That was Christmas

Goodbye to a Happy Christmas time and welcome New Year 2012 - love in your life and peace in the world.

Star of wonder. star of light........

Once again, the International Space Station provides a breath... on Twitpic

Once again, the International Space Station provides a breath... on Twitpic

Christmas shopping?

Struggled through the shops along with hundreds of other frazzled females and cross toddlers
only to find on exiting the Mall all the males of the species were outside having fun on the ice

-  I bet it beats shopping any day.

Christmas shopping

Memories

I heard this week of the death of a lady I knew when I was out at work. My last post was as House Manager in a private charity who had more than 100 flats in a beautiful area.  The flats were originally for people who had worked in the church all their lives and had no home to fall back on in their retirement and had never been paid enough money to save anything for their future but as the rules in the UK have changed during these past few years the flats now have to be made available to anyone.  However when I worked there the original rules applied and the comunity of people had held many and varied positions, mostly abroad and the retired doctors, nurses and nuns had worked in some very strange and barren places.  One lady found it difficult to sleep so I got into the habit of calling in to her flat for a cup of cocoa when on my last round of putting out lights and checking doors and windows.
She had married a clergyman when a very young girl and they went to work on Baffin Island in the snowy wastes of Canada long before we had any modern communications. It took a month for her letters to reach her parents in Devon.  Her husband made visits to his parishioners on a dog sleigh and she had many gory tales of when the new dogs arrived for training and would fight each other in a most viscious way until one emerged as leader of the pack.  Her first baby was born on the sleigh as her husband raced her over the frozen lake to the nearest settlement; her son came early and suffered a slight brain damage.  One night I met her youngest grandson who was on a visit and told him that his granny and I had many long talks in the night - 'what on earth do you find to talk about with her?' he said 'she's led a very quiet life.'    I would like to bet there will come a time in that young man's life when he wishes he had talked to his granny and heard the fascinating stories of his grandparents life before they reached their old age and became invisible to the young.
RIP Rosina - THANKS FOR YOUR MEMORIES. 

wonderfull sense of humour

I love this - it appeared in the paper after yet another long and boring debate in synod.

St Nicholas

This lovely picture is of St Nicholas (whose Feast Day it is on the 6th December) and is in 12th century glass in York Minster.  Nicholas or Nikolaos of Myra (in modern day Turkey) is credited with whole thing of giving gifts at Christmastime because of his reputation of gift giving:  we are told he would put coins in the shoes of those children who put them out for him and thus became the model of Santa Claus (Sinterklass).   What would he think of these days when he had to provide Xbox - laptops - mobiles for the local children?
I like to think he would be up for it.

St Nicholas

Canterbury

Sometimes I think that in the United Kingdom we live in our history and the present is not as important to us as it should be
but there are times when we get it just right. A few weeks ago we were with friends in Kent and spent a day in Canterbury -
and there in this most mind blowing of ancient cathedrals we saw this very simple shrine to Thomas a Becket one time Archbishop
of Canterbury who was murdered in the cathedral in December 1170. The building is vast and very lovely with elaborate memorials to
people who have served the church over the past thousand years or more and there in the midst of all the splendour is
a simple candle forever lit and the word THOMAS - placed on the spot where he lay dying.
It is very moving and perhaps the simple way many of us would want to be remembered by the people who love us -
perhaps not for more than 800 years though.