Spring will bring Byzantium

I got down on my knees this morning and examined a bit of ground near my house. Sure enough, the first tight tips of crocus buds have pushed up into the light and in a few weeks, these pioneers of the spring season will bloom.

Winter storms may still come, but they will go, too, and the seasons will change. My family members who have lost jobs in this ruined economy, will survive, with our arms of support wrapped around them. My grandmother, who fell and badly hurt herself this month, may yet have a few joyful years left with us.

I read through Gnosticism this winter and do not regret the time spent on it, though it was terribly hard to understand. Now I am reading the very last of the "pagans" before I enter the literature of the Byzantine Empire, prelude to the Middle Ages.

This weekend, I read Longus' "Daphnis and Chloe." After the Nag Hammadi library, this book seems almost unbearably simplistic.

More later.