Bittersweet Souls

I hear the word so often lately -- and I think I know what is meant.  Still, the sound of it teases at my mind, begging to be pulled apart and examined more closely.  "Bittersweet" --meaning both at once I suppose, as in chocolate (which is lately everywhere).  But I have a difficult time with opposites occurring simultaneously.  Instead, I choose to believe it is a successive state from one to another.  

I'm thinking of bittersweet as in the rambling vine that profuses with lush greenery in the summer and afterward maintains a bony structure highlighted by merrily bright berries.  Its name describes the nature of the fruit at first inedible to the birds that eventually feast on it after a killing frost.  Passing through the trial of extreme cold, the poisonous berry is changed to become sweet.

Somehow these days of tradition carry centuries of expectation of family unity and joy -- too weighty to be met within a community of flawed and fallen people.  Holidays can hold hours tainted with regret and failure brought sharply into focus by the twinkling lights and music of bells.  Superlatives abound, and in their company the gritty reality of relationships fighting a culture of self-gratification seems to echo with lack.   

But the cold days, the painfully numbing days, are accomplishing much that is unseen.  They are cracking the golden hull of self-love to reveal the berry inside...a fruit for a time when nothing else is blooming or growing and the world is huddled in sleep.  The beauty is so unexpected -- a reddish orange blaze on a dead stalk -- broadcasting a beacon of harvest through an otherwise barren landscape.

I do not know who will be home for Christmas, but many will be missing from these earthly houses.  Merry and bright days make for wonderful greetings, as do peace on earth and goodwill to men, but they are merely wishes.  However, I stand with generations confident that after laying aside expectations requiring human fulfillment, beyond the patient waiting through the killing frost, there will be days of sweet blessing.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.    15th Century Hymn