“There’s all sorts of sadness,” Devin Starlanyl says.
Starlanyl, a member and lay minister at Brattleboro’s St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, knows seasonal songs declaring “all is merry and bright” don’t comfort those feeling otherwise. That’s why she and her peers are organizing a “Longest Night” service for the public next weekend.
“There can be a lot of reasons to be down,” Starlanyl says. “You could have seasonal affective disorder or be worried about getting older or just sick of the commercialization of Christmas. This year, there may be many who are struggling due to the election and all that has come after.”
The third annual service, scheduled for the Sunday closest to the winter solstice and shortest day of the year, is a nondenominational program of spiritual and secular readings and music.
“We have come here, the longest night, to name the loss and sorrow in our lives when the world around us celebrates joy and happiness,” its opening words state. “We have come here, the longest night, to acknowledge the darkness as we also claim the light that follows the night.”
An inaugural event two years ago drew almost 40 people, while last December’s follow-up attracted nearly 50 participants who, during a candle lighting ceremony, spoke of everything from losing family members and friends to struggling with addiction, depression and myriad other physical and mental diagnoses.
“At Christmastime the official mood is one of ‘Jingle Bells,’ but if you’re carrying brokenness, it’s really hard,” says Phillip Wilson, a retired priest who will lead the program. “And when you have to hide it, it’s the most difficult.”
Organizers have written most of the service themselves, including new words to the 1872 English carol “In the Bleak Midwinter.” But they’ll also share a Jewish Hassidic story about Adam.
“How frightened he must have been when, for the first time, he saw the sun disappear,” it says in part. “How could he accept the night, when he had never seen a dawn?”
And they’ll quote the late Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves,” Rilke wrote. “Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
The program is set for Dec. 18 at 4 p.m. at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Brattleboro. Organizers stress they won’t hold a collection or have any expectations of those who attend.
“A lot of people carry all kinds of grief and loss this time of year,” Starlanyl says. “We want to provide a place of quiet, comfort, support and validation that you’re not alone.”
Adds Wilson: “It’s honoring the broken place but also the hope of new light. It’s not Christian-centric, it’s merely human.”
