The pagan season . . .

It's Tiw's day . . . Northerlies return this evening to TulseyTown, as the roller coaster continues toward the Solstice.

Today would mark the beginning of the seven-day celebration of Saturnalia in ancient Rome. For the winter festival, the Romans made and exchanged gifts, decorated their homes with holly and ropes of garland, and carried wreaths of evergreen branches to honor the god Saturn.

Pope Francis is celebrating his 88th birthday today.

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was born on this day in 1807 Haverhill, Massachusetts.

For the first time, Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker was performed on this date in 1892 St. Petersburg, Russia.

“The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.” —John Greenleaf Whittier

A shovel is not a scalpel

It's the Moon's day . . . The “Cold Moon” is still full over TulseyTown...and visible tonight.

“Enough is as good as a feast.” – English proverb in print by 1660. Enough brings satisfaction. Beyond that lies excess, not greater satisfaction.

Speaking of excess. The mailbox was full of birthday reminders:

Today is the birth date of Ludwig van Beethoven. Although no official birth date has been recorded, it's traditionally believed he was born on this date in 1770 Bonn, Germany

Author Jane Austen was born in the 1775 village of Steventon, Hampshire, England,

Philosopher and poet George Santayana was born in 1863 Madrid.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was born in 1917 Minehead, Somerset, England

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law.

And, yesterday was the birth anniversary of physicist and writer Freeman Dyson, born in 1923 Crawthorne Village, England.

Why AI can never achieve consciousness.

Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope. – George Santayana

The moon of exploding trees . . .

It's Sol's day . . .a cold start to a warmish day to TulseyTown. Southerlies bring afternoon cloud cover and overnight rain. The clouds will cover the last full moon of December tonight. Fear not, the “Cold” moon will be peeking between clouds tomorrow.

There comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. – Wangari Maathai

Sunday Sermon

We've tried to turn “God” into a thing with a face, when the word is a stand-in word for everything—Reality, truth, and the very shape of our universe. . .Without an interior journey of [an[ inner experience, much of what we call religion is largely childhood conditioning...atheists, agnostics, and many former Christians rightly react against this because such religion [remaining immature], childish and often fear-based, and so they argue against a caricature of faith. I would not believe in that god myself! – Fr. Richard Rohr, Meditations, 12.8.24

… the shepherds tending their flocks by night in Judea who were summoned by the angel to go to Bethlehem to see the wondrous thing did not go to find jolly people around a Christmas tree with nice gifts and a turkey dinner with a fine wine and rice pudding. – Garrison Keillor, The small holiday of a happy man, in his Column on 12.6.24.