First of all, prayers and all good thoughts go out to our dear friend and frequent commenter Jana, who lost her beloved dad to cancer today. He was a great guy. During the fours years we lived in Louisville, we had many an opportunity to share a social occasion with him, and he was a gracious, gregarious soul. I believe you would call him (and he would consider himself) a salt of the earth. Please keep Jana and her family in your thoughts and prayers.

We have Loreena McKennitt on the CD tonight; her wonderful CDs “To Drive The Cold Winter Away” and “A Midwinter’s Night Dream” weave a exotic, magical tapestry unmatched by any other Christmas CDs in our collection. With a holiday cocktail of your choice and the happy glowing lights of the Christmas tree one might almost be inclined to believe everything is OK and that our hold on life is neither as short nor as tenous as it truly is.

That’s something I think we do well to contemplate as the days shorten and get colder. Normally I couldn’t wait for this year to draw to its much-anticipated close, but there’s a part of me that wonders just what the New Year might bring. Darkness, sadness, and foreboding seem all around us this December. 2009 has been a long, hard sled for us, yet we both know things could be much worse.

I light a candle in Jana’s father’s memory.

The patio outside is windy and cool; they’re getting heavy snow not that far north and west of here, but the night air is refreshing. I sip my glass of Pinot Grigio and hear the strains of McKennitt’s music through the slider and say a quiet prayer to God in thanks for all the feelings I’m feeling tonight: weariness, vulnerability, loneliness, directionless. But at least it’s all a part of life and living (as my grandfather would say) on the green side of the grass.

And tonight I guess that will have to be good enough.