A Taste of Sunshine

December 31, 2019

Beloved:

​          Sometimes I forget that once upon a time I didn’t love the winter.  Once the Christmas tree is down and the new year is begun, I love the new year and the nesting I always start to feel.  I love the settled-in happiness of knowing we’ll be mostly in the house for many, many weeks.  I have books and magazines to read and handwork by my chair.  I’m going to organize my basement storage room where all of our unwanted things eventually go to die.  The leftover cookies and Christmas snacks go to the chicken coop, and my pantry gets an unflinching shakedown.  (See Anne Lamott’s post about New Year’s diets here.)

          I also love the food — soup and bread, especially.  Also, rice with something a little spicy mixed in, with an over-easy egg on top.  And every year, the grapefruit.  I don’t even look at grapefruit the rest of the year, but right now I love it like I love tomatoes in the summer.  Even if you think you don’t like them, buy at least one ruby red grapefruit this season and try again.  They are so beautiful.              They smell so good and the taste is only slightly sour with a wonderfully sweet edge.  Yesterday morning we even had grapefruit muffins, thanks to Lee, the neuroscience-grad-student-baker visiting us for winter break.  I love how they seem so out of place on a table with wintery food like oatmeal, but their taste is the exact thing we need when the wind blows like it’s blowing now.  They taste like sunshine.
          Grapefruit reminds me that winter means different things in different places, and doesn’t last forever anywhere.  Now is the time we are given to enjoy every blessing.  I pray this last day of the year finds you grateful for the past, present for the moment, and hopeful about the future.  

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

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