After hearing this poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44122/a-nocturnal-upon-st-lucys-day

We listened to this extraordinary rendition of an epiphany carol Slava Rozhdennomu by Natalka Polovynka

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5DQv2nIDlA&feature=youtu.be

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Gospel of John 1:5

Earlier we heard John Donne’s great poem A Nocturnal on St Lucy’s day. Perhaps this great metaphysical poet’s, greatest poem? Donne is most famous as the author of some riotously erotic sonnets and for a line from a sermon – because as well the author of love poetry he was also a clergyman who rose to become Dean of St Pauls Cathedral – a line from a sermon which you probably know by heart without knowing that you knew it: ‘therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’…
But this poem; the Nocturnal, or a night poem, on the eve of St Lucy’s, is very special and I’ ll try to share why, at least for me, that is so:
The writer is expressing the occurrence of deep bereavement. Donne’s wife Ann, who was presumably also the focus of the afore mentioned love poetry, died in 1620. And to reach the expression of such a profound loss he uses a particular moment in time that might mean a lot to all of us right now: ‘’Tis the year’s midnight’ the depth of midwinter; very midnight on the longest night. And he invites us into the pure pain of his loss in a visionary way; he reminds us what we only know, if at all, through the experience of grief – that this time is a time of insight; when the heart breaks it breaks us open and we have a potential to see something, everything, a-new.
Donne uses the metaphors of alchemy; the science of transformation, cutting edge science in his own time which gave birth to the natural sciences as we know them today, proto-chemistry, to describe his own transformation. He has become changed by ‘love’s limbec’ – a limbec is a tool for distillation, so love has distilled him to the secret heart of matter; the elixir. And here in the deep midnight he’s become “the grave of all that’s nothing“.
But St Lucy is the patron Saint of light…

According to the pre Gregorian calendar St. Lucy’s fell on the shortest day; Lucy’s, “who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; The sun is spent, and now his flasks/ Send forth light squibs, no constant rays”;
Lux in Latin means light and the shortest day, Lucy’s Day, when light is at its weakest, is when we most value light. This then, in his personal darkest hour, is the time when he holds vigil.

There is wisdom here for us too. because this is a poem about loss and a vigil held in darkness, but it also tells of transformation and the distillation of experience, the journey into light.

A few nights ago as the snow was falling and the news coming out of Washington was as dark as it could be, I read on Twitter a thread by American theologian Diane Butler-Bass. She wrote about the dislocation of time in pandemic – and the need for sacred time.
“We all feel like we’re not only lost in time, but that we’ve lost time. It occurred to me that this state of being “lost” in time is part of the pandemic petrie dish of social discontent. We need to feel our time is meaningful, that we contribute to something that makes a difference. .. to speak of this in spiritual terms, we humans experience time — but we also experience “sacred time,” time with meaning…

The older understanding of solstice [literally: sun-stand] is when we experience time stand still; timelessness.
That is also why it is our most sacred time in the calendar, because it is our reminder of eternity, sacred time, time beyond time.
That is also the meaning and the virtue of a vigil too; an ancient practice that we’ve almost forgotten, one of the many.
It is a time to dwell with: to absorb fully.

And that is the witness that I believe we need to bring to bear now.
Not to rush past this time of discomfort, of cold and uncertainty, of discontent and distress, but to bear with it; to hold vigil here.
This is sacred time.
I know and I’m a aware of the particular darkness of January in the best of times so it must take great patience, great presence, to bear with it – to have the discipline to be with this dark time.

John Donne’s poem seems as bleak as it could be; but listen and you’ll hear its deepest message: a distant echo that resonates from far away, far from the place of the poem, far from this place, but it is sure, it is steadfast:

It is from the void of timelessness that light is ‘let be’

Important to remember that phrase – ‘Fiat lux’ [let be light]; Important to remember that calling up light from the void, the apparition of creation from eternal dark is, it seems, effortless, it is ‘let be.’

“And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”