In the heart of winter in New England, it’s easy to fall into a habit of time traveling. I can spend hours in seed catalogs, or online travel planning, or lost in my own far-flung thoughts – anything to skip over the grey, cold here and now.

This season I’m aiming to skip ahead a little less, even when the here and now is wintry. Instead of screen time to start the day, I’ve been sitting still with my morning tea. Even a minute of quiet un-plugged-ness feels like forever, which is kind of the point. One day this week a sneaky early morning sunbeam pierced the clouds and lit up my tabletop with the most beautiful golden light…. And then faded away, all in the blink of an eye.

Dear ones, it’s hard to sit still, especially in the cold and the dark. But if we scroll past the clouds, we miss the sunbeams too.