreary, gray day anyway. So I've just been trolling through the archives, to see what caught my eye.

The result is a few friendly and not so friendly faces, that still make me chuckle. Being easily amused keeps life interesting.

I saw a fascinating sunrise this morning. When I came out of the Rec-Fitness Center, the sun had just risen and thanks to a hazy cloud screen, I could see it perched there like a fat, red ball.

When I got over to the parking lot behind the physical plant, my view of the sun was blocked by the Music Center, but there was a white halo making a half-circle around the sun. It reminded me of days when you see sundogs off to either side, but if there were sundogs today, they were hidden by the trees. Instead, there was a bright beam extending vertically, and a bright crown at the apex of the circular halo.

It was less visible by the time I returned with the camera, and my photographic skills weren't up to capturing the sight as adequately as I'd like -- it was full day and much brighter than the photo above appears to be, but this allows you a better view of the halo and crown than some of my other attempts.

From checking out "sun dogs" on that fount of knowledge, Wikipedia, I'm guessing that this is an upper tangent arc, formed by the same sort of hexagonal ice crystals that create sun dogs, but seen when the sun is low. The site says that such arcs are relatively common, but seldom noticed because they are high overhead.

Sounds like a mini-parable right there.

You can see an illustration of tangent arcs at this atmospheric optics site.

_In The Wild Places, Robert MacFarlane explores a variety of landscapes in the British Isles, with an understanding of "wild place" that enlarges from "somewhere remote, historyless, unmarked" to include another kind of wildness, "the wildness of natural life, the sheer force of ongoing organic experience, vigorous and chaotic. This wildness was not about asperity, but about luxuriance, vitality, fun." It's a wildness that he encounters in the city fringe as well as in high remote mountains.

At one point he muses on the inner maps we carry, the record of our own encounters with creation, the landscapes small or large that have given us "happiness, and the emotions that go by the collective noun of 'happiness': hope, joy, wonder, grace, tranquility and others."

"Or fleeting experiences, transitory, but still site-specific: a sparrowhawk sculling low over a garden or street, or the fall of evening light on a stone, or a pigeon feather caught on a strand of spider's silk, and twirling in mid-air like a magic trick. Daily, people were brought to sudden states of awe by encounters such as these: encounters whose power to move us was beyond expression but also beyond denial."   Macfarlane, p 236.

At Faith House Fellowship last night, we combined this idea of inner maps of special places with Celtic Christianity's perception of the gift of creation as essentially a self-giving of God,a "showing" that reveals something of the One who is the essence of life. We shared memories of some of the places that have provided moments of encounter, awe, and happiness for us.

Some of us looked back to beloved childhood spots, others to our current maps, or to bright memories from this past year. These are good memories to bring back from time to time, to finger like prayer beads. I've scattered some of my memories from the past year through this entry -- what is on your inner map?

I'm looking through the Creation section of the hymnal this evening, getting ready for worship at Faith House Fellowship tomorrow, and the first verse of All Beautiful the March of Days could have been written for today:
    All beautiful the march of days,
                                as seasons come and go.
    The hand that shaped the rose hath wrought
                                 the crystal of the snow,
    hath sent the hoary frost of heav'n,
                                the flowing waters sealed,
    and laid a silent loveliness on hill and wood and field.

My eye was caught by snow sparkles and shadow, before I scurried back inside to wrap up in a warm afghan.

I've been reading The Wild Places, by Robert MacFarlane, partly in honor of this month's emphasis on earthcare at church, but mostly because it looked interesting. In beautifully evocative prose, he describes his search for wild places in the United Kingdom, taking us through stories of history and landscape.

One of his first chapters is "Island" which tells of his visit to Ynys Enlli, an island off the coast of the Lleyn Peninsula, one of the remote places where Celtic monks took up residence. I like the glimpse he gives us into the life of the monks:

Much of what we know of the life of the monks of Enlli and places like it, is inferred from the rich literature which they left behind. Their poems speak eloquently of a passionate and precise relationship with nature, and of the blend of receptivity and detachment which characterized their interactions with it. Some of the poems read like jotted lists, or field notes: 'Swarms of bees, beetles, soft music of the world, a gentle humming; brent geese, barnacle geese, shortly before All Hallows, music of the dark wild torrent.' Others record single charmed instants: a blackbird calling from a gorse branch near Belfast Loch, foxes at play in a glade. Marban, a ninth-century hermit who lived in a hut in a fir-grove near Druim Rolach, wrote of the 'wind's voice against a branchy wood on a day of grey cloud.' A nameless monk, responsible for drystone walling on the island of North Rona in the ninth century, stopped his work to write a poem that spoke of the delight he felt at standing on a 'clear headland', looking over the 'smooth strand' to the 'calm sea', and hearing the calls of 'the wondrous birds'. A tenth-century copyist, working in an island monastery, paused long enough to scribble a note in Gaelic beside his Latin text. "Pleasant to me is the glittering of the sun today upon these margins.'

