I look forward to this island display all year long. It seems to me a metaphor for all that is good and meaningful about living in community.

Both light and darkness are necessary and integral to the beauty. The trees are lovely, ringing the pond in the wan, winter daylight, but at night the scene transcends lovely and becomes meditative, a healing and unifying force.

The stillness on this narrow rural road is almost absolute, a calm that seeps in through all the broken places in me.

The occasional sound, a deer rustling in the underbrush, an owl on the hunt, livestock settling in for the night—can anyone hear the wonderfully ridiculous sound of a goat bleating and not smile?—only emphasizes the quiet before and after, and reminds me that in spite of all the harm we humans inflict on the earth and each other, the world spins on. (So far. Knock on wood.)

No one pays these light-givers to provide this display; it is their generous gift to all of us. Amidst the acrimony so often present on social media, people post random notes of gratitude for the lights. Neighbors lend a hand. One of the island businesses loans a crane.

Every few years there are more trees added to the display. More light in the darkness.

The loss of two members of our family. Climate change. Aging and its concomitant health problems. Hamas. Justice denied in my brother-in-law’s death. Israel. Crime and homelessness and angry political divisions on “our” island. Yemen. Work stress. Ukraine. Children living with severe food insecurity in one of the richest countries in the world. Petty grumblings over whose turn it is to wash the dishes. Sudan. Warnings of the impending disintegration of democracy. Another sleepless night (it’s so darn cute how all the health advice admonishes me to “get a good night’s sleep”). Mass shootings in the US—again, and again, and again.

None of these personal griefs or worries or global horrors is minimized or mitigated by trees covered in colorful lights.

And yet.

For as long as there have been humans in winter, we’ve tried to create light in the darkness. Here in the silence and beauty a person may set down his or her or their weapons, actual or metaphorical, lay aside political and religious and philosophical differences*** and stand quietly in a moment of shared awe. Shared not just with the person who stopped here, in this place, yesterday or last year, or the person who will stand here next week or next year, but with an invisible host spanning the globe, a host comprised of every person who has ever stepped off the pell-mell road to conflict and mutual destruction to allow himself or herself or themselves to be surrounded and swaddled and enveloped in peace.

It won’t last, this peace. Nothing does. Impermanence is the one unchanging facet of the universe. But here and now, in the glimmering lights on a still pond, peace descends, and for just this moment, that is enough.

*** I realize that the celebration of Christmas is by no means universal, and any attempt to claim these are “just” decorated trees, rather than an expression of Christmas, would be disingenuous. However, I continue to believe that a person does not have to celebrate Christmas as a religious and/or secular holiday to be moved by lights in the darkness.