A Long Night

…and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain - not a single
answer has been found -
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

Mary Oliver

A few days ago, I took a tiny walk on the Pennine Way. The truth is, I was on the motorway anyway, and found somewhere to pull off, to face the cold air for a few moments, to capture this beauty before it was gone, though the frost was still cruel, the road ahead still long.

This landscape somehow spoke also of the cold hardness towards LGBTQIA+ people by christians and churches, and the challenge of staying soft in the face of it. Staying gentle and open hearted and hopeful.

So I took photos. I breathed the air. Felt the crunching and compressing of the snow, marvelled at the deep frost on long blades of grass, and the horizon billows of smoke above a distant city, the light growing across white hills, and transformation of everything.

As I write this, I know there’s all the easy things we could say. Of beauty, of transformation, of seasons, of coming light. And also, often, the pain is too much, the territory is too cold, the ground is too hard, you can’t feel your fingers, and you can’t face the rejection you encounter every day.

So I took photos. And I got a bacon butty and strong sweet instant coffee from a lovely woman in a shipping container cafe that was unexpectdely in the carpark. A pause on a journey I don’t want to be on. A stark day. A long night.

So I took photos, and I wrote something - what you’d read below - something about the hardness we face. The cold stretching in every direction. And the beauty that stubbornly makes its home in the expanse of cold. The light that is coming into the world.

I want to say, this is your children. Your friends. The person beside you in the pew. I want to say, how many more lies? How much more abuse? Because it is lying, to say all are welcome. Abuse, if this thing is really church. I want to say, it’s my story, it’s someone you know’s story, and it’s the unquestioned oversimplifications, the apologetics handed down from white cishet man to white cishet man, it’s the cakes. Cakes. Worth more than people.

But instead, I will say this:  A non-binary God broke though the earth as hard as iron. A queer conception created a holy child. A season steeped in tradition tells the most untraditional story. God and people. God-with-people. God-in-people. Christmas is queer, that’s for sure. A god person. Angels. Misfits and mystery. Transgressive truth. A story told in glitter and stars and song and pain and hope. 

A story that thaws water like a stone. A story that calms an anger born of a lifetime of religious abuse. A story that holds you till you stop fighting. A story that is in a snowflake. In frost on a blade of grass. My story. This story. It keeps us still. It holds us, still.

And a baby. A baby’s cries drown out the loss, the questions, the constant attack of the church (and yes, church is people), the deliberate ignorance, the loved ones who don’t fully love, for a holy night. A baby god with real tears and poop and frankincense and myrrh. Just for a moment.

And so this is Christmas. 

The dawn of redeeming grace.

The hopes and fears of all the years. 

Emmanuel. 

---

Blessing For The Longest Night

All throughout these months
as the shadows
have lengthened,
this blessing has been
gathering itself,
making ready,
preparing for
this night.

It has practiced
walking in the dark,
traveling with
its eyes closed,
feeling its way
by memory
by touch
by the pull of the moon
even as it wanes.

So believe me
when I tell you
this blessing will
reach you
even if you
have not light enough
to read it;
it will find you
even though you cannot
see it coming.

You will know
the moment of its
arriving
by your release
of the breath
you have held
so long;
a loosening
of the clenching
in your hands,
of the clutch
around your heart;
a thinning
of the darkness
that had drawn itself
around you.

This blessing
does not mean
to take the night away
but it knows
its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots
along the path,
knows what it means
to travel
in the company
of a friend.

So when
this blessing comes,
take its hand.
Get up.
Set out on the road
you cannot see.

This is the night
when you can trust
that any direction
you go,
you will be walking
toward the dawn.

Jan Richardson (with thanks to Sarah Bessey, who I heard read this aloud tonight)