Another repost because I have found it helpful to take a look at previous advent journeys. This one was from last year, and uses a poem that I am still chewing on- it comes to me regularly as I walk the hills… the sense of being ‘not alone’. I hope it resonates.

It goes without saying that here in the northern hemisphere, the advent season is inseperable from the deepening of winter, the shortening of days towards icy darkness. The longing for light. It is this juxtaposition that adds immersurably to the poigniancy of how we approach it, so much so that I find it difficult to imagine what a southern hemisphere advent, with just the opposite trajectory, might look and feel like.

Here there is also a feeling that we are treading pre-Christian paths too, in that the traditions that come to us only in fragments suggest that our ancestors also felt the spiritual significance of this season, so much so that they celebrated their own rebirth in the great festival of Yule, the winter solstace. Of course, many of these fragments live on in our Christmas traditions – the date itself, the mistletoe, the father christmas, the tree, the candlelight…

Rather than disturbing our Christian world view, I think it is more helpful to attempt towards a gratefulness because we stand in a long line of people trying to hold and help each other through the darkness.

I don’t need to tell many of you about how hard the season of darkness can be, or why the depths of winter – approaching the enforced jollility of Christmas – can sometimes be a very lonly place. Perhaps it was different in past, in those more connected, agricultural communities that previously celebrated the winter solstace, but then again, there are always outliers in any human grouping; those of us who are cast low or cast out.

Despite the stark beauty, winter can be cruel.

In to this dark place, the Jesus that comes through old stories (and through the lives of those trying to hold and help) is not one who makes everything ‘better’. S/he does not make the winter go away. The searing passage from the beginning of John’s gospel about darkness not being able to put out the light never pretended that darkness would not continue.

Light exists in the midst of darkness, just like solstice comes at the depth of winter.

I would like to share with you a poem, which means a lot to me. It was my attempt to banish my own winter blues and to look for light.

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Light of the world

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The low winter sun takes power from

Puddles of last night’s rain and I turn away

Resonating to signals sent from distant stars

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Something glints in the tops of bare branches –

A flash of wing or a white tooth or the

Coming together of choirs of angels

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And in a wet manger of clogged earth, summer

Sleeps, waiting for light to burst out

Brand-new hallelujahs

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For behold, the light is with us. The light is

In us. The light shines in the darkest places –

It even shines in me