“No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”
Ursula Le Guin and Jane D Marsching
January tends to be Janus faced; looking back and forward all at the same time. So, at the beginning of 2026, when the world has done a big slide sideways, we can rejoice to see the back of 2025. Instead, we can celebrate the “return” of the sun and look forward to “the certainty of increasing light.”
Some of us continue to be warmed into this new year by the Christmas story, with Epiphany coming and a visit from the three wise ones. But the holy family — like too many families in our country and our world today — is unhoused. The tiny infant lies in a makeshift cradle watched over by Mary, Joseph and some adoring angels. An ox and an ass — and animals all, if we believe the gospel — witnessed the birth first and look on from the gathering darkness. It is a scene, we are told, both human and divine.
In one painting of the Nativity, an artist shows the shepherds out on the hills beyond, seen via a large, crumbling gap in the stable’s stone walls. This view stays with me in this month of looking back and looking forward; to the human and the divine; the places between earth and heaven where we can learn to appreciate nature and the vastness of the earth, our only home.
We learned to gather in outside places and sheltered porches during the pandemic. I still cherish walks with friends through the woods; a birthday meal served al fresco or time with my family by the ocean. Like the mothers and fathers of the early Christian church, we have re-learned that the most sacred spaces are sometimes outside.
We can be invested in all these permeable boundaries where nature and culture come together — like that stable wall or Jesus’ small cradle in the byre. In January it is colder in these hill towns. I have a better appreciation for why we bring greenery — holly, ivy and mistletoe — inside in the deep wintertime.
In small ways, the greenery reminds us of what is sacred and alive. Mistletoe was the plant under which ancient feuding tribes pledged to cease fighting. Its evergreen leaves symbolized the “life that does not die.” May we spend January meditating on the life that does not die for “No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.”
Hetty Startup is on the leadership team of the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and a deacon at First Congregational Church of Ashfield/UCC.