We are in the dark days before Advent. The darkness, the cold, the quiet landscape on the cusp of Winter, with the only liturgical marker being the Stir-up collect: this gives particular character to these days, days when we wait in cold and darkness for Advent. We might even think of it as an ecclesiastical 'microseason', to use a term beautifully explored in Nature's Calendar: The British year in 72 Seasons (2023). Indeed, the book identifies a late November microseason which falls around Stir-up, entitling it 'Even the Light Grows Cold', saying of this microseason: As November unfurls the light lowers, casting long shadows. This is the moment in the year when the bronze and golden leaf fall comes to its end, and in these conditions our eyes recalibrate ... Our colour vision shifts in late November, when the axis of the earth has shifted so that the sun's rays reach us at oblique angles and the colours of deciduous foliage have first transmuted and then di...
Old High - Burkean - clerk in holy orders
