Sorry, everyone. Since the week before Christmas until about now, I've been traveling and vacationing and somewhat oblivious to what day of the week it was. Christmas happened on Long Island (at least, that's where I can confirm it happened; I assume it happened everywhere else, too) and New Year's Eve happened with many friends back here in Maryland, which was cool.
I think I've mentioned before that the Christmas season is my favorite time of year. It is significant to me in ways that make me suspect a connection between spirituality and aesthetics.
I caught a thought-provoking sermon at my home church the Sunday before Christmas. It was on the subject of "thin places," where the walls between the physical world and the spirit world are thin--a concept that the pastor was quick to point out was markedly un-Christian, but which keeps finding resonance. Places like Iona, a green, cold, rainy island in Scotland, where people go to be closer to God. What it sent me thinking was that, even though Christians believe God is omnipresent, we want there to be places where God is closer than normal. Even if we have to move toward God to get any closer, part of us wants permission. And the Christmas season is a "thin" time--when the physical world is almost literally worn thin. Even if it's only a perception--an illusion--that we are any closer to God at a time like this, it's something some of us need to imagine that there's even a chance of contact.
Not that I'm qualified to go too deep into it. But I did spend some time thinking about that as I walked around in a cold, dark, and peculiarly beautiful season.
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