When I began to write this, it was the first morning of the first day of winter, and with it the return of the light. Dawn was heavy here, deep gray clouds over a deep gray sea. But it’s two days until Christmas, now, rainy, foggy, wet, and the dark is long. Despite the heavy gray, with the shift into winter, I know that light will come back soon. I reread several times, the words to a Christmas carol: “Lo, how a rose.” In all the frenzied rhetoric of politics, and the inflated hysteria of news coverage, I’m so glad to be reminded of the quietness of Advent, and the waiting, the image of a rose not yet bloomed.

Tuesday was the shortest day–the fewest hours of actual sunlight. Today was not much different, this Wednesday before Christmas. The North Pole is tilted away from the sun, tipped earth, ready to turn back, like that far pose of a dancer who leans into space until we think she might fall, and then, as gracefully returns again. The earth rounds her courses along the horizon, the changing line of the sun’s rising mark the course. “O Dawn,” rings in one of the O Anthiphons. And here, for encouragement, from the Rule of Taize: “Renouncing henceforth all thoughts of looking back, and joyful with infinite gratitude, never fear to precede the dawn: to praise and bless and sing Christ your Lord.”

Never fear to precede the dawn with praise. Tonight is a waiting night. Everything is almost ready, a few last details. Each moment I’m grateful for the peace with which I live these days, and carry inside me, too, the sorrows of people, of friends, of family members, of parishioners, of strangers wandering far from home, of what seems like an endless cycle of violence, and into all that a child is born. We had a real baby this year for the Christmas pageant at church, and all he wanted to do was hold onto one of the children’s hands. You could see his tiny fingers grasping hers, curled around, and holding on for dear life. She held onto him, and he held her, an image of Christmas, holding God holding us.