This is a month of riches, with the freshness of Advent expectation, with great feast days dedicated to Mary, with birthdays for Teresa (Dec 6) and Agnese (Dec 21). And then, of course, there is Christmas Day and the week that follows. The secular new year arrives in the midst of Christmas celebrations. While the days are short, the house glows with light and greenery and wonder at the God who became a little child.
Even the sparse daylight can have a charm. December in Virginia often has sunny and brisk days, and the bare trees open up new vistas in the Valley, and give us the contrasting hues of branch and sky, of bark and hilly rock, and of the evergreens that now have their time of special glory.
Our Valley has a grandeur and an intimacy that I have come to appreciate more over the years. This is a great place to call home, nestled in rolling hills, and it also has heights and depths: blue green hazy peaks and tall trees and plunging stream beds where the water runs relentlessly even when it is nothing more than a trickle.A place to call home... even as I look up at the tops of the hills and the line of the ridge marking the horizon with the faint outline of the limbs of distant trees. It is a home that fills me with longing.
