In The Bleak Mid-Winter
17 degrees, overcast
Strong northerly winds
16 inches of snow on the ground
I’m having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit this year.
This should have been a week of relaxing and enjoying the season. I had my cards in the mail, Denny is home for the holidays... Instead, I’m feeling like a Grinch and all the over-the-top gaiety grates on my nerves. There’s the constant refrain on the media about shopping days and one-day sales as the country convulses in the annual retail frenzy that has nothing to do with giving from the heart and instead lays an expectation on us that we need to give every casual acquaintance something more than our good wishes.
Denny and I are terrible at enforced gifting. When we see something we think someone would like, we give it to them then. We don’t even buy each other Christmas gifts.
The main downer is that I know this is Dinky’s last Christmas with us. My thoughts dwell on those other dear souls who left us in the dark of winter...Sparky, Johnny, Newt, poor Fat Sally.
I think about the dire straits Dinky and Sparky were in twelve years ago. Christmas for them that year—their first winter—was spent cold and hungry, abandoned by the people they had depended on for food and shelter all their brief lives. It was one of the last days in December when they were brought into the Shelter. In my heart, I bless the gruff man who rescued them, who gave enough of a damn not to just leave them to freeze or starve as their “owners” had done. If not for him, I never would have had the chance to know Dinky and Sparky, two cats whose sweetness was undeterred by harsh circumstances.
So if I can milk one good thing out of this sadness, it is that Dinky will not die cold, hungry and alone.
While my delayed Christmas loaves baked this morning, I finally began to string bright chains of beads on our tree, which has stood adorned only with lights for the past few days.
So what does this season mean to a pagan? The kernel is, as Denny says, the days are getting longer. Leave it to me to try to plumb the symbolism of that, to find the inner significance of this festival of light that we hold in the dark of the year.
We watched “The Da Vinci Code” on Wednesday night and the character Robert Langdon said that Jesus, even if only human, was a source of inspiration for millions, perhaps a reflection of what was divine in all of us. Maybe that is what this season is, in the heart of it. A celebration of the light that shines even in the darkest days, of the love we show one another, that binds us together and comforts our sorrows.
The lighted evergreen tree in the depths of the forest has a meaning that pre-dates the Christian era by thousands of years. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can not overcome it.
I don’t have answers as such. I don’t really know if it is possible to have answers for some of the questions we ask ourselves about our world, our universe. I just know there is love, that it is the only miracle I know, and I know that it is enough to know there is love. Once I know that, all the fears are meaningless. There is love. That is answer enough for me.
Strong northerly winds
16 inches of snow on the ground
I’m having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit this year.
This should have been a week of relaxing and enjoying the season. I had my cards in the mail, Denny is home for the holidays... Instead, I’m feeling like a Grinch and all the over-the-top gaiety grates on my nerves. There’s the constant refrain on the media about shopping days and one-day sales as the country convulses in the annual retail frenzy that has nothing to do with giving from the heart and instead lays an expectation on us that we need to give every casual acquaintance something more than our good wishes.
Denny and I are terrible at enforced gifting. When we see something we think someone would like, we give it to them then. We don’t even buy each other Christmas gifts.
The main downer is that I know this is Dinky’s last Christmas with us. My thoughts dwell on those other dear souls who left us in the dark of winter...Sparky, Johnny, Newt, poor Fat Sally.
I think about the dire straits Dinky and Sparky were in twelve years ago. Christmas for them that year—their first winter—was spent cold and hungry, abandoned by the people they had depended on for food and shelter all their brief lives. It was one of the last days in December when they were brought into the Shelter. In my heart, I bless the gruff man who rescued them, who gave enough of a damn not to just leave them to freeze or starve as their “owners” had done. If not for him, I never would have had the chance to know Dinky and Sparky, two cats whose sweetness was undeterred by harsh circumstances.
So if I can milk one good thing out of this sadness, it is that Dinky will not die cold, hungry and alone.
While my delayed Christmas loaves baked this morning, I finally began to string bright chains of beads on our tree, which has stood adorned only with lights for the past few days.
So what does this season mean to a pagan? The kernel is, as Denny says, the days are getting longer. Leave it to me to try to plumb the symbolism of that, to find the inner significance of this festival of light that we hold in the dark of the year.
We watched “The Da Vinci Code” on Wednesday night and the character Robert Langdon said that Jesus, even if only human, was a source of inspiration for millions, perhaps a reflection of what was divine in all of us. Maybe that is what this season is, in the heart of it. A celebration of the light that shines even in the darkest days, of the love we show one another, that binds us together and comforts our sorrows.
The lighted evergreen tree in the depths of the forest has a meaning that pre-dates the Christian era by thousands of years. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can not overcome it.
I don’t have answers as such. I don’t really know if it is possible to have answers for some of the questions we ask ourselves about our world, our universe. I just know there is love, that it is the only miracle I know, and I know that it is enough to know there is love. Once I know that, all the fears are meaningless. There is love. That is answer enough for me.
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