Late Snow at Riverwood, by Bob Timberlake




THE BLESSINGS OF ORDINARY TIME

I am looking forward to getting back to it again, and I'm always surprised each year that it is so. After all, dreams of Christmas often dance, like the proverbial sugarplums, in my head on those impossibly hot, humid days we get down south, or when things just seem too dull and dreary to endure another mundane moment. These little flights of fancy often get me through, but there comes a time each year in early January, when I know that its time to let go and sweep it all away. A time to sit in the cold sunrise of a winter morning and let the house just be a bit bare, like an unvarnished piece of truth.

Truth, like Ordinary Time, is often avoided, feared even, but is oh, so necessary to living a healthy life. For example, when you take a deep breath and allow yourself to see a person as they really are instead of through the sugary confection of what you had hoped they are, or would at least become, you can actually find peace and/or change things on your end. It's like playing cards; you must play with all the skill you have to win with the cards that are actually in your hand, the cards you have been dealt. You wouldn't think of fixating on the cards you would like to have received, not if you hope to win, and not if you do not wish to get thrown out of the game.

So it is, with accepting reality, and with making the most of the blank days of January. Take this time to clean the house, declutter the closets, eat some plain food, and take off those sugarplum eye glasses.