Boston is dark in January. Very dark. At 5:30 p.m. light has
completely abandoned the city. Sure, there is a kind of fake fluorescent light,
a pale bluey glow, a TV light. But there is no authentic light, only illusion
of it. And illusions only make the matter worse.
My college motto is vox clamantis in deserto, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. It suits a college whose fame includes being the setting for the movie Animal House. Cry out in playful poetry. Cry out in inebriated bombast. Cry out amid the lone pines of New Hampshire.
For more commentary on this week's readings, see
the Reflections
on the Lectionary page, which includes Dragseth's current Living by
the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content.
On the first morning of every new year, I take a three-foot-long saw with three-inch teeth, walk out onto Lake Michigan at 20 below in my sandals and swimsuit, hack a hole in the two-foot-thick ice and jump in.
