A Prayer for Light

We gather to pray for the return of the light. Teetering on the thin edge of light, entering fully into the darkness, there is no way out but through. Each year, we wrestle with this unwilled descent into shadow, each alone with it, facing down our individual darknesses.

And yet, we can, and we do, gather to pray for the return of light, for lightness of heart, for the luminescence of a full-throated summer sun, for a light spirit treading lightly in the world.

We cherish and trim our candles, and hold them high in the darkness. In this hearth-keeping, this light-kindling, we feel a long connection with women down through the ages who have worked, mightily, to do the same for the ones they love, and for themselves. And the light does not, did not, illuminate only—no, it throws off warmth as well, to thaw the deep chill and unfreeze the mind.

I wish so fervently to nourish an illuminating, warming life force in myself, to fan it into a bright flame, letting it penetrate all my being and all my doing, and then to project it bravely beyond myself. I pray for the return of the light, in my world and in the world.

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse 
from Our Solstice Sampler, December 19, 2013

Be the Light

Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden.

–Attributed to Philo

I came upon this attributed quote in Kayak Morning, Roger Rosenblatt’s second memoir of grief upon the sudden death of his beloved only daughter. (His first memoir, Making Toast, explores his grief and the mixed joys of stepping in with his wife to help raise their three motherless grandchildren.)

Philo reminds us how fragile we all are, all the time.

We are entering the darkest days of our calendar, as well as the season of several festivals of light and hope. The interplay of light and darkness at this time of year is always compelling, serving as a potent metaphor for the mix of joy and sadness, gifts and burdens, that life inevitably brings.

I have never felt the shared burdens of so many people in my life as acutely as I do this year. Dear friends facing disease, their own or that of close family members, pacing themselves with great courage and equal difficulty through treatments that bring their own terrible afflictions and uncertain outcomes. Acquaintances fighting visa issues that have shadowed their lives for years, and now finally bring them to face the starkest possibilities. The waters seem to be rising for friends who daily tread against the deep currents of depression and loneliness. Almost everyone my age is making some arduous trip to spend the holidays with failing parents, hoping to do what they can to ease day-to-day living while hedging against the ravages to come. And, as if these trials weren’t enough, our nation reels and mourns at yet another mass shooting in a school, this time of the very youngest schoolchildren and their teachers, who displayed unimaginable courage and resilience in the face of unimaginable horror.

Reading this quotation, and observing the folks around me,  I am struck anew by how difficult, even impossible, the daily carrying of these burdens, much less into a season of celebration, can be.  While this interplay of light and dark has usually, for me, encouraged the perspective of light penetrating gloom (think The Little Match Girl and her impossibly upbeat appreciation for the light shining from warm family homes and from her few brief matches), for those living in deep shadow, the light may not penetrate at all, or may seem to shine an ironic, elusive spotlight on darkness.

And so back to the wise and simple words of Philo: Be kind.

Bring light.

When you think you cannot bear any more of your own darkness, try to lighten the burden of someone around you.

My current practice is to attempt to be present to the beloved friends and family members who need it, whether they know it or not, whether they are able to ask for it or not. To break out of my daily routine and invite a friend who needs a break to a matinee, and afterward, to stand in the parking lot as long as possible, laughing and crying by turns. To celebrate my friends in small ways; call someone I have fallen out of touch with; make eye contact with passersby in a way I usually don’t while walking; tell someone who doesn’t know I am aware of their existence that I appreciate the way they do their job all year.

Be kind. Bring light. Presume good will.

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse

The Spirit of Birds

When I entered the small living room of my host on the Solstice day, my eyes were drawn immediately to the Christmas tree, flocked in white and covered in birds: clear glass birds, traditional ornament birds, felted birds, birds made of bells and pinecones.  The tree was magical, and it drew me once again to a story I have been trying to write for months, well years really: a story of birds on a Christmas tree.

My auntie, long deceased, gave bird ornaments.  She believed that birds should hang on Christmas trees. Every year she bought a new bird to hang on the tree in her home, and gave it to her son, her only child, to fill him with the magic of birds.

After Auntie died I picked my cousin up at the airport to spend the holiday with our family, his first Christmas without his mother.  He told me sadly that he would miss getting a bird from his mother.  At her death, I hadn’t thought of this detail, as I am sure he hadn’t until this season came around.  I asked him what he did with all the birds from past Christmases.  “Gone,” he said.  “She sold them in a garage sale when I was in college.”

I remember the sale.  Auntie was tired of moving, tired of schlepping her things from apartment to apartment, tired of fighting with her only son, and tired of the pain that comes with divorce. She sold it all: childhood toys, jewelry, family antiques, clothing, and Christmas decorations.

For many years now, I have been reliving that garage sale.  Wishing I had the presence of mind to stop it or to at least stop the sale of those birds.  I wished I could have bought them and presented them to my cousin in some grand gesture of family love and loyalty.  I even pictured myself going door to door on the street where Auntie lived asking people if they had bought any bird ornaments at a garage sale, oh so many years ago.  Every year at about this time I can picture the event: bird ornaments being lifted out of a dusty card board box as they were sold one by one on a hot July day while my cousin waited tables in a far away town, trying to save enough money to buy books for college, unaware that they were disappearing.

The story has a happy ending, I told my host, whose tree I stood there and admired.  A few years later my cousin married a woman who gives him a bird ornament every year for Christmas. He has 10 now. 

Legend says that birds are the carriers of spirit: taking the soul with them as they fly high above treetops or perch on branches to sing their song, and so I bask in the glow of my hosts bird filled Christmas tree in the waning light of this solstice day.  All those years I had pictured the fateful garage sale when really this special bird filled tree is what I should have been dreaming about. I finally understand what Auntie always knew. At last, I am comforted by birds. 

Amy C for the PGM

Light in Darkness

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Chinese Proverb

As the days darken down, I find myself in a transitional space. I have lived almost my entire life in northern regions, where a first hint of winter enters on the wind while fall is still in full swing, and darkness bleeds into daylight well before anyone is ready to face the inevitable reduction in exposure to the sun.

For me, this transition to a dimmed existence is deeply familiar, yet tinged with familiar comforts. My emergence into this bleak, wintry world is simultaneously colored by glimpses of extraordinary luminescence, made visible in contrast to darkness: the stark illumination of an icy moon and the miraculous, mirrored radiance from fields of snow; the warm glow of simple, brown-bag luminaria on a  dark path; the reflected glimmer of a Christmas tree in beloved ornaments; flickering candlelight highlighting family faces at my dinner table.

I grew up in a relatively small town, in a relatively simpler time, and experienced the freedoms (as well as the limitations) that existence offered.  One freedom was a less vigilant attitude about the movements of young girls in the waning hours of daylight. I remember walking home from a friend’s house or school in darkness, feeling covered by darkness in an empowering way, captivated by my own breath visible in the night, buoyed by the ambient brightness of snow blanketing roofs and yards, animated by cold and the brisk walking pace it encouraged.

As I age, the cold seems colder (although Bloomington is the most southerly home I have ever had), and the darkness often seems too dark, an inconvenience at best and a serious threat to harmony and mental health on the worst days.

This year, I’m making a winter resolution, to recall the feelings of aliveness and comfort that early dark and cold can spark, and to create light and warmth wherever and whenever I can for myself and those around me. I’m lighting the Christmas tree as long as possible, and this morning, I put fresh candles in the kitchen candleholders. I’m offering mugs of cocoa daily to my girls, topped with airy clouds of whipped cream, and planning frequent  evening baking.

May you surround yourself and yours with warmth and light to last into the now-unimaginable heat of summer.

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse