Greetings for 2015

Marking the New year 

is a little like drawing a line in the sand of the beach.

The great ocean of time washes over it

 and we realise it was

just a mark of our own making.

The moment of a New Year breaking

helps us take stock perhaps;

in truth every moment of life offers us new opportunities.

How great is that?!

http://stylipics.com/happy-new-year-2015

May You and Yours Know the Richest Blessings

 In the Year Ahead.

May Not the Least of These Be

 Laughter!

http://happynewyear2015wishesquotesmessagessmsimageswallpapers.com/

Send Out Your Light! - An Advent Cry

Light breaking through winter clouds by emmwah-d5kyskq

I have been attempting to keep as deep an interior silence as I can this Advent season, 

  so I have cut out as much unnecessary exterior "noise" as I can to help me

 in my waiting for the new light of Christ to break in on me.

Blogging and facebook were the first to go,

 driven by my longing to see more clearly,

and to make an inner space for the coming of the light.

 Well more accurately my longing is
 to be ignited by a greater light of compassion and love.

Of course what has happened has been a deafening rise in my inner confusion,
 and own dark voice,

with a couple of winter bugs for me and hubby as a back ground accompaniment.

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I am a seasoned traveller on the faith journey,
 so why,  when I set my face to go deeper
 am I always so surprised and seemingly overwhelmed?

Each descent into my own darkness, each waiting out the dark tide, feels so new.

 Even well known paths become uncharted wilderness seen, as they are,

from a new vantage point of time, grace, and experience.

In the outer winter darkness of the world,

other destructive forces have raged and sobbed,

 too terrible to contemplate.

Each news brings appalling facts

 that I can only wish with all my heart did not exist,

 wreaking havoc as they do.

And this news is not new to me,

but familiar echoes of the dark state within which I wait

 for the new light to break within my own heart.

Yet in my waiting gloom something shimmers.

There is the memory of my own story.

The story I have begun to tell, and faltered over,
 leaving it as yet not fully told, (though promising I will),

when going over old suffering proved too much to encompass in the time I have had. 

Can I merely short circuit the full telling of it now by saying,

 at a time when I was desperately sick

a physical and spiritual light broke in on me

 that healed me all the way from the outside in.

The thing I need to say right now is I was no more

 "holy".

nor "righteous",

no more "deserving",

then than I am now,

 and yet the light came.

So I have every reason to believe, and to hope,
 for that same light to come for others.

Unholy, unrighteous, undeserving like me.

And that is the Advent hope,

and the Advent promise.

The people living in darkness have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." 

 Matt 4:16

Out of these last days of Advent waiting I offer you the glorious promise that

the darkness of death and evil do not have the last word.

He who is light comes,

even to you and me.

Be Blessed

P.S.  One thing I have maintained in my Advent silence is my faith companion at Ennis Blue. 

 For more glory than you can handle why don't you do the same?

That was A BIG Birthday!

It was war time when I was growing up,
and what with rationing, my father away at war,
and her own ideas of priorities of life
my mother never made any sort of fuss about birthdays.

My first birthday cake was my 50th,
so you get a fair idea of how I regarded the importance
of celebrating my birthday too.
(I did ensure everybody else got a cake, lest you get the wrong idea).

Oh while I'm preventing misunderstandings
that was the Second World War not First, I hasten to add.
Things are getting serious enough on the age stakes
without adding any more years willynilly.

Anyway this year was a biggy so there wasn't just one cake but two,
and it was a truly beautiful day.

The celebrations began with a bouquet from my brother arriving at the door
quite early, (hence the dressing gown), the morning before my birthday.
- And that's when I began to feel all wobbly inside, and distinctly weepy.

All that day on and off I just felt like having a really good cry, and at first I couldn't understand what was going on, and kept asking myself what on earth was wrong with me.

Then the truth dawned.
Down the years I have had some serious illness.
Twice wasn't expected to live, and the medical prognosis was not good following that.

I had been laid in bed for two years, in my teens with a rheumatic/heart condition.
I have had myasthenia gravis in my twenties,
with resultant on-going muscle weakness,
and yet here I am having reached my three score years and ten,
having lived a full and active life!

I realised that at some level I had believed the prognosis I'd been given
and subconsciously never expected to reach this age.
And this despite living in the day to day knowledge
that God has done a terrific healing in my life
and completed what medical science began,
but could not hope to offer me in the fullest extent that I have received it.

I don't know where you are today in your hopes and expectations,
or in your fears and disappointments,
but wherever you are I can offer you the truth of my own experience. Look beyond the realities that seem set to crush you,
and set your eyes on the promises of God, in Christ.
He alone knows the plans He has in store for us.

New International Version (©1984)
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

God Bless

Protests and hope

This has been a week of extremes.
Extreme weather for this part of the world,
which has brought both wonderful and unfamiliar beauty
 to our humdrum lives;
- and not a little difficulty and anxiety for many.

Then difficulty and anxiety of another sort
 brought ugliness to our streets.

I watched the television coverage of the clashes
 between students and police with tears in my eyes.

I know the genuine anguish behind the protests,
and the frustration that the peaceful protests 
should be hi-jacked by activists
intent on causing damage, and injury.

(For those who do not know, student fees in England
are due to increase exponentially,
despite pre-election promises that there would be no increase,
and although the loan system for student repayment of loans
has been changed, it is again
 lower income groups who will be barred from higher education.
I should add that working your way through Uni
in this country is not the option it is in the States.
 We have never been a country where part time work is easy to come by,
and certainly not at the moment.)

