Everything nonsense now. Those mourners came up. Hands extended. Sons intact. Wearing on their faces enforced sadness-masks to hide any sign of their happiness, which –went on. They could not hide how alive they yet were with it, with their happiness at the potential of their still-living sons. Until lately I was one of them. Strolling whistling through the slaughterhouse, averting my eyes from the carnage, able to laugh and dream and hope because it had not yet happened to me.
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
[Jesus] is exalting not hte plausible greatness that is the only thing the world understands but the implausible greatness that He Himself intends to pursue.
Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace
We had some beautiful snow last week. We woke last Wednesday to 20cm of it with more falling all morning. Peter and the girls were off school and I took a snow day as well. Pearl and Rose made a snow man in our backyard – I loved the moment they came knocking on the backdoor asking for a carrot.
We walked through the quiet, snowy streets to our local park where so many of the neighbourhood children had gathered. The girls joined with friends to build a snow fort then claimed it as their fortress for a kids vs. adults snowball fight. We went home to hot chocolate and a quiet, do-nothing kind of afternoon.
Back to school the next day and then a half day on Friday when the rain started and turned the streets to ice and slush. This week it’s raining again and the snow is mostly gone. Temperatures have gone back up to the January usual. But the snow was magical while we had it.
His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone laboured under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated.
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Karissa Reads Books 
That picture of the sun looks like a desktop image on a computer 😮