Out of darkness

I am not alone. Many of us encounter a touch of melancholy towards the close of another year. We feel ourselves getting older. We wonder whether we’re any wiser. We try to take stock of what good we hope we, personally, have brought into the world, and of all we’d really rather not have brought. We begin to shape ‘new’ resolutions. We try – and sometimes fail – to voice our hopes and aspirations.

Beyond the taking stock, though, there’s a degree of melancholy, of sadness, that we can’t exactly explain. And then there are the more obvious causes for sadness, even despair for many. These don’t need explaining – words only ever seem to perpetuate them. We simply long, in every atom of our being, for them to end, for restoration of peace, for healing – though we cannot begin to imagine how healing can be brought to some of the shattered, bereaved and broken lives in our thoughts at the end of 2023.

So where do we turn when words fail as we look towards 2024? Upon what may we rest our gaze? What might we hear of comfort, of promise, when – disorientated and distressed – we cannot bear to look upon ‘The News’ (and feel profoundly uneasy about that), and are deeply concerned that almost anything we might contribute to the universal human conversation is fraught with the danger of being too glib, too ignorant, too ill-advised, too trite, too utterly unnecessary, too plain wrong?

Well, not for the first time, I cannot answer my own questions – but am aware, nonetheless, of a promise that lies buried in dark earth at this year’s end. Delicate snowdrops will find strength to push on upwards towards the light. Daffodils will grace gardens, fields, roadsides and windowsills when Spring comes. Courage in brave children, women and men will inspire us to restart and start again. And again. And again.

All of us – snowdrops, daffodils and humankind – must learn how to live, and to communicate, and to thrive, in the new, ever-changing and – for some – alien and unwanted environments in which we find ourselves. We will do well to speak with tenderness, out of thoughtful consideration and reflection, and to listen more carefully, to the voices of the severely oppressed, of refugees, and of the young – many of them crying and pleading from the heart.

We will be mindful of the hidden strength in much that we have thought delicate. And we must hope with all our best might and main that every effort at perseverance, at bravely pushing up through darkness towards tomorrow’s light, will make for a better world – for happier, wiser, new years.

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