The weather outside today is absolutely frigid. Today’s cold spell follows a few weeks of steely gray skies and torrential rain, leaving everybody in the city soggy and cold, even when we’re inside and dry. We rush to and from Metro stations and parked cars, heads ducked down, bags clutched tightly to our chests, solitary figures rushing toward any kind of shelter we can find.
It occurred to me the other day that the weather outside seems to reflect the state of so many hearts this holiday season-the heaviness-the alone-ness-the darkness-seem palpable wherever I turn.
It could be, of course, that I was not paying close enough attention in past years, but this year in particular we seem to be running through a whole lot of Kleenex in my office. Cheery Christmas songs are blaring louder than usual, striking an annoying dissonance with the melodies I’m hearing in quiet, tear-filled conversations-notes in a minor key, with raw pain the illustrations.
Some situations are heartbreaking losses. Some are ongoing pain magnified to oversized proportions. Some are just waves of sadness cresting on the horizons of lives mostly calm. Each life has pain of its own, but there no getting around the fact that this year there’s just a lot of sadness all around.
The gray skies and the torrential rain and all the tears are helping to remind me: it’s still Advent. We are still waiting for the light. And not just us-all creation longs for just one glimpse of a spark, a glimmer of hope way off in the distance . . . light that will not miraculously erase the pain but that might help us see a little more clearly through the tears.
The Longest Night
by Peter Mayer
Light a candle, sing a song
Say that the shadows shall not cross
Make an oblation out of all you’ve lost
In the longest night of the year
Gather friends and cast your hopes
Into the fire as it snows
And stare at God through the dark windows
Of the longest night of the year
A night that seems like a lifetime
If you’re waiting for the sun
So why not sing to the nighttime
And the burning stars up above?
Come with drums, bells and horns
Or come in silence, come forlorn
Come like a miner to the door
Of the longest night of the year
For deep in the stillness, deep in the cold
Deep in the darkness, a miner knows
That there is a diamond in the soul
Of the longest night of the year
Maybe peace hides in a storm
Maybe winter’s heart is warm
And maybe light itself is born
In the longest night
In the longest night of the year