26 December 2009 – Restlessly joyful

Those Silurian brackeny hills above Kington were white; the road to church crunched under foot and the bells rang out beneath an ice blue sky. Together we gathered to give thanks for the most extraordinary event this universe has every seen since its marvellous and unfathomable creation. Humanly speaking I am pessimistic about the future of our species and this delicate slither of life which is our planet home. But experience teaches me hope founded on something wider and deeper and timeless. The fifth candle was lit in our church on Christmas morning, lights symbolizing the long heralded coming of God to earth fettered in flesh. The Patriarchs saw it dimly, the Prophets foretold it scarcely daring to comprehend it, The Apostles were burdened with this heavy news, Mary the servant was pierced by it; finally the light of the world was come, and as St John puts it “the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not comprehended it”.

We went forward to receive the gifts of bread broken and wine poured out, quietly, personally. My eyes wandered up the stained glass window to the image of the cross. There the mystery is focused. Out of light, through darkness, came life for those who come near. Light-darkness, birth-death, new life and hope for the pilgrim, walking lightly, going together on unknown paths towards a certain home.

TS Eliot said it in his Journey of the Magi:.“.were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There as a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.” Hope possesses shape and life when you are “no longer at ease here”, when you throw out your foreign gods. Jeanette Winterson in her fable The Lion, the Unicorn and Me, gathers in the eternal with the imprisoned past, the breathtaking reality of divine intervention. “The kings came inside even though there was no inside left now that we were blown inside out, time past and future roaring round us like a wind, and eternity sitting above us, like angels, like a star. The kings kneeled and one of them, the youngest, began to cry.” ....began to weep in unreasoning unfathomable joy at a promise we dare to believe.

Walking home in the sunlit snow through the parkland we kicked the ice in a shower, crunched the frozen turf, disturbed the sheep, unwitting spectators of angelic heralds bringing “good news of great joy that will be for all people.” Strange and wonderful that at this winter solstice the creation itself speaks hope in shards of light in the winter darkness. A Great spotted woodpecker drummed its territorial tattoo on an old oak in the wood; a dunnock began feebly to sing, stirred by the boldness of the sun. The dipper flew piping down river; in the dead of winter he sings secretly by the sweet murmuring Arrow. The unsettling flight of hope, restlessly joyful.