Bleak and Grim, Merry and Bright

Christmas and the End of the Year; To Writers and Readers

Dec 30, 2023

Candles in the dark | Candle in the dark, Candle photography dark, Burning candle photography

Substack is a kind of haven. The last year has resulted in personal growth due to the consistent reading and less consistent writing made available here. Here I get to read and follow real writers with real thoughts who are free to explore our world - both in damning the evil and inhumane while also figuring out how to pave a path of goodness and life. Those two works always go hand in hand.

When the dark is treated as absent or its presence downplayed, the power of the Light is negated. We are all touched by the darkness. It is only the power of the Light, shining into the bleak blackness, that allows us to even begin to raise our voices against its tyranny.1 All things carry the grim scar of transgression, but the Light heals all wounds.

That reality is what we celebrate at Christmas. The Son of God bearing flesh and dwelling with us is the first cracking of redemption’s dawn. It is here, this hinge of history, where everything changes. While things remain grim as ever, the Light’s children carry out our merry work cursing what is evil and loving what is good. The bleakness of the world’s rebellion carries on, but we work as wayfarers inviting others to walk the path revealed by the light given to us. We do it in a myriad of ways given our backgrounds, talents, interests, and vocations. We do it knowing that because the Light is Lord of all, He touches all. We do it by enfleshing our thoughts into words; our widow’s mite compared to the Word who became flesh.

Hermann Corrodi, *Monks Walk to the Mountain Monastery of Athos,* 1905

The writer and the reader are both sub-creators. It is obvious to see this in the case of writers, who inevitably are also readers. They construct sentences, turns of phrase, and arguments. Their style, a literary fingerprint, is left on each work. A collection of works is a constructed world. Each world is itself a creation, but one that shapes the “real” world. They move and spread and propagate. All of this is impossible without the reader. The act of writing itself has power to shape the world, but it is the act of reading that allows others to be involved. Writers are transformed from lone gunmen into members of a team by the act of readers. The reader completes the act of writing because they engage in the creative act. Reading is not passive. It shapes the mind of the hands that shape the world. As lives and homes and towns are being shaped, the world changes.

Change happens in both directions. It is not itself good. In many ways the world is ever-changing, but it is moving to specific end. That end is the Light ending the rule of darkness forever. In the now there is work to be done, the work of pushing back the darkness, of proclaiming the expansive hope of the Light, of carrying the Fire. This Christmas, in reflecting on the bursting through of hope’s rays in the Incarnation, I have felt indebtedness to many in the realm of Substack. Indebtedness to the beautiful readers who dine on my infrequent crumbs and sincere thankfulness to those whose words cut through the black, who remind me of hope, and carry on according to their callings. You’ll find them at the bottom of this post. But, for now, a few more words if you please.

To Writers

Who or what we read is a reflection of (at least) two things. First and most obviously, who we are or what we like and are interested in. Second, we read according to our aspirations. It reflects who we wish to become or how we want the world to be. The best of writers are first readers of both sorts. They are interested and therefore interesting. They are also passionate, channeling that passion not into the construction of paragraphs and essays, but into ways of being. They care and therefore they write.

The writers I read on here generally fulfill both categories. You are thoughtful, holding to specific ideals, seeking the good, and wanting to push against the darkness. You write against the tide. I’m sure like me, you’re tempted by pessimism. Things really are bleak. We hate it. And so we think, write, and live. Although many of our ideas and thoughts intersect with each other, we have our own specific niches, particularities, intellectual and spiritual backgrounds, and visions for the future to come. That is how we keep the madness from driving us mad. Writing gets the voices out of our heads, temporarily, so that they may speak out into the world.

You lend your voice to building up hope. Reading you has let me know that I’m not alone or crazy. Those voices aren’t what is insane. Rather, it is the world they shout against. I’m sure you find the same solace in your own reading, both here and in your various (though I think we have many of them in common) influences. What exists in this community is a sort of remnant, a group of folks dedicated to cultivating an alternative life. It is a sphere I’m thankful to have fallen into. It is one I hope we can materialize in each of our places. Maybe, hopefully, and hope is all we have, we’ll even get to do it together.

At Christmas, if we understand it at all, we take the time to look back to the entrance of Hope into the world. But we should also be looking forward. Hope will ride again.2 That is the span of faith. It recognizes the already but also the not yet. It knows that the future is inevitably shaped by the past. Faith then makes use of the present. We are not twiddling our thumbs in the physicians office, we’re working in the fields because the harvest is on the way. A time of long preparation is at hand. We work at mending and tending the broken fragments of the Garden that are still left. Our hope is that others will be burdened to do the same.

