A Long Winter’s Night 2013 – Day 1: Find Joy in the Darkness
Posted By Randy on December 21, 2013
Winter begins today, and those of us who understand the joys of travelling dark forest trails can walk slower tonight, for there is more darkness to enjoy.
As I recall, the last time we all gathered here for A Long Winter’s Night, we were staring down the barrel of yet another ending of the world. Apparently nothing can shut me up, because you’re now invited to follow me on yet another winding path through the haunted wonders of Wintertime, all the way to year’s end. Welcome back.
If you follow us here, you will know that although Mrs. LFM and I come from traditional Christian upbringings – she Catholic, I Presbyterian – our spiritual paths had gone elsewhere before we became One. I won’t speak for my incomparable Wife, but for myself I’ve written a bit about the catalyst of this before:
From an early age I was acutely aware of the perpetual tug of war between reason and primal fear of the unknown. While as a child I was very religious in the Christan sense, something I have since been cured of, I somehow grasped that there were things and forces sharing the universe with me that I could not yet understand or even detect, and that became progressively more obviously beyond the ken of my available stable of adult authority figures the more of them I consulted. Asking a question along these lines always met with an answer lying between a patronizing reply embracing the “we are not meant to know” philosophy on the one hand, and the making of the secret sign to ward off evil on the other. In fact I’m not completely certain that my paternal grandfather wasn’t advocating driving a stake through my heart while there was still time. ~ Musings as Hallowe’en Approaches
However you approach this time of year, and however you express your faith, one thing is certain – you cannot escape being touched by Winter, for even in the glory of Spring, the height of Summer, and the celebration of abundance that is the harvest, all is abuzz with frantic preparations for her coming. Winter, in Truth, rules everything.
To set the mood, today I’m going to open this Long Winter’s Night with a couple of seasonal ditties that may sound familiar, but you will find contain sentiments that harken back to times when spiritual understandings were not so anthropocentric, and Nature spoke Her Truth directly and clearly to the souls of Men. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
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