My hands warmed by my morning coffee, I stand on our balcony, this almost last day of the year 2015. Before me the smoke rises from the old houses of Schleitheim, as it has for a thousand years or more. I went out here because it promised to be one of those rare clear mornings, the hidden rays of the sun creating a gold outline over the hills surrounding our village. By the time I made the coffee, put on my fleece jacket and found my shoes, wads of soft grey clouds, like cotton candy were creeping up from hidden valleys, seeping slowly over the hills. The light was still allowed through, the fog silver yet, as it shrouded one hill, one tree after another, a light diffusion first , then fully gone. Fascinating to watch this take over. The village didn’t know anything of its fate yet, the smoke from the old houses still clear, the air crisp; I could see every bulb of the Christmas lights burning across the valley.
It’s cold, I need to go back in, get to work at my desk. I know, when I look back out, the hills will be no more, the village shrouded in grey, the light gone. And I think of all those villages where there is war, where life was normal, the light shone, the children played in the streets, went to school and people walked to the bus stop and went shopping. Not knowing perhaps, of what was creeping towards them, taking the light out of their lives, not just covering, but destroying the trees and the village, and the people living in them.

It’s warm in my house. The sun will come again, today or tomorrow, or the next day. The village and the hills will look the same. For many in our world, that’s not true. This last year saw so many people fleeing their homes, more than ever before. Many of them are coming to our safe worlds. Many of us see them as the fog creeping over our safe villages, taking over our streets and jobs. Definitely our world will change somewhat. Nothing ever stays the same, even in a village as old and traditional as this one. The migrants, whether legal or illegal, are not going to go away. It is up to us, largely, whether we see it as fog or light. Is it fascinating or fearful? Because, as an old saying goes, we create what we fear. So what do we want to create this year? I want to embrace the light along with the fog, and make something beautiful of it, as was the scene before my eyes when the fog was in the background and the light still there.