Miracle as intention

Photo credit: Anne Haarmark Møllmann 2021

In my mother’s home we use live candles on our real Christmas tree. As a result, we light it only twice: on Christmas Eve and on New Year’s Eve. We watch the tree closely when lit, for obvious reasons. It is an undeniable fire-hazard. But we also watch it because it is fleeting. The tiny candles we use for the tree last 30 minutes at most.

There is something reverent about the attention we pay to this ordinary tree at that time. We don’t talk much, except to jokingly bet on which candle will burn out first (my mother usually wins). It’s not like we haven’t seen this before, but it feels new and special and fragile every time. We worked to get here: several ornaments are handmade, many of them old, carefully packed and unpacked every year. It takes time to find and fell an appropriately sized and shaped tree. The candles need to be carefully fitted into their holders, then placed just so to avoid burning nearby branches and twigs. When it comes right down to it, perhaps we owe the tree more reverence than just 30 minutes in relative silence. But then the moment is gone and we are back to our other pursuits, some of them immediate but many of them online.

A new year is coming and I want to say something profound and transformative, but I cannot. The sun is setting as I write, and I know how simultaneously trite and miraculous that is. The colours are achingly beautiful, but they were beautiful yesterday and they will be beautiful again. Nothing new under the sun, they say, and they are not wrong. What has this past year been, but repetition?

I keep wondering what it will take to lean into the miracle of it all. I don’t know. But this is my intention for the year ahead: presence. Acknowledging the ordinary uniqueness of life, and appreciating the work it takes to get wherever we are.