A Light Knocks at the Door

an invitation to lay down the golden calves of Christmas

This essay is part of the stunning Advent collection from The Way Back To Ourselves. Please click the “Keep Reading” button to finish reading the essay there, where you’ll find the rest of the collection that you won’t want to miss, including stunning words from

Kimberly Phinney

,

Deborah Rutherford

,

Rosa Gilbert

,

Donna Bucher

,

Kristine Amundrud

, and

Heather Lobe Johnson

.

I have entered the season of Advent in a cloud of confusion and disillusionment. Hobbling toward Christmas, I feel as though a swarm of gnats is swirling around my head, my body, my very essence. For reasons I can neither see nor discern, I feel like I am being shaken upside down for my lunch money. Here—with my ankles to the heavens and my sense of identity falling all around my head like the lint and loose change from my pockets—I scan the sky for the Light and wonder why it still feels so dark.

These are the times when I begin to believe that I must take control. If the Light hasn’t come, then perhaps it’s by some fault of my own. Perhaps I must set the stage for the Light. Perhaps the Light is finicky or fickle, like an auntie who stays in the guest bedroom at Christmastime and needs the bedding just so, the temperature just right, the coffee just that way. And so I take my cues from the world around me. Our family goes dutifully to the tree farm to cut an expensive evergreen, and I take photos of my children with candy canes in Santa’s lap. I buy gifts and agonize over Shutterfly templates and burn candles with names like après-ski. We watch White Christmas and drink elixirs with snowy white foam. Beneath the twinkling glow, I am almost convinced that this is the Light, that this is all there is for us—whatever magic we can conjure or manufacture for ourselves.

But every pocket of my soul knows better.