The fat and the fire

"Lovely evening tonight" I tweeted. "Friendship, candlelit dinner, baked spiced apples, glowing fire, chocolates, laughs. Oh and I was called fat."

It's true, one of our dear young disciples made this heinous (and sadly increasingly accurate) accusation. And it was funny, though not as funny as the time my then 3-year-old declared: "When I grow up I want to be like Daddy - " (pause for pathos and effect, then - ) "fat!" In fact, though I may be a little more rounded than I was ten years ago, I don't think I yet quite fit the epithet.

Nevertheless, there is something about those long, fire- and candle-lit evenings in winter, in community, that really does feel like living off the fat of the land. Friends and family gathered with nothing much to do except to be. To be friends, to be family, to be...

It seemed a fitting follow-up to my last, rather theoretical, post about Sabbath rest.

C S Lewis, as ever, put it rather well: "Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?"