I remember my grampa cutting kindling in the woodshed out behind my grandparents' little red-trimmed house on York Hill. He would be out there for hours, never mind the dark, the cold, the solitude. Perhaps it was because of these things that he lingered until the cooling embers of the hearth could quietly summon him back inside so that they could be stoked and fed another log or two. He was a man who kept to himself -- one who never insinuated himself into the affairs of others. I can sill hear the soft crunch of icy snow beneath his booted feet.
In Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, there is a scene that has stuck with me since I first came across it. Frankl describes the horrid conditions of Auschwitz -- how the sky was gray, the tattered uniforms were gray, the snow was gray -- but off in the distance in a house on the side of a hill, someone turned on a light. This one light broke through the grayness of his existence, and defying all that he was up against, gave him hope.
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