Thoughts, today, to those in mourning, those who know loss a little too well, those on their own or a long way from home, those hard at work making other people’s holidays special, and those making brave decisions to get up again when they’ve fallen down.

We revisit a poem shared by local therapist, Lesley Marple, earlier on the Almanac, because it speaks so well to one of the underlying themes of the season, whatever your spiritual bent be: renewal. The promise of a new day. Forgiveness, redemption and grace.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver