While many reasons could explain the popularity of Christmas, perhaps the best is the appeal to lose ourselves in mystery…

These months of waning sunlight call us to long thoughts. As we walk the streets in these months, we smell those fires burning around us as the labor of daylight ends early in the early advent of evening. Maybe that’s why there is more time for pondering our place in this vast world.

While the new year begins on January 1 and the lectionary year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, for most the rhythm of the year is set early in life and remains…