Not quite three weeks past Christmas, we are moving into the heart of winter. The Julian calendar celebrates old Twelfth Night January 17th, and this is the traditional date for Wassailing in parts of England; maybe somehow this is where my lingering sense of Christmas originates. Because the sense of stillness, of a balance of light and dark, cold and warmth, that begins for me in the Christmas season– blessedly irregardless of the hubbub spinning around– does not subside December 26, or January 2, or even January 7, the day after Epiphany. It lingers through the month.
O great mystery. This most beautiful Christmas Matins chant never ceases to remind me of something much greater and deeper than us poor humans. Something far beyond our limited comprehension, fleetingly accessible at moments of transcendance. Works of art, visual, auditory, offer us a glimpse.
And love may, depending where we are on our path, and the balance of egos, desire, self-awareness. Love that conquers all, causes the ills and cures them, both. It is not pretty or easy or soft, though it may be all these at any given moment.
Acceding to it and accepting our powerlessness is at once terrifying and a comfort like no other, brutally humbling and sweetly thrilling. It is a mystery with no solution.
O magnum mysterium.