At the Close of the Year

This weather doesn't seem like December weather-- this gray, endless soaking that's too warm for even a raincoat. I switched off the Christmas music in the car this afternoon, over great protest from the backseat, but I needed to hear the rain pounding down. To really listen to it wash the year away, back into the earth, to fertilize whatever is about to be born.

This past year I walked away from much that was damaging, from much I'd gotten wrong, from much I'd hoped would turn out another way. I was stripped back to my studs, left without that ubiquitous "five year plan," and for many months, too tired to even write. Lately, though, little wisps of thought have been making their way back into my fingers-- like the tiny buds on the Christmas cactus, the little slips of green in the pot of paperwhites. A rebirth of possibility.

I find myself craving Christ in new ways this Christmas. Each day for the past seven I've sat with the O Antiphons, those little prayers of unknown origin that popped up some time in the sixth or seventh century and somehow remain hidden jewels. They are meant for evening prayer in the last days of Advent, but I've begun my days with them, copying each on crisp, clean paper with pens in jewel-colored inks. I was struck by the desire in each of these prayers-- the intense, repeating urge that Christ should finally be embodied, to "mightily and sweetly order" all things; to "shut the mouths of kings;" to "lead the prisoners from the prison house." Christ is referred to, variously, as wisdom, as a root, as a key, as first morning light. Each ancient, mysterious metaphor arcs both backward toward prophecy and forever onward, marking the least, the last, and the lost as the people this Lord will come and save.

This past year did a number on my prayer life. It was hard on my faith as a whole, and at times I felt like I was running down a corridor with the tiniest possible flame cupped in shaking hands. Somewhere along the way, my arms grew tired. I set the flame down. I didn't want to, but I couldn't hold it anymore. The miracle of my life over this past year was that the flame did not go out. It's been beside me this whole time, small and warm, an invitation to consider that perhaps I was never meant to hold it by myself. It's a mystery whose depths I haven't been able to plumb, truthfully, but when I read the O Antiphons, I nudge up against whatever happened with that tiny flame. To whatever is still happening. To the source of light and life whose birth we await, and whose life and death sustain us even in the waiting, no matter how difficult the waiting may be.


Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, Georges de la Tour

These waning days of the year feel safe. There's a closeness inside the house as we wait for Christmas-- the kids have too much energy, and it's too wet to let them out in the yard-- but I've been content to stay inside and putter about and peek, every so often, that the flame is still there. Perhaps it draws its life from the same source from which, lately, I've drawn mine. Wisdom, a root, a key, and first morning light: a curious collection of mysteries, like little bells, pealing across the centuries and audible even in the midst of so much rain.