stille nacht

I'm a city girl - born and raised in Phoenix, 6th largest city in the nation.

I'm in a village so small it has...nothing. Not a stoplight. Not a stop sign. Not a church, a bakery, or a school. It has houses, a cemetery, and a volunteer fire station.

I went out to walk Sam tonight. It's warmed up to 46 degrees (weird to get warmer after the sun goes down) so I was out in just a sweater and scarf. The snow has all melted, alas, but the streets were shining gold in the lamplight, wet with the rain. It glistened off the grass as we walked to the end of town. I stopped at the curve in the road and looked out. I could see the other little hilltop villages in the distance, windows gleaming warm through the night. Where the forest lay in between was complete, unbroken blackness, a gaping hole in the landscape where anything could lurk. Above, the sky was low and cloudy, and a faint smell of woodsmoke hung in the air, along with the rich aroma of wet soil.

The silence was heady as I stood and listened. No cars or trains, no dogs barking or tvs blaring, no crickets. The world echoed with stillness. You can't find that silence in the city, but out here, it's everywhere, soaking the darkness in it's deep quiet. Ahead, through a gap in the clouds, one star shared it's cold, blue light, twinkling in the black.

Moments of peace like that are rare, where the world stops and you breathe in and can only think of how great is the Creator, because the beauty of His creation drowns out everything with it's silent rejoicing.