A man after my own heart,  that tenth-century monk.

We were back to clouds and snow today, after yesterday's clear sunshine. The sun hadn't come up yet when I went over to the Rec-Fitness Center this morning. For being dark, it was quite light, with snow coming down steadily and holding the light from the campus lighting system. On the ground, the snow shimmered with a zillion shining sparkles, like a cloak of glittering sequins covering the sidewalk and grass. Though that's backwards -- the glittering sequins are like the glistening snow, which has the longer pedigree.

The sparkles twinkled more rapidly as I looked down at my feet, and more slowly further away. And there were still a few random twinkles even when I moved through shadow. Snow catching the ambient light, I assume -- though when I came home again, day had arrived, and the snow was as dull as the clouds overhead. I'll have to ask one of my physicist friends or relations about that one.

A day of sunshine and cold temps here and Goshen, and icicles outside our front window to prove it.

A few more photos from the Kansas trip, taken at the City Market. My eye was caught by pattern, light and shadow.

Fourteen hours on the road yesterday, traveling home from Kansas. There were many moments of light, like this sunrise soon after we started, and the sun-brightened fog that filled dips in the landscape.

Others were harder to catch with a photo, especially from a speeding car -- stark bare branches in a glowing fog, the bright breasts of raptors perched on fence posts beside the road, a herd of maybe a hundred deer drifting through a bare woods and across a stubbled field (fortunately, quite a distance from the highway).

Temperatures here were way down over the weekend, and back up into the 50's today. I discovered my snowdrops are up and showing a bit of white -- and by late afternoon, they were also surrounded by white. They should be fine, though -- they are called snowdrops for good reason!

Many moments of light this weekend, but less time to turn them into blog entries. On Friday, I traveled with two friends out to Kansas for our 18th annual Joy Luck Club gathering. We met our friend, Christina, in Kansas City, Missouri, after traveling ten hours from Goshen, played some mah jongg in our hotel room and did some sight-seeing the next day before driving on to her home in Salina.

It was snowing when we left Goshen, and we saw a couple remnants of accidents on the road near Chicago, so it was a relief to arrive safely. And traveling through Missouri, the combination of colors created by the late afternoon sunshine and golden dried grasses, brown branches, white snow, blue sky and blue shadows lifted my spirits.

Saturday we spent some time in the contemporary art museum in Kansas City. I liked the glass sculpture by Chiluly and its shadows.

And from a little farther away, I was intrigued by the way the artwork reflected in the floor.

And this photo by Michael Schultz was a spark of light -- it's a photo of a decaying ammonia factory in Belgium,with green moss and ferns growing on the floor. I also like his quote above, which you may not be able to read: I believe the camera can produce an image that. . . enters a realm of heightened reality.  It struck me as fitting well with what I'm doing with this blog.

"Sparks of light" is a very visual phrase. I've been wondering what the equivalent would be for the other senses, prompted in part by the strong clean scent of pine that came from this pile of recently cut wood, a very definite olfactory spark of light.

Whiff of fragrance, perhaps. Chords from the music of the spheres. Sounds of silence. Tang of....what? And for touch I'm not even coming up with a feeble attempt.

Inspired by the whiff of pine fragrance, today's photos are of scents, so you'll have to use your imagination.

This breakfast grapefruit manages to include some sparks of light as well.

Without the scent, this one may be harder to identify -- a bowl of dried lavender buds and wave-smoothed beach glass.

Dutch apple pie -- apple and cinnamon and butter and sugar scents.

And having posted these, I'm amused that there seems to be a strong circular theme, as well as the fragrance theme.

I looked out my study window today and saw some suspiciously spring-green tips. Closer inspection revealed that, yes, some of my daffodils are feeling the siren call of the 40 degree weather we've been having.

A tour of the yard revealed that while most things are still safely hibernating, there is at least one early bloomer in the bunch.

The winter storm watch the weather station has declared for tomorrow may come as a bit of a shock. Fortunately, these plants are adapted to the vagaries of the winter and spring dance, and even though it doesn't usually begin already in January, they'll cope. Those bursting buds will just need to wait a little longer.

It was a lovely, sunny day, but due to my schedule there was only a brief time in the late afternoon when I could get out to look for sparks of light.

I decided to give myself the challenge of seeing what I could find in the blocks just north of here, where 10th Street runs past a couple factories and the alley runs past parking lots and dilapidated back yards. Not the most scenic area, as you can see above.

Still, there were things that caught my eye, like the landing of the small bird on the leftmost wire - something about the bird blithely making itself at home amidst the complexities of the wires tickles my fancy.
    All God's children got a place in the choir,
    some sing low, and some sing higher,
    some sing out loud on the telephone wire. . .
    (hear a clip of Bill Staines performing the full song)

And there were the lines and the light on this stump.

