HOW LONG THE DAYS [W, 6-21-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—HOW LONG THE DAYS [W, 6-21-23]

 

I never knew my mother’s father, my grandfather, Elmer Pond. He was a coal miner. He was killed in a mine cave-in before I was born. I have a washstand that he built, a simple wooden table he kept outside his backdoor at home. He made it more than a hundred years ago. When he returned from the mine, he would fill a tin basin with water and wash off the coal dust before he entered his house.

My grandfather Pond spent most of his time in darkness. Especially in winter, he went down into the mine before the sun was up, and he came up from the mine after the sun was already down. His only light in the mine was the dim glow of a carbide lamp on the front of his hat.

I think about him often, even though I never knew him, perhaps because I never knew him. I wonder if he got to see sunlight in summer, since the days were long. Like right now, as we hit the summer solstice.

We say that the days are long in summer and short in winter, but every day still has twenty-four hours. Only the day when we are born, and the day when we die, only those days are any shorter than the others.

It is not the day but the light that is long in summer and short in winter, “in short supply.”

It is true, though, that in a more profound way, we measure the days by light. More light, more day. Less light, less day. If there is less light, we have less time. “Work, for the night is coming, when no one can work.” [Jesus of Nazareth, recorded in John 9:4.]

This day of summer, as I look at the wash stand my grandfather made, still so sturdy, at the end of the sofa, stacked with books, I think again about this man whose coal-mining genes I carry, and the day is long with light.

John Robert McFarland