This post is late in coming, but a good friend reminded me... and it's timeless, anyway.
Christmas Eve this year. I got out of work at 3 p.m., got home and walked the dog. I've always noticed a natural silence on that day, mostly because I live in the city and people are gone.... to families somewhere else.
But as I walked...two days ago, and stood by the water and looked at the stars of twilight there was a depth of feeling that only comes on that day. And that thick, wonderful, mysterious feeling wrapped itself around me and I wondered why it happens every year. I ceased being 'religious' when I was nine years old so I wasn't buying into the 'meaning' of the day.
Dog chewed on a stick and tugged this way and that, but I stopped and looked down... and up. What of the silence of the rocks, the stillness of the water? Trees did not shiver in the wind. Clouds stayed still. There was as always, an uncanny reverence to the world.
In years past, the rocks would have been hidden by the rush of the water.. the trees and clouds thrown sidewise by the wind, Maybe snow. And still that mysterious feeling overwhelmed me.
Nature does not know it's Christmas Eve, so it's all in my head.
It's all wonderfully in my head, I told myself and we walked on.
But, when I said I ceased being 'religious', I didn't stop being a spiritual person. I think there's magic in the world, and if I can't name it, so be it. I'm just grateful it comes to me in the most unexpected places.... the small wild places, where man lives, anyway.
Ahhh…my dear friend, you wrote, and wonderfully. There is a great truth here, in your words—for on Christmas Eve something does occur. Magic? Preternatural? Spiritual? You think it happens only in your own head—which I too feel in my own head and heart. Yet I also believe that this "whatever" happens beyond myself, seeping into and permeating the wind and air, the water and trees, the sand and stones and earth. I look up and see this same whatever in the stars, in all that ever was and ever will be…in the fabric of time and season and light. Magic? Preternatural? Spiritual? Truth? I'm so glad you found something there which stirred inside, the longing of life for love and peace and joy. You are going to find your way through all this: I know and proclaim it! There is a goodness and worth in you that I've always recognized, and in spite of the way you've been tossed these past months, that strength will prevail.
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