温哥华湖公园

Fisherman trying his luck along the shores of Vancouver Lake with Mt. St Helens in the background.
The light slips out of the world so easily; it darkens and fades and threatens never to return.  I felt like a druid here, looking over the flimsy work of a group of human beings, two dozen pier poles appearing so minuscule in the wide expanse of the earth, water and sky. 

And I thought back to a time five thousand years ago, and to a group of people huddling in a circle of stones, as the longest night of the year faded and their prayers for another day were answered. A febrile ball of light rolled up over the horizon.  The earth was not extinguished.  Crops would rise come Spring.  And the summer light, and summer warmth would soon be theirs again.

But, oh, the night they had to pass to arrive at that conclusion.

How many of those nights does each of us pass now?   Dark, harrowing passages of our own making?  Filled with doubt, wide and dark, and fed by utter desperation?

They are not permanent, you know.  They ebb. They fade. And they dim in the cloud of memory as surely as the solstice.

So on this shortest day of the year, for all of you, and particularly for a friend who has undergone a great tragedy from which she is yet to emerge, I offer you this promise.

There is no darkness strong enough to conquer you.  The day will lift up as it always has.  

I swear to you, with every ounce of faith I have: your light will shine again.
The southern shore of Vancouver Lake.  I would have taken these on the solstice, but we're going to have rain that day.  No matter, one day earlier and the light is still struggling to assert its presence.
Stately old Oak off the lake's southeastern shore.
Dusk along the marshlands near the border of the lake.


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