I find myself along with others caught up in quite absurd activity as ‘ the Christmas rush’ bears down. I discover that in this maddness I have no evenings free before Christmas and wonder how much of this is of my own making! An early flurry of sleet and the promise of snow for some tomorrow  took me back to my childhood and our open fire – filled with coal not wood as in this image. The heat and warmth and reassurance from a coal fire is one of those extraordinary experiences of life….my only essential requirement from a retirement house will be an open fire!

The fire somehow slowed things down – it transfixed its glow and helped those in the room to stop and wonder. Contemplation – the here and now – the nourishment that comes from Doing Nothing ( as Stephen Cottrell puts it in his book Do Nothing to Change your Life ). We all need to slow up and dig deeper – allow some time to wait and wonder – and see what emerges from this process.

RS Thomas expresses it in this way:

Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

and imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but it is the eternity that awaits you.

One of the things that older people teach me is the deep joy that can emerge out of this waiting and contemplation of the ordinary in everyday life. Its there if we will but stop and see and wonder.