It has been a gloomy winter. Winter decided to brighten things up with almost 24 hours of snow. Lent is starting. On Monday and Tuesday night the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read and chanted in Orthodox churches and so it was this week. On my way out of the Tuesday service I thought how beautiful the sign outside church looked. It was carved about thirty years ago by a talented woman who lives in the United States. Nature outlines the fluid lines of the carving.

Now that I look at the image I see that it is divited into three distinct parts. On the left, the traffic and the lights of a modern city. then with a distinct divide the sign, outilined in fresh snow and on the right the structure of the building of the church itself. The distinctions are so clear that it seemed to me a metaphor for our life on earth, split as it is into the material world, the spiritual sphere and the institution of organized religion. An image from which we can take as much as we need here at the beginning of a season of reflection.