This past December 28 was the shortest day of my entire life.

I was visiting Copenhagen with my family. That day we had a scant seven hours and three minutes of sunlight. (The previous week we’d been in Hamburg, farther south, so even though the days had been getting longer since the solstice, we hit our personal Peak Dark when we went north a week later.)

Living with darkness (both real and metaphorical, these days) I’ve been appreciating all the ways that people in Northern Europe introduce light and community into the winter months.

We’ve enjoyed going to Germany’s Christmas markets, which I realized serve the same role as beer gardens do in the summer: they are places to gather outdoors in the evening with friends and enjoy the season (and drink heartily, if that’s your thing).

Without darkness, light wouldn’t mean so much to us—as I had the chance to appreciate when I visited the recently rebuilt Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. (We flew there from Copenhagen. And as an aside—this is more travel than I’ve ever done in my life, and I feel intensely lucky to be able to visit all these beautiful places.)

We got to Notre Dame early in the morning to avoid the crowds. But this was a tactical error: the sky was still dark, so no light came through the great windows of the cathedral. You couldn’t see the stained glass at all. We left disappointed.

Fortunately my spouse suggested we go back later, when the sun was shining. I’m glad we did. Now the windows were lit up, and perfectly lovely:

And yet—and yet! I still felt…just a tiny bit… disappointed. I’d visited Notre Dame once before, almost 30 years ago. My memory is of dark, dark stone walls and a vast, tall, dim interior, lit up and transformed by those brilliant windows. It was perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful built place I’d ever seen.

That was before 2019’s terrible fire, then the massive renovation during which centuries of grime and smoke were stripped from the cathedral walls. The interior walls used to be a dark grey; now they are light in color, almost white, and the whole place feels much brighter. But sadly— to me, anyway—in the newly brightened space, the windows don’t stand out as much anymore.

I miss the old darkness.

Writing News

My book is written! Last week I signed off on the final proofs. Here’s the cover, with an image adapted from a woodcut by Alicia Quiroz, a former Annunciation House volunteer:

The book will be published in May, which feels like a long way off, but in Publishing Time apparently isn’t. There’s still lots to do. Right now I’m collecting “endorsements,” the marketing team is writing content for web pages and promotional materials, and the managing editor is putting together an Advanced Reader Copy for, uh, advanced readers.

I’ve had a couple of little successes lately that I hope will help more readers find my book: I was named a finalist for the Robert J. Margolis Award, which honors writers of “social justice journalism.” And a chapter adapted from the book will soon be published in Consequence Forum, a publication focused on “the consequences, realities, and experiences of war and geopolitical violence.”

In completely unrelated news, I have a new poem out in The Shore. It’s about crows.

I wish you all light (and just enough darkness) in the new year.

Mary