Hardy on the New Year

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians 

The Trinitarian, January 2014

English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy wrote the following about the New Year’s season: 

The Year’s Awakening

How do you know that the pilgrim track

Along the belting zodiac

Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds

Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds

And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud

Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,

And never as yet a tinct of spring

Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;      

O vespering bird, how do you know,           

How do you know?

How do you know, deep underground,

Hid in your bed from sight and sound,

Without a turn in temperature,

With weather life can scarce endure,

That light has won a fraction’s strength,

And day put on some moments’ length,

Whereof in merest rote will come,

Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;      

O crocus root, how do you know,           

How do you know?

January, though the coldest month here, already has started to see slightly longer days and shorter nights.  After an Epiphany-tide where we talk about light in darkness, and God being manifested in surprising ways and places, we will soon be in Lent, when the rapidly lengthening days will bring us to Holy Week and Easter. 

Truly big and good things often start out small.  Faith starts small.  It may start out as a vague feeling that turns into a hope, then a quiet thought, and then a word.  The word grows louder and louder, and calls us to actions, and they eventually become a way of life.

Older people often focus on what we are losing in old age.  But it is important to remember that our whole lives are but a small, quiet start of something truly good and big.  Fall and winter may remind us of our advancing age and mortality, but growing spring and summer should be seen as symbols of hope, of something great beyond even death itself. 

Grace and peace, 

Fr. Tony+