This is what it looked like on the last Wednesday in December, an ocean of bleached stubble rolling all the way to the edge of the woods on the far horizon.
The neighbor friend I visit each week lives at the edge of this field, sits out in his garage with Dozer, his pit bull, and watches the weather and the seasons change. Last week, he said, a flock of starlings came in, painting the sky with the graceful designs of their flight. He estimates they numbered three hundred thousand. Imagine the sound!
They come to feast on the remains of the harvest, the golden kernels scattered on the ground. And then they go, and the world is still again, with only a whisper of wind, playing the cut stalks as if they were its pan pipes.
Now that the earth is asleep it’s up to the sky to hold all the colors, the hues of blossoms and silken plumage. It does so luminously, as a gift, to remind us that glory is not only possible, but irrepressible, even in the dark and the cold.
In less than a week we’ll be into the new year. Today, the rains came, as if on a mission, as if they were sent to wash away the rubble of the passing year: the shards of suffering and anger, of pain and fear and loss– everything false– to dissolve it completely, leaving nothing behind but swaths of truth and faith and goodness, stretches of miracles and healing, and reaching for connection, the unspeakable beauty, everything–and only those things– born of absolute love. I smile at the dream and watch the raindrops with their upside-down reflections of the world slide down the window pane the way that sands glide through an hour glass. Next week, it will already be the next year.
“It’s odd weather for Christmas in these parts,” he said to his cousin, an old man near his own age, whom he hadn’t seen In years, a guest for the holiday. “We’re used to snow,” he went on, climbing the hill, pointing out rocks and roots in the woodsy terrain, “Not this fifty degrees and rain stuff.”
They pause to catch their breath and look around. “I like the snow. It pretties things up a bit. Especially now that everybody will be taking down their Christmas lights. It gets so dull and seems so gray–don’t you think– without the Christmas lights and snow?”
“Nah,” the cousin says. “I just pretend I woke up on a different planet. And I’m all curious, trying to figure out what I’m seeing. Just now, for instance, I glanced over there.” His finger points at a clump of green moss that’s climbing the remains of a cinder block wall. “See? See? It’s a piney forest of some kind stretching up into a midnight sky. But there are no stars. Maybe it’s the moon lighting up the trees. What do you think?”
The first old guy squats down, peering at the moss from eye level. “I see stars,” he says. “They’re dull, but I see them.” He’s looking hard at it now. “Or maybe,” he says, caught unawares in the game, “it’s just a different atmosphere that doesn’t bounce back light like ours. ”
The visiting cousin grins. He sees that he caught his childhood pal, snatched him right out of his world. “No! I know what it is!” he says, letting his old friend in on the joke. “It’s moss growing on an old wall, putting on a show for us two old fools.”
And they laugh and climb on, Christmas lights inside them that they have no intention of ever taking down.
It was a silent night because there are no words. Who could say its meaning? I once heard a song that said for each child that’s born the morning star sings a greeting, calling it by name. But on that night, whole hosts of angels sang. You can hear them still, in your heart, in the core of you, if you listen. Their song is right there, beneath your breath, pumping through your blood, saying you belong to the Yes and are of it, enveloped in its wondrous, infinite Love. And all It asks is that you pass it on. That’s its nature—to flow through all creation, every speck of it, even you, even me. Pass it on.
At dusk, the gloom of the day suddenly gave way to a wash of color in the western sky. A blush of lavender and rose, it seemed somehow a sign of hope, a promise glowing through the calm and silent air. Christmas, I thought. That’s its message. That’s the promise. That’s the hope.
