At the Bottom of the Year

Each Advent season is new. Those most recent have been tumultuous: COVID, bitterly cold snows, visionaries speaking frankly of a coming apocalypse. But other things as well: our own issues, the creeping age factor, the death of loved ones. Advent, like a creaking old metal gate, corrects us every time. It lets us know that only one thing matters: the stable, that little crib where cows chewed hay. Children, and childlike adults, still find all the consolation they need there. We wait for a ...