These are words – as nouns – that I always associate with the solstice and with the Christmas season. Hope burgeons with the promise of longer days. And although winter has just begun, it has also just begun to end. Not that winter is a bad thing – it’s beautiful. But the dark days can be wearisome, especially in climates where the sun makes itself scarce, even for the few hours of daylight that we have.
And wonder: wonder at the fact that a season has yet again passed, a season has yet again begun. It just keeps going round and round. Wonder when, as this year, that planets cross paths, that the moon frames their meeting. Wonder that, although we can explain so much, so much remains to be understood. Wonder, really, that it all is at all.
Hope – the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson phrased it
Wonder – a sense of the miraculous
(Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash)
