December...opalescent days and lapis lazuli nights

December offers us opalescent days and lapis lazuli nights. Two beautiful gemstones sum up the final month of the year, for me. Opal–glowing white, shot through with fireworks of flaming crimson, orange and yellow, electric blue and green. Lapis lazuli–deep night-sky blue, often sprinkled with starry sprays of golden pyrite.

"Winter Sun" via pixabay.com

December days, bright with new winter sunlight, all fire and ice and eye-watering clarity, glittering the frosted morning with tiny sparkling jewels. Our twelfth-month sun glows with anticipation and promise–Hanukkah’s most enduring candle flame, Christmas’s gleaming day star. The beauty of a December sun is all the more precious for its shortening span. Dusk arrives earlier each day, dawn sleeps in a bit longer.

December nights, deep velvet blue, swirling with distant stars that, for a time, look near enough to touch. So many wishes, so many prayers, floating up to that star-spangled sky. Gazing into those heavens, I can feel

"Starry Night" via pixabay.com

the human longing for peace and purpose, love and wisdom, comfort and joy. December ushers in the longest nights of the year, bidding us to ease into the darkness, resting our busy day-working bodies and minds, inviting us to light the home fires sooner, to gaze longer into the hearth and candle flame.
December is a month of magic, miracles, and mystery–threads connecting these two stones. The iridescent opal, flashing with its rainbow hues, looks as though it must have been brought into the world by pure

"Opal" via pixabay.com

magic. Such enchantment touches some deep chord within me, triggering visions of infinite possibilities and dreams of things unseen. The cosmic blue of the lapis lazuli draws me inward, to sink into its depths and float among its gilded stars, a color so divine, Renaissance artists reserved its ultramarine powdered pigment for the Virgin Mary’s gown.  

"Lapis Lazuli" via Pixabay.com

I invite you to pause in the midst of your busy holiday preparations and celebrations, to brighten your spirit with December’s opalescent days and dream deep into its lapis lazuli nights.


Thanks for stopping by! Y'all come back now.

Kate