Winter draws away?

[Winter draws on was an awful Edwardian pun, innocently enjoyed by my grandmother] [= 'Drawers' a now-unused name for underwear].
Rain came with its heavy sound - pounding on the snowy ground, the roof, the road - washing away the residues of grit and salt, no doubt to poison the grass and the creatures dipping into puddles for a drink.

The spatulate fingers of neighbouring trees appear a warmer shade of brown in the sunshine. Every plumped up bird sheltering from the cold in an uncomfortable proximity along the branches has flown elsewhere.
All our previously-rejected offerings on the new bird-table look pretty forlorn and unappetising - but the little black dog sniffs hopefully around the base: how deep the instinct to scavenge goes!

Endless pps emails arrive from the heated summer of Oz and NZ, of densely snowed-in vehicles in Canada/Scandinavia - which seems slightly like coals-to-Newcastle in the circumstances, but may help them to feel cool, or superior!

Epiphany

Snow Sunday! Roads into the village are clear one way though not further: much phoning and the wonders of e-communication have allowed Services to be re-negotiated. So instead of my heading over the hills and across a field, for Christingle, and even further along dark, high-banked lanes to a more remote church for Evensong, they've had their Service sheets by email [they already had the hymns]. Up and down the valley, clergy have swapped services to avoid travelling too far, and encouraged Church Wardens to lead the services wherever possible.

In this village, with people from a different, cancelled service, we spoke of the Wise Men, of the different forms they have taken over the centuries - through imagination, art, poetry - to represent 'all' Gentiles. The original [Matthew 2:1-12] tells so little, only that wise men came from the East and bore 3 gifts - we have clothed them in majesty, given them names, reduced them to 3 Kings, and placed them firmly on camels.

What they saw, in the end, cannot have been what they were expecting. They were tracking a King: so they looked for him in a palace, and brought symbolic presents that must have looked singularly out of place to Mary and Joseph, and the child Jesus - although part of me likes to believe that ‘symbols’ have many different values, practical as well as representative, and perhaps each gift helped the little family to survive in their flight, and exile in Egypt.

Not for the Magi the direct visitation of the angels, with clear instructions on how to find the baby: that is reserved for the shepherds. The wise men follow the bright, enigmatic star, using their intelligence to plot its path, making assumptions in their visit to Herod - and with what fatal consequences.

They came to search for Jesus, representing all of us Gentiles - everyone [which is to say, Greeks and Turks, Serbs and Albanians, Tutsi and Hutu, Israeli & Palestinians] together with the Jews -- what is now, in the 21st century, a multi-national church of God. BIG questions for the start of the new decade: essentially involving church with open doors? or closed.. what nature of welcome can we bring to this melting pot; and at the bottom of it all, are we gift-bearers or gift-receivers - or both (which changes everything).

and the snow came [finally]

After all the weeks of other people's snow, we have our own... during the night the transformation that returns us [all?] to a childhood delight, happened here.
Gone are the ice-filled puddles where the tractor enters the field, gone the crimped ridges of frozen mud along the road-edge - everything is smooth and newly white.

Too late to have misgivings about plants in the garden (could I have wrapped them better against the cold) they are out of sight - small lumps in a mystery of shapes.
Looking at the sky, full of light and distant dove-grey, it isn't hard to believe this fine rattle of snowflakes will not persist - but immediately a fountain of snow rushes past the window in a draft...

The gritter - not being in such demand here as in snowier counties - has cleared selectively, and there's a chance of reaching the next village for bread and milk (which were sold out yesterday).

The small black dog thinks less well of this novelty: we huddle briefly into the cold wind, but no interesting smells persist in such cold.
...and no birds sing.

the coldest time of winter...

I've been finding some readings for the Christingle service next Sunday, and discovered one by Laurie Lee, which will accompany T S Eliot's 'The Coming of the Magi' with us singing 'In the Bleak mid-winter' to separate the two. The weather forecast is snow for the whole south... strange to think that 6 years ago, when we were in Scotland, that inundation of snow was normal, and so was laying in food against being cut off...

The two poems capture so much more than word alone... as poetry always does.

The Journey of the Magi T S Eliot

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Twelfth Night by Laurie Lee

No night could be darker than this night,

no cold so cold,
as the blood snaps like a wire,
and the heart’s sap stills,
and the year seems defeated.

o never again, it seems, can green things run,
or sky birds fly,
or the grass exhale its humming breath
powdered with pimpernels,
from this dark lung of winter.

Yet here are lessons for the final mile

of pilgrim kings;
the mile still left when all have reached
their tether’s end: that mile
where the Child lies hid.

For see, beneath the hand, the earth already warms and glows;
for men with shepherd’s eyes there are
signs in the dark, the turning stars,
the lamb’s returning time.

Out of this utter death

he’s born again,

his birth our saviour;
from terror’s equinox he climbs and grows,
drawing his finger’s light across our blood
the son of heaven, and the son of God.