I’m sitting in the den having conversation with the Divine when I hear my neighbour’s truck rumble to life. I glance at the clock; it’s still early. Too early for many. He is returning to work after the holiday and I’m tending to the first business of the day under my blanket in the silence of a still-sleeping house. All over the city I imagine people crawling out from the festivities, bleary-eyed and still a little turkey drunk, hungry for a bit of ordinary.
We’ve welcomed good news and great joy, but also borne broken bones and broken hearts. We crawl toward the end of the year scarred, nursing wounds we didn’t have when it began fresh and full of promise. We inch closer to one last manufactured holiday, fat with the season’s feast and starving for a little less.
Beautiful and terrible, that’s the stuff we’ve come through. It’s what we’re heading into: we know it, deny it as we try.
I think of clusters of yellow tomato blossoms on plants in my kitchen hydroponic garden, and how I smiled yesterday when I saw the first of many tiny fruit hidden in the foliage. It’s the promise of delight that keep us putting one weary foot in front of the other. Unexpected things. Simple things. Bittersweet things. Like the belly laugh of a baby and holding the wrinkled hand of a parent on her way out of this world.
The year winds down. We hold on to promises and pray for strength to help us make it through another day. We’re ready to release the hold this year has had on us through all the wonderful and tragic things it has been. We’re ready for the fallow of January and the opportunity to be still. We’re ready. Make us ready. Carry us safely across the finish line. Selah.
