Where is the light?
Elizabeth Moore
It’s quiet in this apartment I used to know so well. I am relearning this again: life on my own.
Yesterday, I returned to New York after seven weeks with my family. When I walked through my door, I paused to remember where to hang my keys, my coat. I rolled an imposing suitcase into my freezing bedroom, smaller than I remembered. Does this drawer hold sweaters or shorts? I explored my kitchen cabinets and rifled through the unworn clothes in my closet, discovering things I’d forgotten I owned. A whole life here, waiting for me to unlock the door, walk in, and start living it again.
This morning, I put the gooseneck kettle on the stove and grind the coffee beans, muscle memory kicking in as I dust off my old routine. I carry my coffee to the couch and stare out the same window I’ve looked through a million times before.
I think about this year — about how I’m crossing the threshold of January much slower, much smaller this time. Last year, I had lofty goals written on sticky notes with trips, visitors, and tickets to look forward to. I intended to break ground in my career and relationships, but those ambitions have since faded, stuck in a past life that no longer feels real. This year, I have nothing to offer January but a feeble attempt at faith and a crumbling hope. I’m reluctant to expect good things because I’m haunted by the dark days we’ve endured, knowing that the darkest of all may be yet to come. Many times I’ve asked myself: In this never ending darkness, where is the light?
Another sip of coffee and the radiator hisses in the otherwise quiet living room. I raise my mug to toast A happy new year and auld lang syne! to no one in particular. And I pause to recognize that though I am alone in this empty space, I do not feel lonely. Something else is here, glowing out of sight. Fragile but enduring, delicate but unquenchable. Steady. Perceptible only by listening; and always, always there.
This light, unseen but felt, holds us impossibly together, seeing what we cannot. It’s in the warmth of clasped palms, in the sparkle of laughter among loved ones, in the simmering pot of gumbo or the ladle of mulled wine.
There is a curtained glow of warmth that safeguards this night, daring us to hope when all hope seems lost, startling us with joy, and beckoning us to peer inside frosted, glowing windows.
A (brief) liturgy for the New Year
You are here, God,
seeing what we cannot
for the darkness is as light to you.
And here we are:
safe in the pocket of your care,
beneath the shadow of your wings,
dimly comprehending one drop in the magnificent ocean of you.
You are in the slow simmers
and soul sparks that strike
again and again and again,
miraculously resilient,
in the dark.