December

And so we come to winter and the dying end of the year. It has been a long travelling, as Eliot might have said, and at the end of it, a confusion of outcomes and a profusion of alternatives. What do we do, as year succeeds to year? The answer of the ancients was a simple one; they laid up stores, hunkered down, and waited till the new year had really started. (For many of us, this will be on 20th January, when finally the long drawn-out lack-of-government in Washington comes to an end.)

But this year has always been redolent of the fin-de-siècle. Again and again, that French phrase connoting the end of an era and new hope for the future seems to come up. At the same time, one thinks of Zeitgeist and Aufklärung; one thinks of light and clarity and time and spirit and how mankind does tend to screw it up.

The last time things felt this way was probably on 22 January 1901, when Victoria of England died. That will have been 108 years ago, when Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States of America, that entity that began as a group of British colonies way back in the 18th century.

This, then, is a December of the world and its times. Old things have passed away, and looking forward in faith, we hope that new things will come that are not old things repackaged. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the change we want is change we can believe in, then we should really open up the armouries of the soul and the arsenals of the heart for our assault on the present darkness. God be with us.

March

Hey. It's March now. Somewhere under the turnings of the earth is vigour, sparking into life. You think we have no seasons here? Let me tell you about two seasons, the season we are leaving and the season ahead.

The first of the seasons is Muddle. Muddle begins just after Christmas; it starts the moment you realise that you are confused about what to do before school starts and after the holiday season has begun to die. And it muddles on, bringing newness and chaos, newts and toadstools, rain and the promise of rain and tantalizing summery days which are just spots of light in grey and messy schedules. Muddle is the period in which the mind is engaged in work, but the heart is unwilling, and the soul is angry at the difference - but the spirit is resigned and somehow we negotiate Muddle, and the term ends, somewhere around the Ides of March.

And that brings us to Distal. Distal is the season of being further-into-the-year-than-you-want-to-be. It is in Distal that one thinks of approaching deserts and distant mirages and a sense that one is being worked to death despite it being only the middle of the year. April's Fools offer scant respite; April and all her Fools do not compensate for a long March, although sometimes they just May. And then comes June. Distal is the period in whcih the mind has taken a break, the heart has stirred to life, the soul feels ill at ease because the engine-brake is now working against the flow - and the spirit soars at the thought of a long break. Which it will never get.

Ah, life. In all my forty years, I have enjoyed it. Some people think it is sinful or immature to enjoy it this much. But I have only one thing to say: "I am young, still."