What you do is important, especially when it feels inadequate.3 That is the area of growth, the forge of not just your ideas but also your character. Character matters more. Sticking to the task in the face of opposition, whether it be external or in your heart and mind, is often a truer test of the substance of your beliefs than the beliefs themselves. That proves that they are worth it.

Keep writing. Do not stop reading. Share each other’s work. Promote what encourages the good, true, and beautiful. Lift up the fellow pilgrims also making their way through the dark with the light given to them. Join them. Agree and disagree. Talk to each other. Encourage hope in the face of blackness. Tell truth against all odds. Lead people to the Truth. In that there is no folly or regret.

To Readers

The fallacy of the critic is that he is a wet-blanket. Thoughtful and consistent critique of life and society is hardly popular because it calls the world something better. But to champion the good involves some level of exposing the wicked. It is in any chastising of waywardness that the thoughtful get lumped in with the reactionary. But the true critic and the doomsayer are separated by the willingness to take a shower. Both get their hands dirty, but only one participates in washing and calls others to do the same. The issue is that the acts of cleansing is a difficult one. They involve deadly sacrifice,4 and it is easier to remain foul than to endure the pain of transformation.

We often operate under the guise that no news is good news. To have the illusion shattered and have a way of life challenged is usually received by our hearts as bad news. This is why prophets are never welcomed figures. A prophet’s mere presence means change is on the horizon. Change shaped by Hope is a welcomed thing, but it always requires change in the person wishing to attain it. We must first be changed. That is inescapable. That is difficult to hear. In fact, the reckoning with this painful revelation may be worse than the actual act of cleansing, or purging, or excising. At least at the end of the act is relief, with the news comes guilt and the dread of expectation.

So, we easily give into the temptation to avoid being challenged. Thus true critics, who in the end champion the message of true Hope, are ignored. They get lumped in with the debbie-downers and the angry reactionaries. That, or they’re ignored in favour for the hot takes and ire that define our age. Either way, when we give into this temptation we leave ourselves ignorant or outraged. Both are without hope.

Readers, challenge yourselves. In doing so you will not neglect hope. Read in pursuit of Truth. It will mean facing your faults, which is woven into the tapestry of the world’s sins. But that is how Hope becomes manifest and the world, from our own individual spheres to the grand macrocosm, moves towards its end. Critique the world in hope.

Part of the essence of Christian hope is that no action is wasted. Merely reading well is not too small of an act in the Kingdom. In fact, there are acts too small, or too grand. The grandest acts have already been accomplished or are yet to be fulfilled. It doesn’t render what we say or do, or read, inconsequential. Instead we are free to move towards that great and future hope. We are free to practice resurrection.5

Read well. Read widely. Read according to the Light. Spread what you read throughout your community. Put what you read to the test and have it flow from your heart and mind into your hands. Take seriously the darkness at hand and combat it by championing the light. Challenge yourself and graciously do the same to your own people.

The work of the writer is important, but you turn words into the world.

Conclusion

The final entry of Letters from Father Christmas of J.R.R. Tolkien is dated Christmas Eve of 1943. The world is at war, and all the world notices. Today, wars don’t affect us in the same way they did then. Everyone was acutely aware. The conflict was more that headlines. There had been a battle over Britain. All over Europe, and even in America, items were either rationed or altogether unavailable. Many things were scarce. For a lot, if not most, that included hope. The grim character of the world was unavoidable. Tolkien, writing as Father Christmas, engages this truth in this letter to his young daughter, Priscilla.

“My messengers tell me that people call it ‘grim’ this year. I think they mean miserable: and so it is, I fear, in very many places where I was specially fond of going; but I am very glad to hear that you are still not really miserable. Don’t be! I am still very much alive, and shall come back again soon, as merry as ever.”6

Though the world be as bleak as the weather here in Eastern Scotland, and as grim as ever, there is cause to be merry. Hope, in the person of Jesus Christ, entered into the world over 2,000 years ago. The Light has already come, and continues to shine into the darkness. The darkness is no match. Though next year will carry on in its bleak fashion, the reality is that we’re one step closer to Hope fulfilled when the clock strikes midnight.

To all those who this year wrote and read, laughed and cried, feasted and starved, talked and remained silent in joy and courage - here is to another year of mirth in spite of melancholy. Make haste against the dark and make much of the Light. Do not go quietly but may our lives singly gladly according to the spirit of these parting words:

“And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us
We will not fear for God hath willed, His truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him,
His rage we can endure, for lo his doom is sure,
One little world shall fell him!” 7