Others, as is seasonal, have gone to the French Alps, and a family is returning from Dubai where they tasted of affluence and the sun. And some of us find ourselves, yet once again, in a place we would not trade for all the ’hot’ spots on the planet — by a cosy log fire, stretched out on a thick pile rug, contemplating the warm glow and the shadows of the leaping flames on the wall as the evening light outside fades to darkness. Our lives are gently caving in. We wish our departed friends well and we miss their faces already at the table. A feeling of bereftness, of mourning, is close to the surface, triggered perhaps by absent ones but, more than just this, it is a mourning that encompasses all the mourning we have ever known or been touched by. ’Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused …….Celebration and mourning, so far apart in the range of emotions of the heart, and yet so close at these Christmas and New Year’s festivities.
