A Bare, But Fully Adorned Tree

 We love the ornaments. 

Some have been precious gifts from family and friends.  

Some are heirlooms from the past that have miraculously survived the years and the moves.  

Some are whimsical.  

Some are sentimental. 

Some bear names, anchoring them in identity,  or years, rooting them in time.

Some are the work of crafty hands.

Each one ignites a memory of a face, a place, an experience, a taste – the textures of life in the living.

We treasure them all. 

 

But this year we left them in their boxes, in the crates, in the barn.  The tree, itself, is what calls our name in this season of expectation, a rich green and black plaid skirt replacing the riotous red of previous Christmases.  The stark simplicity of the tree; the soulful invitation of it - the deep green bristles of the Vermont white spruce, unadorned save by the nestling lights, bespeaking the opacity of life while also the reassuring fecundity of it.  Life, and the hope woven throughout it.  It stands quietly, but influentially this year – a proclamation instead of a decoration; an evocation of earthier truths and celestial promises, of patient growth and quiescent beauty.  Unadorned, the tree towers over the room with a grounding soulfulness we needed this year.  

 

This year.  These years.

 

Last night’s storm roared through as a tumultuous representation of the world in our time – fast moving, unseasonable warmth, tempestuous winds, broken branches, miscellany in disarray, trucks rolled into ditches, power lost.  

 

Indeed.  The storm that is our natural world, our relationships, our politics, our spirituality, our discomfited psyches, our certainties disarrayed, our confidences dismembered.  Fast, hot, broken and scattered.  Life overturned and drained of any power to generate much of useful consequence.

 

We simply weren’t up for the frivolity of tinsel this year – even the celebratory sparkles of beloved ornaments. 

 

The tree, then – stately and centering, grounding and glimmering with quiet grace and gentle promise.  And, somehow, the miracle that into those simple branches and bulbs all the memories, all the names and faces and stories and milestones, all the blessings of those treasured balls and stars and miscellaneous shapes, the silver and paper and porcelain and wood…

 

…are mystically enfolded and adorned.  

 

They will hang there again in years to come, but this year they are even more fully present in their absence from this, our warmest, simplest and most beautiful tree ever.