‘The fourth light of Advent is the light of Man,
the light that shines love to give and understand.’
Advent Steiner verse.
The night before last, after a cold, bright day spent in Galway— my favourite Irish city—with my two favourite people; I came home and knew one of the most special times of the year had arrived. For the last few years I’ve been buying a beautiful notebook (mostly I just use basic plain ones) to open the week before Christmas and use through into the new year. Last year and this year’s were both pink — a colour I only began to be drawn to when I was pregnant. I’m someone who is so drawn to this time of year but who struggles with the deep sorrow and anxiety that surrounds it for me and so many others with difficult childhoods/ memories etc. For me that can look like extreme lows; right at the time I love most of all. I have very few good memories of Christmas and lots of heartbreaking ones, so I’m working hard to try to loosen the hold a past like that can have. The year I stopped drinking was the first year I bought a notebook for this time period. Something about this intentional action; the giving of space and time to journal; the promise from myself to myself that I would carve time out to listen to the child inside me and comfort her (you are worthy, you are safe, you deserve to heal), felt life changing. It is one of the most sacred rituals I choose to hold near.
After I’d put my wee one into our bed, I came out to the stove my partner had lit for us. I wrote only a few lines, the day had been full and left me bone-tired. I wrote about these boats in the harbour, all dressed with fairy lights, and about the joy my son experienced when he realised I was taking him, just before sunset, to the park. I wrote of his increasing vocabulary, and made note to write about ritual here. The list : pink notebooks, coffee cup, etc. I left both the notebook and the coffee cup in question on the table beside my armchair and made for bed. In the morning , as I gratefully roused from a dream of swimming in a deep lake at sunset, my partner told me my mug was — without even being touched — broken beyond repair. All the fragments had turned to pieces too small to even see.
I have a long history of broken things: families; a collar-bone; relationships; friendships; mobile phones; teeth — but the things I break most of all are beautiful things. Mostly pottery. Mostly things that were given to me by people that really matter to me, often made by them. The thing I have noticed, odd though this may sound — is that this often intensifies at periods of great turbulence on my life— when the winds of change are howling at the door.
And indeed they are howling just now. Our wee house has been sitting at ‘sale agreed’ for a truly unsettling amount of time without moving to the next stage; the one in which we might be able to find another house. This is not an unusual state for me to be in; I’ve often not had any clue where I’ll be living the following week let alone year, but it feels a little different now as a mother. I feel like it’s a very important part of keeping my child safe— making sure we get these next steps right. Making sure we find somewhere with a good strong community ; somewhere wild enough to meet his needs; social enough to meet his parents’ needs.
What does this all have to do with that mug though? In Cacophony Of Bone I explore a little the draw many of us have to objects and to ritual.
‘I cannot get away, these last weeks, of thinking about how we choose to spend our days.
Of our rituals.
…The gentle, insistent act of repeating. How it creates equilibrium between the small & the vast, the seen & unseen, the self & other, the part & the whole.’
During the lockdowns I found myself in this small cottage, looking at the same small collection of objects — and really thinking about what they meant to me. And how best I might learn to live in a way that invites room for the sacred in my everyday life.
I’ve noticed that, since having my child, my relationship with objects and ritual has changed. Some things matter so much more, in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. Others, like my favourite mug, the one I use every day, don’t seem to matter in quite the same way. I had planned on keeping these candles, made by another mother I knew long ago , and this lovely candle holder — one of the only things I bought in Edinburgh the first time I took my son there — when he napped in the pram so I couldn’t see the exhibition I was at the gallery to see, to use next week on my birthday. I’ve only in very recent years begun marking my birthday in any real way — like Christmas it holds lots of memories I’d rather forget— but it’s important for me now to give myself time and care on that day; to reshape things to how they really should be.
But there are some days on which we are a little more in need of light, and so I’ve already lit this candle l, and am glad I did. There will be other candles, perhaps, for my birthday, and other ways to mark that moment. As those of us who celebrate Christmas move closer towards these days that hold such joy and such sadness depending on out pasts; depending on our current lives, I hope you can find a way to shape this time how you feel it is right to. I hope you can find stillness amidst any brokenness that may exist for you; beauty in the sorrow; hope in the dark.
The objects we choose to keep close in these days matter, the way we spend these days will make a huge difference for how we feel at this time, the way we mark things—Christmas, birthdays, love, loss— holds power to change our lives. The world around us is in deep need of our care; the humans around us too.I’m sending you all deep love and healing light. I hope that your days are merry and bright, but most of all I hope you feel safe. That you know that even in the midst of brokenness, light still finds its way. X
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LISTENING- SOLOMON BROWNE - Callum Mitchell’s moving telling of the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster.
READING- Alfie’s Christmas on repeat.
MOVED BY- my body’s ability to keep on despite not feeling all that well.
GRATEFUL FOR - light , love, hope & joy
Ah yes, wonderful evocations of the heart-spirit embodied/held/expressed by the objects we cherish and keep within sight, in our palm at teatime or on the wall drawing a gaze or grazing peripheral awareness as we go about our days. It’s lovely see these glimpses of the simple beauties in and around your homespace; thanks for sharing both words and pictures.
A beautiful read, thank you. A new notebook and the ritual of writing is balm for me too. You’ve described the duality of this time of year so well. “The gentle, insistent act of repeating” is ringing in my ears. A lovely reminder of ritual and our instinctive need for it.