A Deep River Year
December 3, 2014

Last week the town crew was out all day, attaching evergreens and great red bows to the hundreds of lampposts lining Main Street.    It was an expensive project, to be sure, considering the cost of all the materials as well as the paid hours necessary to do the job.   But it looks beautiful to have the town decked out for the season, and most of us deem it worth the cost.  This Saturday night is the annual holiday stroll, with all the shops open, a horse drawn wagon for the kids, a tree-lighting ceremony and a gingerbread house contest.

But I am struck by all those red bows fluttering in the December breeze.  In these dim, gray days, they proclaim a joy that captures us, lifts us out of the year’s doldrums.     December, this colorless month, is edged with red as a gift, calling us to celebrate even in the dark times.  We see it out the kitchen window as a pair of cardinals wing their way to our bird feeder, a glory in feathers.   By the front door, the winterberry bushes are covered with red berries the size of marbles, and over across the yard the holly seems to be singing the old medieval carol:  “The holly bears a berry as red as any blood!”  

Maybe that is why red makes the heart leap.    It is the color of our blood, the essential substance that pulses in and out of our hearts, giving us life.   Often when we see blood’s red it is a sign of danger.   There has been an accident, an injury, a wound that must be tended.  Our blood best does its work unseen.  But the red around us in the world reminds us of that hidden source of life, the primal red that is within all human beings.    It is a call to embrace life, to wonder at this secret that hides within us.     It is the force that turns winter away, that reminds us that we are all family.  It makes us want to sing.   

Red

In the wakening light
of earliest morning
a flash of red outside the window
promises something beautiful
in these grim days.
It is just a  bird seeking food,
but also something to stir the heart.
It is rose and berry and blood,
a wild and feathered miracle
that flies like joy.
We shall hang scarlet bows
on wreath and mantel,
deck our tables with holly,
its red berries winking a secret
to us in our passing.
This red is in us,
the life of life,
the thing that will help us to endure
the darkest winters,
the brightness that binds us
to friend and stranger,
the color of miracles in a gray time
that make us fly like joy.

--Timothy Haut, December 3, 2014