"Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is known by multitude of words.
"When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God."
— Ecclesiastes 5
Bluster led the first days of an albescent December. By Christmas, an Alaskan shunt of wind and air helped lead warm, not cold, air into the Eastern United States. January was inordinately warm, resembling March more than the middle of winter. As if following the Gregorian calendar, temperatures have fallen with the arrival of February — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has noted the possibility for a cooling trend along the Eastern Seaboard. I will admit, for a man who prefers cold, wet and white, that these mild five weeks were as sparing of things manmade as those sired in creation — like the heart. Now winter may return in full, and we shall adjust, but as someone dear recently reminded me, often what shifts in regards to normalcy are our expectations of it.
Perfectly arranged for Saturday morning. Snow, J.S. Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium and coffee with cream — sent, respectively, from the heavens; Eisenach, Thuringia; and Indonesia.
It was a blessed Christmas.
It was a photogenic Christmas.
The one surely begot the other.
But one star and one earth, and the face of tomorrow is yet unknowable; muse, at first light, begun anew.
Old friends. Dear, old friends.
Snow began falling just after eleven o'clock last night.
Any guesses?
When warm southerly air drove through here on Sunday the low, grey panoply delivering snow last week shattered into a jumble of clouds thrust at every angle. The front gave us two days' reprieve from bundling up, some wind and some rain; its balmy remainder fodder for the chilly mass rolling in from behind.
There are two weeks on the calendar when travail is welcome, when bustle and burden are taken with good cheer. One week begins today and the other follows nearly thirty days hence.
