Of News at the Solstice

I used to be afraid of the dark. Each night as a child I would ceremoniously crack the bathroom door so that just a ribbon of light might give me my bearings lest I should wake in the dark. But now, I’ve made friends with the dark, its seductiveness, its mystery. At this the darkest time of the year the heavens quite paradoxically seem closer to us. Maybe it’s just the low humidity, but the stars seem somehow nearer….the stars along their familiar voyages, Orion, the hunter in his eternal quest, the Pleiades huddled in mysterious sorority speaking each to each of some question, some proposition perhaps…Polaris, the axial heart of the matter, ordering, wheeling the starry lights of the northern hemisphere into something that resembles a dance…a dance of purpose…a dance of hope…light the outward and visible sign of hope…hope that is always, always born in the dark…hope sent to us from the future as sign of what we might expect when all is said and done.

I noticed posted on the Episcopal Life website an article about a church in California offering a “Blue” Christmas Eucharist…a service seeking to honor our grief during this dark time of the year….the memories of loved ones gone and tragedies befallen that always surface at the solstice…The dark about its graciously sad but necessary duty…It is as if, as the light fades, our humanity rises to meet the heavens coincidently descending in the dark to engender yet again the hope that will forever sustain us. That is why we have no alternative than to celebrate…name this descending and rising…name this coming…name this birth and the potential this birth brings.

There is news from the dark: An admission that the vast darkness of the universe has been pierced by the light…In spite of untold light years of the breadth of space, the light cannot be prevented by the dark….Hope is forever engendered among us in spite of the dark…calling us into lives of sacrifice and advocacy to bear the light into the dark corners of our world…with the sure and certain knowledge that the solstice will give way to quickening light…God’s coming again…a memory of the future…a future in which all manner of thing shall be well…and no need to crack the door and be afraid.