The sky was dark and foreboding as we drove eastwards. Although the roads we travelled were well known to us, it seemed to be a little more alien this morning. I could just see the first glimpse of a possible sunrise beginning to touch the sky, but the overall sense of darkness seemed more complete, more intrusive.
And yet out of the darkness, a distant light appeared.
It took me a while to understand what I was seeing, because it was in the middle of what looked like nowhere. Yet as I stared out into the darkness, I realized I was looking at a farm out in the midst of a few fields.
It seems that the family who owned the land had decided to string Christmas lights in a rather random formation around a tree that stood adjacent to the house.
For some reason, the light coming from the tree spoke to me.
As someone who really doesn’t like the darker months, the shortest day of the year for me is kind of a bittersweet moment.
I know that thankfully there will be more light every day now rising into the summer months, yet it also brings with it the knowledge that my two least favorite months of January and February are right around the corner.
Yet somehow, this one lit tree standing in the middle of the darkness seemed to protest, and reassure me that the light was still there, and that more would be coming.
After a busy day in practice, we climbed into our car, and headed home. Our evening commute is almost due west, and here in the Pacific Northwest that means you’re headed into the sunset.
On an evening with not a cloud in the sky, there was a wonderful gradient from the blue of night into the remnant orange of the evening.
And a strangely haunting silhouette of all that we could see.
For a few minutes, everything felt very quiet. There seemed to be an almost unearthly aspect to the calm in which we drove. I felt like we were chasing the last few moments of the light as we prepared to transition into the longest night.
Somehow it felt lonely, and as the light finally succumbed to the darkness, it seemed as though something sacred had passed into the next journey of its existence.
A transition that we had somehow become a part of, as we watched the darkness fall.
Yet as we crested over a hill, and were able to see out over a valley, there before us was the sight of hundreds of homes spread out across our view. The lights strung on the houses seemed to be a chorus of voices against the night, all joining their song together in a benevolent benediction.
Although the darkness that morning had seemed so complete, each voice in this soliloquy of illumination held back the darkness, and promised that the night would never be forever.
And something about that filled me with a timeless sense of joy.
I thought back to the traditions of so long ago, of the Yule log, and of candles, and of celebrating the light and the hope of its return.
For a moment I felt connected to all those across the millennia who have desired the return of the light, and of the banishing of the darkness, and I felt connected to their hope of a brighter tomorrow.
For in the midst of darkness, it is hope that lights our way forward.
Allowing us to see, and trust, and believe.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings