Out of the Darkness...

...into the light. Today is the earliest sunset of the year. From now on the sunsets will be later every day. (It won't be the shortest day of the year until December 21 when the sun will begin to rise earlier). 

Advent is said to be the time of waiting, but I think we are all waiting for something most of the time. My next door neighbor who lost her house told me she wasn't resentful or even angry...just sad. She lost her paints and brushes, her art, her furniture and clothing and...her can opener, one of those things we take for granted until we need to open the cranberry jelly on Thanksgiving day and there is no can opener in the drawer. They are renting a house across town while they wait to rebuild their home.

The world is waiting for a vaccine against this virus that has changed our lives so much. We are waiting to hug our loved ones again, to celebrate all the birthdays that were missed this year, to go back to school or to church or a Pilates class 

Will is waiting to start his first job, Peter is waiting to find out if he will be able to go back to university classes in person. Matt is waiting on a business deal, Rick is waiting to start up a plant he has been building....

We are waiting to see what plants come back and which ones will have to be taken out. We're waiting to see if the guy with the ugly prefab house above us comes back and puts on a second story. 

The one certain thing about waiting is the uncertainty, and there is something about light that helps banish the uncertainty, or at least helps us to tolerate it. The uncertainty of the night gives way to the morning light when nothing seems as bad.

Perhaps lighting a candle or putting up some lights is like creating a   little dawn, asserting a little control, setting aside the uncertainty.

--There is a crack,
a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen-