It’s a wonderful novel, a so-so Netflix adaptation, and an expression that captures the essence of this winter solstice season.

This longest night of the year caps off a year of much brutality: Ukraine; the Israeli-Hamas war; a world on fire; so many people hungry, unhoused, desperate; casualties mounting in our gun-obsessed culture; an extremist Republican Party that has enabled a man who should never have been President and is now a coin-flip’s chance away from ascending once again to the Oval Office even as he should be headed to prison. Personal and hidden sorrows that don’t ever make it into the headlines abound. It is sometimes hard to see any light.

And yet it is there: the millions who have not given up on peace and compassion, on seeing the humanity in the other. Those who know that despair is an enervating strategy, and who thus work—tirelessly or tiredly–for change. Hard work bearing fruit. The green fuzz emerging on the gray-brown hills as rains come to the parched earth. Babies and young children whose joy and urgent demands insist on life and laughter. A consoling casserole, an embrace.

The stillness and replenishment of these dark times yields to light. Hope is the light we cannot see.