We awoke on Wednesday morning to a thin covering of snow; not the 'snow on snow, snow on snow' of Christina Rossetti's poem 'In the bleak midwinter', but enough, with the fog which accompanied the smattering, to turn my mind to her poetry.
I've come late to admiring her work; I've used one or two of her poems recently in stuff I've been doing. I like its quiet insistence, the way it burrows into the truths of her faith, truths beyond fact. Few can think, for example, that Jesus was born in the midst of a snowy landscape, Bethlehem being so far south. But a picture of a bleak midwinter would not somehow be complete without cold and snow, and it paints a picture of a moral and spiritual landscape which longed for the sunshine and light to come in the revealing of God's purposes in Jesus, hidden and quiet though they were in a stable, far from the centre of things.
The year turns today; we start that increase of light and warmth which comes with the shortest day behind us. It will be difficult to see this for some weeks to come, but it's there. May the light of Christ- the 'gladsome light' as the ancient hymn has it, warm, refresh and illuminate whatever winter, or dark, or cold, of body, mind or spirit you may be experiencing.
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