Article 16

The winter season brings a renewed hope as your SP prepares for Advent. The temperature declines while emotions heighten, elevated by a prevailing spirit of the season. Hope, faith and charity are three legs of the little stool in SP’s study warming his feet in front of a fire while finalizing his list of gifts for his friends in the village. The sheer thought of the genuine smiles of his friends receiving his gifts warms his heart and lifts his faith, a faith that is forever challenged.
Winter in its bleakness possesses a purity and purpose that your SP knows all too well. Its rawness, bracing cold, and stillness allow for a clear and almost transparent contemplation of life. This arguably reaches its pinnacle in the charity witnessed as nature’s conditions demands it. The friends in the village come together prompting acts of kindness and evoking a hopeful joy that drifts down upon us all as an early winter snowfall.