It is winter. It is cold. It is the bleak midwinter.
Christina G. Rossetti’s poem, 'In the bleak midwinter' later put to music by Gustav Holst, goes like this:
In the bleak midwinter,
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago.
Perhaps as a antidote to the darkness and cold of the season my wife and I decided to replace our family room’s overhead light and ceiling fan, and the ceiling light in the dining room.
We opened the boxes of light and fan parts, laid them out on a counter and stood, as if in the dark, wondered just how this chaos of nuts and bolts, fan blades and light sockets would come together.
Little by little we deciphered the language of the instruction booklets, and step by step we created some order out of the chaos and brought forth some light into the darkness.
When all was assembled and installed, everything worked. Light filled the room and a gentle breeze blew across our worried brows. We rested from our labor, enjoyed that wonderful feeling of accomplishment, and winter didn’t feel quite as bleak as it had felt before beginning the project of light.
Another glimmer of light in the winter’s darkness occurred while I watched the evening news. As a reflection on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday celebration, forth graders in Washington, DC were shown at the Lincoln Memorial Monument.
One by one the young children came to the microphone and recited a line or two from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. They had memorized the words and recited the lines with smiles, enthusiasm and a determination that gave those treasured words meaning and life. As I listened and watch the children, I experienced a warm light shining in winter’s cold and darkness.
Dr. King shed light upon the dark impulses of racism, intolerance and bigotry, and the forth grade children at the Lincoln Memorial carried the torch of that warm light and gave it new life.
Those dark impulses have not disappeared from our nation’s heart and soul. Perhaps they are not as blatantly expressed as they were in Dr. King’s time, but they weld their dark power in our world just the same.
This winter another anniversary was being remembered -- the 50th anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning to America about the danger to our society from what he called the "Military Industrial Complex."
In his farewell address to the nation January 17, 1961, Eisenhower said: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
In this winter of 2011, it is evident President Eisenhower’s warning of looming disaster has been virtually ignored in the corridors of power. The corporate-military liaison is so deeply connected and enmeshed with our social, political and economic institutions of our nations that it - the military-industrial complex - is America.
A “misplaced” darkness seems to fill the land and keeps us perpetually at war. Its “influence” assures us our future as a nation will always be defined by the wars in which we are engaged. Eisenhower’s voice, echoing down to us from a half a century ago, is a small beam of light. May we have eyes to see, and ears to hear.
Each of us is a bearer of light in the world. When we find ourselves in winter’s darkness, we are made aware of the truth we have choices to make. We can let our hearts, like the earth in the bleak mid-wither, be as hard as iron; or we choose to stand in the warm light and allow it to shine on us and through us.
May we each find a way to bear the light in the darkness of our bleak midwinters.
