We've all had too much sorrow.
All the things I wish I could write about, and an Advent playlist for you
I want to tell you about the movies I saw a little over a week ago, about crying in the final moments of Hamnet, about the unexpected beauty and grace in Wake Up Dead Man.1 I want to tell you how surreal life feels when your community has lived through a mass shooting,2 how strange it is to see maps of streets you’ve come to love and the city so many friends call home making international news. I want to find words for the anger and grief I feel when I see that, by some counts, this year is ending with almost 400 mass shootings in the United States.3 The case is closed, but it doesn’t feel like a relief, not yet. At the same time, I wish I could highlight all the ways people keep showing up for each other, not just first responders and law enforcement, but café owners and bus drivers too.
It’s a lot. And it’s all tangled up with the mad dash to the end of the year, with quiet snowfall and Christmas shopping, last minute details and getting a long overdue oil change.
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There are just a handful of days left until Christmas, but I still wanted to share my Advent playlist for those of us who still need a little space.4 I’ve been tweaking it all through the season, and once the list came together, I found these songs a helpful companion in a particularly heavy season.
Last night, we had a few friends over for a winter solstice dinner, and toasted to a brighter tomorrow. May it be so. And may we take the time we need to catch up to the light. 🕯️
But for real, I do want to write about Wake Up Dead Man at some point because I can’t stop thinking about it.
Gun violence CW for the footnotes — I’m specifically referring to the shooting at Brown University on December 13th. We live about half an hour from Providence, my job and our church community is there, and we know quite a few faculty and alumni and students. Providence feels like a second home.
Source Citation Corner: I’m going by the Gun Violence Archive’s definition of mass shooting, any incident where 4 or more people are injured in the same place at the same time. Summary of their data is here. Some sources define the terms differently. It’s worth celebrating that mass killings were down this year, but again… almost 400 is far too many. Even one is far too many.
Apologies to Apple Music / other streamer friends. One day I’ll find the magic app to share playlists across platforms.