What shall we sing? As I sit by the fire on a cold winter's eve, Buckminster Fuller's words come to mind. "Fire is the sun unwinding from the trees log. When the log-fire pop-sparks, it is letting go a sunny day of long ago, and doing it in a hurry."

Isn't it the same when we sing old songs and recall experiences with friends and family? Those memories are our log-fire pop-sparks. Maybe that's why the stories we tell and the songs we sing are so elemental. They remind us of important times in our lives and offer hope for times ahead.

Wishing you light and warmth in your life, among your family and circle of friends, and may we all find ways of enlarging that circle. "The galaxy is a flung thing, loose in the night, and our solar system is one of many dotted campfires ringed with tossed rocks. What shall we sing? What shall we sing, while the fire burns down? We can sing only specifics, time's rambling tune, the places we have seen, the faces we have known." - Annie Dillard