Midwinter Light

Winter solstice -- last night was the longest night, so we're beginning the slow climb of gradually longer days and the sun's return, and this sun on my sister's porch, with its messages of believe, relax, life, warmth, grow, plant, breathe, daydream, love, feel, create, and laugh seems like a good way to celebrate.

I went out midday in search of glory. In The Book of Creation, Philip Newell quotes George MacLeod as saying in one of his prayers, "Show to us the glory in the grey." He describes this as looking for the light of God in the most ordinary, and even dullest, of contexts. I decided that an overcast northern Indiana winter day, without snow, qualified.

And this water retention area on the edge of campus, with the industrial park in the background, full of dead and dry plants, seemed like a prime candidate for the ordinary in the midst of everyday life.

And there were intriguing shapes and bursts of light, in the midst of the grey and papery brown.

And even in the midst of dried stems and grasses, there was new life and color, growing greenly on a south-facing slope.

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