Entry for 10 January 2007:
“The people who have walked in Darkness have seen a great Light.” -Isaiah 9:2
The sun came out today, shining with almost startling brightness out of the south, not setting until after 4pm this afternoon. My office was brighter than it had been in weeks, and as we gathered this afternoon next door in my research room on the 3rd floor of the Stowe Building for the Social Anxiety Study Group, we marvelled at the light. One of the diploma course students – I think it was Tom – remarked that the two weeks before and after Christmas are always the worst, but by now it is clear that the light is returning.
So it seems that we have reached another turning in the seasons, which could be called the Coming of the Light, or Lousadzak, after Armenian-Scottish-American composer Alan Hovhaness’s Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra, one of my long-time favorite pieces (the Keith Jarrett version with Scottish composer Dennis Russell Davies conducting is quite nice). It is predicted to rain for the next 5 days, and in fact there are rain and gale-force winds tonight, but we who are living in Scotland during the Time of the Dark know that the Light is coming back, day by day, pushing back the Dark a minute or two minutes each day. This would make a nice festival bridging Hogmanay and Burns Night.
1 comment:
I love this idea! Lousadzak, I will happily start this tradition myself.
Your website is so interesting to me, as a writer and as I am so fondly called by my very Scottish husband, "a New Mexican New Age wacko". I am reading more of it bit by bit...am especially interested in the way you analyze dreams. I'm a Jungian-influenced person myself. I love the entry where you spoke about dreaming in Scottish, that your deeper self was recognizing/claiming it. I first realized that when I dreamed that I was driving a car on "the wrong side of the road". In the dream an American friend in the back seat was chiding me about it and I told her, very firmly, no, I was driving correctly! That's when I knew my Scottish driving lessons had really taken hold!
Maybe some candle-lighting ritual should herald Lousadzak. Something like setting out a certain number of candles and every day lighting an additional one, as the light returns?
I have two blogs if you wish to see another expatriate's experiences. http://www.abearnamedhope.blogspot.com (that one is a salon for anyone to take part in and currently has photaes of New Mexico luminarias to light our way into 2007) and http://www.followheartjournal.blogspot.com
I hope you will drop by!
SpiritBear, near Stirling
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