Most people I've met love the season of spring best. I, myself, am odd in this respect because my favorite season is Autumn, and my second favorite is Winter. I've always had a fascination for the cold, whiteness a northern winter could bring, probably because I've lived in the South all my life and never really experienced a hard winter. Spring is lovely, with all the new growth coming in, or the old growth rejuvenated, and summer is nice with it's warm evenings. Fall is absolutely marvelous, and the splendor of nature during that season of change near the end of the year always makes my heart soar with happiness. Why? How can I say what it is that makes me so happy then? It is simply beautiful. Winter, too, makes me happy. though it is bitterly cold right now, there is still a delight, a joy, that the world is so white, glistening, despite the harsh wind. I stand there, shivering like mad, loving the snow and the white world around.

Why is it? Maybe it has to do with my personality type or something, for I love sad songs (She moved Thro' the Fair, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya, for instance). Unlike most people I've met, I look foreward to Advent and Lent. I am attracted to sorrow, to longing, to hoping. Advent is my all time favorite Church season. Why? Perhaps God will tell me someday. Perhaps it is the assurance of a new beginning. Perhaps, a promise of good to come, a reassurance to make it easier for me to trust. Perhaps because I recognize that suffering gives me a chance to attone for past faults. I don't know. Somehow, sadness/suffering give me a taste of heaven in that they further my desire for heaven. That sounds masicistic, but I don't mean it so in the least.