Today's choice is an old photo. Which I am setting alongside this one which is just a few days old...

The hat is the same in each photo, but they are separated by almost eight years.

It is a 'thing' that I now see every new Christmas as a very precious gift, something I would not have dared dream of eight years ago.  In those eight years I have made so many friends that otherwise I'd never have met - together we have laughed and loved and lost.

Each year, at some point I take a moment to reflect, just before the full-on festive fun begins. To remember how terrified I once was.  To recall the names of (far too many) absent friends. To realise how fortunate I am.

Advent/Christmas as a gift of remembrance... seems somehow right to me.

Today, let's start with some music!

Gud Jul! Solstice Blessings!

Today's reflection centres on the concept of the solstice, which I had ever realised literally means "sun stands still" 

Of course the sun doesn't stand still, and it's the earth's movement that creates this effect but...

That moment, however fleeting, when movement pauses or stops before it (effectively) reverses... that infinitessismal change that changes everything.

BC - AD... before-after... paradigm shift or a continuum...

Tis mystery all, but it happens, twice yearly, that the movements of earth and sun combine to change the seasons.

Tis mystery all, God enters creation in the form of a child...

The book offers this prayer for today:

Warmth of all warmth, comfort of all comfort, be with me this day.  I would share your warmth with others, and be to the other that which the great other is to me.

Let not the darkbness overcome us, but let the light shine from within to illuminate that which is darkness.

As the darkness stretches its long hand over this land, let your Light shne forth from within your people, that none would be left in darkness, but that isntead we will liove in the hope of the coming Light.

Great Light, be my guide.  Hold me fast in this present darkness that I may be the fire on a hilltop in this dark time. Burn within me now and ever more.