OK, so today starts with a confession - on my walk nothing really caught me eye, and I was almost home without a photo. However these pink signs that have recently been added to litter bins always make me smile, if only because they are faintly ridiculous. "People make Glasgow cleaner" implies that without people it'd be dirtier - which patently isn't true, because it's the people who drop the litter we are gently being told to put in the bin.
Am I permitted to admit that nine years ago I was horrified by the levels of litter I saw in Glasgow? We have certainly come a long way since then, and people are working to make the city a cleaner place.
Advent as a time of 'cleaning' or 'cleansing' then... identifying and disposing of litter, the detritus of another year, literal or metaphorical, consigned to a bin. And perhaps a sense of ongoing cleansing too - the practice of binning stuff (poo or paper!) that otherwise spoils our everyday lives. For me it's an ongoing effort not to internalise 'rubbish': the negative thoughts, feelings and occasionally comments that so readily 'cling'.
Perhaps I'm back to Hebrews 12 again, and the injunction to rid ourselves of the sin (with the 'softer' definition of shortfalls and missed-marks) that clings.
Into the bin with negativity - a good sermon to self for a Monday!
