Christmas Eve.
These are those deep dark moments before the dawn, the world swaddled in low-hanging clouds heavy with their undelivered burden of snow, only a single distant star visible just above the ridgeline to the east. Even the dogs are quiet this morning, as though they, too, recognize something profound in the air.
It will be a while yet before the sun is up; if we are lucky, the clouds will not yet be so dense as to block its red rays entirely, and we shall be granted the gift of celebratory sunrise. But even if the weather is uncooperative, the forecast suggests that the western sky will be filled with fire just before fall of night.
This is a complicated day here, one more in a complicated season. Christmas is fully manifest in our communities now as a holiday, both secular and at least partly religious. Tonight, there will be vespers in the old village at the mission church, followed by the procession of the Virgin Mary, music and celebration, bonfires blazing high in the cold winter sky.
Our cathedral is here, on the land of Wings’s ancestors: portals marked off by ancient fenceposts; a choir of trees and a pond containing waters sacred as any baptismal font; a nave of rich red-brown earth and a vaulted spire of sky; on all sides, the brilliance and beauty and color of the light, pure illuminating power unfiltered through stained-glass windows. Bone-dry in summer drought or wrapped in a blanket of snow in midwinter, the land here is holy; so is the water, and the sky.
Today will be another busy day here, although the work will revolve mostly around more ordinary tasks. To the extent we mark the holiday, most of the work is already done. It frees us to welcome the snow, if indeed it decides to appear.
And at dawn and dusk, it affords us a few moments’ quiet contemplation, as we take the time to acknowledge the light.
It is, after all, perhaps this place’s most salient feature, its greatest gift and lesson, too. The light here is a thing unto itself, its own animating force and elemental spirit. To fail to appreciate it would not be merely ungrateful, especially at this season; it would be sacrilege.
For weeks, the outside world has been wrapped in red and green: the colors of Christmas, of Santa’s suit and spangled trees. On this day, our small world here will be dressed for the season, too, in greens and reds of far more ancient pedigree. This is a land studded with the emerald hues of the evergreens — of piñon and juniper, fir and spruce, and the great soldier pines that have stood their watch for centuries and more. And as this winter’s day, this high holy day of the outside world that is to us yet one more in an unending year of holy days, draws down to dusk, it will rest in the warmth and red fire of the setting sun’s light.
And now, a faint glow appears between clouds and ridgeline; the eastern sky, still the color of charcoal, is slowly warming from below. The snowclouds have taken on a distinctly coral cast around the edges, darkening to crimson here and there. We may have snow yet today, or not; it is as mercurial as Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. But we can depend upon the arrival of the light.
On this day devoted to gifts and gratitude, it’s time to go and greet it properly.
~ Aji
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