This picture of a cold winter sunset is from the end of November. I certainly wouldn't have been able to get a picture of the sunset on this Winter Solstice. We have been having heavy snow and high winds since early afternoon. Sure looks like the first day of winter. It's supposed to keep up until tomorrow evening. It felt good not to have to be anywhere and to sit in my warm home looking out on snow flying horizontally across the lake.
In some Christmas cards I wrote yesterday I said that it didn't look like Christmas but we could keep Christmas in our hearts. Now it can be in our eyes as well as in our hearts.
For those of us who grew up in these hills, snow at Christmas was pretty much taken for granted. If you were to ask me to recall some time from my childhood when I felt most secure, it would be coming out of Christmas Midnight Mass with snow falling thick on our faces and laughing parishioners wishing each other Merry Christmas. I felt the large embrace of this family of faith.
It is dark now and the howling wind is beating snow against the windows. I think of how frightening a solstice night like this must have seemed to the people who built Stonehenge 5,000 years ago. For too many days they would have watched the sun lose its battle with night. Now it would look like darkness had won.
We know that isn't so, but there are times when another kind of darkness seems about to envelop our world and we need so much to hear "A people who walked in darkness have seen a great light! On those who live in a land of gloom a light has shone!" (Isaiah 9:1, from Christmas Midnight Mass)
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