The Ninth Buddha

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Hexham, England, December 1920 Snow had fallen in the night, a stark white emblem of another world, purity lost and stranded in the depths of our humanity.

Above Causey Hill, a white, bloated fog hung like a freezing shroud.  The long, low lights of Advent huddled in the cold and gloom, extinguishing their flames in preparation for the mystery that was to come.  In halls and cottages, the fires of Christmas were emblazoned with frost and rimmed with soot.  In village squares, in the ancient gathering darkness, ice formed on newly erected monuments to ten million dead.

Night and the expectation of night to come, the great untrammelled dark barking and whispering beneath the eaves all winter long, the dull onslaught of mystery in the hard, silent heart of an unredeemed and unforgiving world.  God and the expectation of God to come.  The Lord of light and darkness would return as he had always done, born into the freezing flesh of the dying year.

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