Why be a pilgrim still?

On the solstice crossing place.

Dec 18, 2024

The morning after the storm, the sun was slow to rise. It edged above the hill as if peeking into our valley of felled trees and flooded fields, unwilling to take it full face. The lake was calm, and the mist hid all the whooper swans on the opposite bank. I watched the birds venture out after days of strong winds: hooded crows, our resident jays, blackbirds, song thrushes and a giddy cloud of long-tailed tits; everyone was famished.

We had no electricity for three days during Storm Darragh. It is one thing to wax lyrical about the dark when my house is lit up like a Christmas tree, but quite another when I’m lighting candles and firing up the superser. It made me realise how much comfort I have built into my life and how dark the dark really is.

In the quiet days that followed, I listened. This is the work of winter.

The Winter Solstice Threshold

Pereginatio est tacere - to be silent keeps us pilgrims. At this time, when there is so much noise, so many things clamouring for our attention, to be silent is an act of defiance. To retreat, go inwards, and listen to the things stirring in the depths of ourselves, will inform how we cross the winter solstice threshold.

At the darkest point of the year, I am present to an ancient fear that the light may not come back. My ancestors might not have understood the physics of our globe, but they knew a thing or two about how to align underground passages to receive the first rays of the returning sun. This marriage of light and womby dark is profound. It plants a seed of hope deeper than all the doom by which we are surrounded.

From my writing desk, I can see the Cailleach’s House on the Ballygawley Mountains. This is where the midwinter sunrise is visible from the Carrowkeel Tomb Passages. What must it have felt like, to see the sun, after so much darkness, and know that it would only get brighter from here? When did we become so complacent about the mystery of our spinning planet, tilted to take us away from the sun for so long that we fear we have been forgotten?

Moonset above the Ballygawley Mountains as we wait for the sun to rise.

What if we paused here?

In the three days between the solstice and Christmas Day, the sun stands still. On the 25th, whether it is the Son or the sun that we celebrate, the light returns. What if we paused here, on these three still days, and held the tension between darkness and light; death and rebirth; suffering and joy? What if we were silent? What if we recognised this as a threshold, as trasna, a crossing place? Perhaps we would see that it is a choice to be a pilgrim, to cycle through the seasons with intention and wake up to our lives. “Here is the world,” a voice might whisper. “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.” (Frederick Buechner)

Here is a poem that my dearest sister-in-law once shared with me. It is one of those pieces I fold up and put in my shoe for company. It reminds me to be quiet long enough to hear the questions: Why go on? What am I seeking? What is my quest?

At this crossing place, there is an invitation to take your life firmly in your two hands and choose. Will you be a pilgrim still? I hope to walk with you on the other side.

Trasna

The pilgrims paused on the ancient stones

in the mountain gap.

Behind them stretched the roadway they had travelled.

Ahead, mist hid the track.

Unspoken the question hovered:

Why go on? Is life not short enough?