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30
Jan
2023
Thursday January 5, 2022
So here we are – 12th Night, 2023, the end of the fabled Twelve Days of Christmas.
Originally, 12th Night referred to the arrival of the Three Wise Men – although the Bible never says there were three – from the East.
My mother’s British traditions considered it bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up after 12th Night. In an eruption of winter energy, we took down all the tinsel and tinkles, the glass balls and nativity scenes, and packed them away for the next Christmas.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Incarnation, 12th night
Sunday January 1, 2023
So here we are -- New Year’s Day, 2023. It’s tempting to make guesses about what will, or will not, happen during this coming yea. Will gene-splicing enable medical science to create killer T-cells that attack only individual cancers? Will nuclear fusion – using unimaginable power to create unimaginable power – finally put the fossil-fuel industry out of business?
Will meteorologists find a way to keep polar vortexes where they belong, hovering over the high Arctic like a frigid skullcap?
It’s tempting to speculate, but useless. Because I don’t expect to be around long enough to say. “I told you so!”
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: New Year, Resolutions, Bucket list
Thursday Dec. 29, 2022
The waxwings are back! They swirl in the air by their hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- dense clouds of feathered wings beating the air into froth.
As far as I can tell, waxwings do not have a leader giving orders. No individual waxwing says, “Okay, all of you, we’re going to go strip Jim Taylor’s tree of its berries.” They simply arrive. And then, for no apparent reason, they leave. All of them, all at once. They whoosh off, perform a variety of aerobatic manoeuvres. The cloud of birds inverts itself, reverses itself, spins upside down and sideways, emulates a Mobius strip, and returns to my tree for dessert.
Tags: leadership, Waxwings, berries