November is the month of the year that brings me into the night. Every morning, I get up well before sunrise and every evening, I go to bed well after sunset: impossible to escape the darkness outside!
Disoriented by these days which are getting shorter and shorter, I patiently await the arrival of Advent which will direct me, in December, towards the light of Christmas. While waiting to let myself be guided by this lighthouse, I am invited to live without a compass the mystery of the sea, sometimes calm, sometimes stormy, of the night. She comes to remind me that my life is woven with threads of all colors, from the darkest to the brightest.
grow in truth
If I speak of calm or rough seas, it is because the night, for me, is not made of air, fire or earth, but of water! The night is cold and humid, as is the rainy November atmosphere. It offers me the depth and darkness of its waters, where all I have to do is embark, sail, dive, walk, depending on the visibility of the day. These waters do not lead to death; on the contrary, they are matrix. They retain, to shape in them, everything I have to mourn: what has disappeared forever from my life, like what never appeared there, for lack of having been expected, desired and welcomed. .
This work of mourning is vital: it is what keeps me alive, walking awake and confident on my path. As Jesus told us, “all that is not assumed is not saved”: all that is not loved, forgiven, crossed, honored is not saved. Symbolically dedicating a month of the year to the calm or stormy sea of the night is therefore essential to grow in truth. I then agree to navigate between disappearance and appearance. I learn to let go in the depths what is dead, and to bring to the surface what desires to live and come to light to know the full light.
How to navigate in this way between disappearance and appearance? Dancing in the night! Every November, I place a photograph of the aurora borealis on my work table. For the Inuit, these lights of the Far North are indeed the souls of unborn children who dance in the polar night. Having never left their mother’s womb, they do not know how to leave Earth’s, and thus knock on the door of Heaven. Contemplating this image encourages me to open the belly of the night to deliver what seeks to die or to be born. She tells me that I suffer less from the lack of light than from a lack of dancing.
Assemble what has disappeared
Who says dance, says music! November is the month of the year when I listen to the most music, in the dark of nightfall. Listening becomes essential to follow all the waves to the soul that inhabit me, as if hearing became finer when visibility decreases. It is true that only music, whether vocal or instrumental, can drive away the clouds that hide the infinity of the Universe and the light of the stars. Only music allows what is shaken by the waves to cry out, to cry, to invoke, to sing.
This year, I combined dance and music with rose floral water. In fact, I learned that Mexicans spread flower petals in their homes on the feast of the dead so that their perfume can mark out a path and guide those who have died to the common table. It is true that the living and the dead come together in one communion of saints.
And isn’t that the evening vocation of November? Assemble at nightfall what has disappeared forever and what has never appeared, so that this word “never” no longer hinders the desire to live and the joy of the heart. A desire and a joy that will have the whole season of Advent to dissipate the night and let the day be born.
Charlotte Jousseaume is a writer. She leads writing workshops and has published Silence is my joy (Albin Michel), mystical quartet (Stag), And the mirror burned (Deer) and I walked on the foam of the sky (Salvator).