For the night is...

...dark and full of terrors. So they say on Game of Thrones.

I'll not patronize and say these terrors are just our own fear of the dark, a fear that seems to spring from our very DNA.

For there are real terrors, and there is real darkness, and to fear such is an adaptive trait.

And yet the same DNA seems to drive us to hope, to seek the light, to remind one another of its return. This capacity to hope, to believe that which cannot in that moment be seen, has fueled the festivals, the celebrations that mark this Mid-Winter time here in the Northern Hemisphere for as long as we can remember.

Our species has left its mark on the stone, the land, the oral and written record of our peoples, talking of the darkness, the terrors, and the light driving out the darkness. Twenty-six and more centuries ago a voice was raised saying:

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light..."

Yet the odd thing, the salient thing for me, is the speaker/writer is not talking of the past. He spoke of the future. I have written before that we are a hopeful species. That seems to be as much part of our makeup as our fear of the dark.

So, look up. Look past the terrors. Look past the dark. On they who dwell in shadow...a light will shine.

Our truths tell us this.

*Image from: http://switched.deviantart.com/art/light-through-trees-20221042

Oh Holy Night...

My religious tradition, building on an earlier tradition, speaks of the night of Christmas as one in which "...a light shone in the darkness..."

As always I am struck by how powerfully these images of light and dark resonate with our experience of the world around us in these brief Winter days. They serve as a reminder that the light returns. The darkness is not the end, or the all.

A reminder, for we are a forgetful people. If not forgetful, absent-minded.

For it is easy to forget that the light returns. That what presents as unending darkness gives way to light. It always has, even at the times it seemed it could not. And it always will, at least until that last great burst of light our sun will deliver before life on this bauble of a planet we call home goes the way of all things.

Yet the up-to-the-minute disaster services, our modern Cassandras, would have us tune our minds to one bleak perspective after another, barely comprehending the first before switching to contemplate the next.

This leads to absent-mindedness. Unthinking, unblinking, staring into the dark. As if the dark is all there is.

Whatever your tradition, there is a deep belief, gifted to us from the genes of our ancestors, based upon memory carried in those same genes, that the light returns.

When we had nothing like the understanding we do today, we yet built mechanisms that would show us that the light was returning. Millenia later, these mechanisms still work!

We are creatures of light. Look into the smile of a baby and tell me otherwise.

Darkest before the dawn

The phrase entitling this post set me thinking.

Such phrases litter our language, hinting at a hopefulness I believe is at the core of us as humans.

Deep in Winters long ago (fadó, fadó - the Gaelic equivalent of 'once upon a time...')... So, long long ago in the depths of Winter, we sat through the long nights and remembered, told stories, of the warmth, the light, the bounty that flowed from the sun in Summer. We consoled ourselves that the sun had returned before, that new life had sprung from the cold earth, that we had seen other Summers before, and would again. That the people, the tribe, the group would again be saved.

Later, as knowledge grew, we learned to measure the change in the course of the heavens so it could be seen that there would come an end to seeming endless nights.

Celebrations sprang up, for we are a celebratory species - perhaps a little too pleased with ourselves when we think we understand something, but the celebrations were warranted.

So, little surprise that my own religious tradition builds upon this celebration, borrowing from older traditions, beliefs. "...people that walked in darkness...seen a great light"...the thought of new life born to us...that we would be safe.

It calls to something deep within us as a species. There can be but one answer - hope.

So, whatever your tradition at this celebratory time of the year, I wish you joy. I wish you peace and, most of all, hope.

Solstice

Yes, I know. A day late - and likely a dollar short.

I blame the travel. Yesterday we flew across half the country, racing away from the sun. We took off in full sunshine and landed in full dark. In the land of my birth, it would have been full dark for more than an hour of the clock by the time we landed. It was dark enough for me not to feel homesick.

So, 'twas the solstice. The depth of Winter. The year's longest night. The year's shortest day - at least up here in the Northern hemisphere.

Yet the very word 'solstice' contains within it the name of our star, the sun. One can argue which came first - word or name. It doesn't matter.

The word looks forward. Therein is contained hope. In the depth of the night, the promise of light.

At the very least, the hope of light.

What a resilient species we are. Hopeful, despite our best efforts. Despite the darkness around, and within, us.

And therin lies the glory that we are.

Perhaps a mirror cracked...

On occasions, more frequently than I might care to admit, I feel like my writing isn't going nearly as well as I would like. Or I don't have the time to devote to it I'd wish. Or that I have to work, because writing alone won't sustain me financially.

Or simply that I have to work (Monday mornings are particularly bad for that).

On such occasions, the sculpture of the Weeping Buddha helps, or at least serves as a focal point for the feeling. I used to have it on my desk at work (now it sits near my writing computer) and, on being asked about it, would say, "Somedays, it's just like that."

Everyone seemed to understand.

And yet, and yet...

When I do feel like that, back at my home office where I also do my writing, I have two other sculptures that provide a different perspective. These remind me that anything, no matter how crazy it might seem to the outside world, is possible.

And so I continue to write, safe in the knowledge that all I have to be is awake to hear the story, and that it's OK to be quite crazy at times.

The title of this entry is from a poem I wrote much time ago.

The cracked mirror explained the many images that seem to make up my life - some even externalized like those above.

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