Joyous heavens and cold winter

Advent Preparations

(click on thumbnails for larger view)


Loreena McKennitt- The King

The castle beckons

A season symbolizing hope and light.
I love advent season, the lighting of candles at the altar, the silent purity of falling snow, the music of Noel, sweet baby Jesus in the manger and the opening of the heavens.

Fairies courtesy of Raven, Tamra and little King Raine

They finally found Jack tucked away at the edge of the frozen crystal forest

 A winter night's dream

My heavenly mantel 

I've had this angel sitting on my mantel ever since my father died some years ago. It always reminds me of him as he so loved Christmas. His eyes would light up like a child's when he stood back from decorating the tree while the sounds of a Yuletide Pavarotti played.   Our house was never dull and on Christmas day it was aglow with a spirit of generosity and good cheer,  full of family and visiting friends and the smell of mom's great cooking.  May this angel and the baby Jesus hold in the light those who are loved and missed this Christmas, father and mother, grandparents, all-  and our  dear brother who made us beautiful stained glass birds one year and gave Dad a fish that sang "Take me to the River."

A Christmas Past
I'll be home for Christmas.. (if only in my dreams) A Tribute

Our house on the hill

With great sadness I heard that
our once lovely old home beside the University lands is no longer standing.  The neighbourhood has grown over the past 20 years and fell prey to rezoning. It is now upgraded and modernized into an upscale urban community, in other words in just a few short years, almost unrecognizable. One more lesson of the changeability of this life and to seize each moment fully as it is given us,  and  then also to be able to let it go. (the harder of the two)

A melody of yesterday remains playing in our hearts as mom waves a welcome to all through the frosty kitchen window and we with hearts of Noel are walking up the road to step through that front door again!!

"Yes, the news­pa­pers were right: snow was gen­eral all over Ire­land. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, fur­ther west­wards, softly falling into the dark muti­nous Shan­non waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely church­yard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and head­stones, on the spears of the lit­tle gate, on the bar­ren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the uni­verse and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the liv­ing and the dead."-  James Joyce "The Dead"


Dean lighting candles before the Grace- ten or more people would eventually sit down to dinner

 

Blessings on the dear old house and on us all and to those
                   still cherished and remembered in the book of life, we will
meet again

and now to embrace it all, joy and sadness together and go and make a proper cup of tea!! ( Pema Chodron)