POST-CHRISTMAS Greystoke has facilitated wind-down to stop! It’s vaguely beginning to register that in a day or two I’ll have to start winding-up to go again. But close to the end of another very full year I’m revisiting and renewing the old resolutions to take life just a little more slowly, avoiding the overly-frazzled approach to life and work. The difference between frazzled and fractious loss of vision and “life and health and peace” for me has a great deal to do with whether a day has allowed for a) an even very brief walk in fresh air with nothing particularly on my mind and b) a silent hour or two “beside the fire” (physical, spiritual or plain metaphorical) and opportunity to savour and process my current reading, and imagination, and meditation, and prayer. Ordinand Paul Deakin speaks of the rhythm of life he’s discovered at Mirfield. I’m a gentle rhythm sort of a man, I think. Rather fonder of ebb and flow than of great highs or lows. Quietness, books, fireside, loved ones near in heart and mind if not actually present, then something in and around me glows. And grows.