Solstice

 

December 21, 2025

Longest night.

Woke too early, with bitter thoughts in my heart. It’s almost time to go to Advent IV service, and the thoughts have tempered somewhat. Sound of the washing machine from downstairs, harmonizing with Handel from the bud. The music for Christmas Eve at St George is a sweet Charpentier pastoral.

I have spent my life awaiting holy moments, moments of peace, moments of unexpected regard, of sudden vision, and marking them down as faithfully as I can. When I was a boy at home I’d beg not to go wherever the family was going, so I could sit alone and await the Coming. One year my father put a lonely string of Christmas lights in the crabapple, which, when lit at night, made a glittering road into the heavens, bright and dark at once, with an end unforeseeable. Last night I stayed home from a party and a concert so I could do the same, to sit in the silence until silence resolved into a song. Tonight there was caroling at church, and an organ concert at another church, and I found a way to resolved to go too late each time, so I could be here, listening to distant music, bathing in the strangeness of the Longest Night, awaiting the Voice. 

Was I asked to do this? I thought I was. I thought it was a sacrifice of what was everyone’s pleasure for a secret joy that was my reward for listening, for watching with such intensity. It has come to nothing other than itself. Perhaps I was indulging myself, doing what I pleased in a way which I could not at the outset know would separate me, however subtly, from the society around me. After a surprisingly brief time, there was no way back. There is certainly no way back now. Little hermit of the night. Little spider in the corner spinning and spinning. I thought I would be the Announcing Angel. Maybe so. Probably not.  If it comes, it must come quickly.

The bluebirds returned today. Blessing. 

A sleek red-shouldered hawk missiled into the dogwoods above the feeders. The other birds disappeared. She stayed a long time. I had my binoculars and could take in every detail. I wanted her to wait until I could through some meat into the grass, but suspected that dispensation will never come again.