An acquaintance came biking past as I took this photo and asked if there was something special I was photographing. "No, I just liked the red ribbons," I told her, and then as she biked away, felt like I should be explaining that it was something about the festive air of the bows decorating a gray fence on the edge of a bland parking lot, not that I'm especially attracted to red plastic bows. But ah, well. Sparks of light came in many forms.

I do seem to be drawn to shades of red, whether in the near ground-level berries in the photo above or in this towering, glowing bittersweet vine, or the closeup from the same vine below.

Epiphany was January 6, but I'm still pondering it and probably will continue to do so, because watching for sparks of light is an Epiphany practice.

In a short reflection piece for Alive Now! called "Looking for Christ in the Boring," Sarah Parsons gives the short version of one of her "ordinary, boring days" and then retells it, with an eye for the Christ moments she encountered.

She writes: These Christ-sightings are an Epiphany message for me. Christmas says Christ is here, born into the world. Epiphany says it's up to us to find him, and it may not be easy. We may have to walk a long road, follow strange guidance, and encounter Herod-like dangers. . .When I expect Christ to enter my day with lots of fanfare and, at the end of the day, bemoan that 'nothing happened,' I wonder if I am getting Christ wrong somehow. Christ originally entered the world in pretty ordinary human style, even more humbly than most humans do."

Our invitation is to stay awake, pay attention, notice the ways that God is present in the place where we are, in all its ordinariness.

In what started out as a gray Indiana day, my attention was caught by the changes in the sky, from the midday sun beginning to break through the clouds in the picture above, making me think of a dark-winged angel, to the blue skies and fleecy skies of the later afternoon, catching the light of the setting sun.

There were other moments of light as well, of encounter and relationship, but those are not always mine to share. Read Sarah's full article for her examples of ways she encountered the light of Christ in her boring day, once she opened her eyes to look.

I took my walk by the dam in the middle of yesterday's warm, sunshiny day, and took delight in finding dried leaf sculptures, and other chance compositions. Here are a few.

The Twelfth day of Christmas arrived with swathes of gauzy, pink clouds strewn across the pale blue sky, as though dawn were preparing for the arrival of twins, male and female.

Today is the Feast of Epiphany, from the Greek word epiphaneia, meaning to appear. Related words are epiphaino - to give light, to illuminate-- and epephanen, to be revealed. A very fitting day for searching for sparks of light.

For the Eastern Orthodox, Epiphany is also known as the Festival of Lights, because believers would bring many candles to celebrate the baptism services held that day.

The Western Church celebrates Three Kings Day, and the arrival of the magi, the wise men from the east, bringing gifts and paying homage to the infant Jesus.

The afternoon sunshine came streaming in our south living room window, bounced off the shiny library book on the coffee table, and created some intriguing light and shadow play with my pewter nativity scene.

And the glory shone all around....

Sunset arrived as I began work on this entry, and the pink swathes returned.

I've been enjoying the sunshine streaming down the last couple days, though due to other commitments and the challenges of taking photos when the temperature is below freezing, I haven't been able to explore sun on snow as much as I would have liked.

At least my spirits can be lifted by the sight of sun and snow from inside the house -- though the snow has been melting since this photo, as the temperatures climb into the 40's.

Given that we are still in Christmastime, this 11th day of Christmas, I've been enjoying the way the sunshine brought out these traditional Christmas-y colors.

And a different sort of spark of light --
On JRR Tolkien's birthday, January 3rd, Garrison Keillor included this story about him on his daily Writers' Almanac. Tolkien was a professor of English Literature at Oxford, and one day when he was grading exams, he found that a student had left blank an entire page of the exam booklet. In that empty space, Tolkien scribbled the sentence "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." He went on to develop that into a story he told his children and, eventually, his book The Hobbit.

I'm enchanted by this snippet. What if there hadn't been a blank page just then? What if Tolkien hadn't let his diligent prof-grading-exam identity drift away? What unsuspected delights might come popping out for us, if we find a little time and space in the midst of our everyday duties, and let our creative selves playfully scribble a mysterious sentence, a joyful doodle, a half-heard tune?

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with a group of friends for an annual New Year's journaling session. We each have a list of questions drawn from Elizabeth O'Connor's Letters to Scattered Pilgrims, and we settle down with our journal or laptop and work our way through them, reflecting on the year through a variety of lenses: high points, significant people, significant books or movies or pieces of art, new discoveries about yourself, regrets and learnings, dreams, themes, ways you were gift to someone else, and so on.

We take about an hour and a half looking back over the past year, take a snack break and do some sharing, and then move on to a second section, looking ahead to the coming year.

One of my highlights last January was a trip to Japan as part of an Amish and Mennonite quilting exhibition for the Tokyo Quilt Festival. Yesterday, getting ready for the journal session, I spent time looking at photos of the trip. I thought I'd post a few memories, sparks of light from last January.