I know the desperation of the police,
to be seen safeguarding public order;
however I abhor the increasing evidence
that we are moving towards a society where
every attempt at legitimate protest is met with shows of excessive force.
 There are routine removal of basic human rights,
when access to lavatories, and medical aid
 are routinely barred to protesters.

Now an police investigation will take place,
and, (especially as royalty became embroiled), security overhauled.

Worst of all perhaps,
for whatever reasons seem good to them,
our representatives in Parliament have, yet again,
been seen to be un-trustworthy.
As one woman on a programme dealing with current affairs put it,
" How can we ever believe politicians again?"

So the dark days of winter gather around us.
Not a very cheerful post for a weekend you may say.


Well, in the midst of the gloom I found
this light sabre
in my garden.

The sunlight of the cold
morning struck this blade of cordyline
and made it shine out
in a way the camera
could not possibly capture.

At the head of the post
you see my fragile white bells continue
to shine gracefully under their
blanket of ice crystals.

The world goes on.
There is a strength and resilience,
and a hunger after honesty
and fair dealing that is,
I believe, shining deeply at our core.

Do not discount our ability to rise from our difficulties again,
re-newed from the gloom.
We have done it before.

My motto is always,
"Resurrection now!"

Have a weekend.of renewal and hope

Easter Holidays Anyone?

It is has been a by-word with me for years that no matter how late Easter falls, it is still always too early in the year to go away. Well that's how it is in Britain anyway.
No matter how many daffodils are nodding in the breeze the breeze they are nodding in is decidedly nippy, and the little lambs leaping in the fields need those woolly coats.
It may look nice if the sun's out but it's all best seen through a window, and preferably one not too far from my own cosy hearth.
So this year when we are experiencing the worst freakishly cold weather for decades, (even snow further north!) am I looking forward to a snug Easter at home? Am I buffaloes! No, this year we have decided to go down to Cornwall for a few days to take in the Eden Project.
Of course the suitcase will be bulging with all the different layers that life in spring-time Britain normally demands, - and then some. Thank goodness we are going by car and nobody need ever know that I would rather carry all of my wardrobe with me than risk being cold.
Because we are both Welsh we take getting wet as a matter of course.
Anyway I'll let you know what occurred when I get back.



This small painting was buried in my untidy studio. Looking at it now I think it is well suited to being an "Easter" picture, although it is really one of a series that started with seeing the winter sun coming through some trees in a wood near Kenilworth.
We use the word "buried" quite often just as I have done about the painting, when something we are looking for is hidden amongst other stuff, but the only time we are likely to use the word "resurrection" is when something's been brought back from disuse and obscurity. Like an old skirt that's come back into fashion maybe.
Strange that when Easter has far more to do with life out of death "resurrection" than anything else, the things which spring to mind when we mention it are usually "chocolate eggs", "crowded airports", or "It's too early to be going away".

Easter is about new life,
hope re-born.
May you know these Easter Blessings in abundance.

Why "Wonder in a Nut Shell"?

As I began to work on this my first ever blog page, the line went down for the first time for years, I lost what I'd prepared, and was off line for most of the day. I must say that this set me to wondering in a whole different way than I intended but underlined for me that part of the reason I need the "little moments of wonder" so much is because we are on a journey through life that has just as many questions as answers. Perhaps that is why life is truly so full of wonder in both senses of the word. Anyway here I am many hours later, tired and woolly headed but determined not to let the unexpected jinx put me off.

In this blog I want to share some of those day to day little moments of wonder that help keep my boat afloat. There are so many things that lift my spirits, or shine a beam of truth where I need it most. They seem to come kernel sweet yet deeply sustaining, and as my name is Hazel, a nutshell of wonder seemed quite apt. Of course there's also the hope that I might be able to keep it short!
What I've been thinking about today is another day very much like this one in as much as there was a little occasional sun, but mostly rain setting in as the day went on. Sitting in the dining room over a cup of coffee I caught sight of what looked like a scattering of silver coins over the stones of the patio. Walking to the window to get a closer look it became evident that what I was seeing was merely the first drops of a rainstorm lit by the early sun. Pretty, but soon lost in the increasing downpour.
Later, taking advantage of a dry spell I took some rubbish out to the bin and spotted something glinting amongst the dark wet earth in the flower border alongside the path. I expected it to be a piece of gold toffee wrapper that had blown into the garden and bent to pick it up. Surprisingly as I tried to grasp the bit of "gold" my fingers closed on nothing other than cold wet soil, yet the spot still shone brightly. This time I had been fooled by the afternoon sun shining through a knot hole in the fence.
In one day I'd had silver and gold delivered to my door and neither of them had been the" real" thing. Of course I 'd never expected them to be. Or had I? Truth to tell, for just one nanosecond before common sense had kicked in some part of me had quickened with excitement and anticipation at what just might have been. (You must know that "Wow" that comes up unbidden at the first flake of snow) .It's this hidden child in each one of us that never quite ceases to expect the magical and wondrous.
It,s possible for life's disappointments and traumas to persuade us that we would surely be better off to stop hoping or dreaming. All the more wonderful then when we get caught out by something as simple as sun shining on raindrops or onto a patch of wet dirt.