Tracks in the snow

One more sleep until Christmas. Perhaps appropriate to acknowledge that this time of year can be difficult for people in the best of years, and we’ve not had really good years for a couple of cycles. The global failure to inoculate a sufficient portion of the population has brought us damned near a full alphabet of variants. Healthcare systems throughout the world are hanging on by a thread. It’s hard to muster up comfort and joy in the midst of grief and anxiety.

I thought about this a while ago on my morning walk. I was at the apogee of my circuit—meaning either way I turned I had a 30-minute walk to get home—when precipitation stung my face like needles. Sleet; deep joy. But after about five minutes I realized that the sun was shining, and when I looked up there was a huge rainbow ahead of me—so wide I couldn’t capture it all at once on my mobile phone. And the sleet stopped, so I was only marginally wetter than I normally am.

I took that as a Sign; reminding me that for most of us, crappy times pass. Or at least that, in the midst of those times, there are rainbows, if you look up from the crap.

So my Advent music for today is Natalie MacMaster and Alison Krauss performing MacMaster’s “Get Me Through December”.