Searching for Meaning in the LA Fires, by Charles A. Coulombe

As I begin this article, I am feeling extremely surreal.  After an absence of over a month, I am back in my Austrian apartment, with everything about me as normal as it can be for an expatriate.  But just a few short days ago I was in Southern California, where I have lived most of my life, with two of my favourite areas engulfed in flames. A few days before that, I was engaged in celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas as I have done for many a year, until COVID kept me from coming back from Austria in 2020.  A little while before that, I was enjoying the Advent Markets that mark the season in Central Europe, and half-wishing I could stay and celebrate the Christmas festivities as I have grown accustomed to doing in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.  And here we are, on Inauguration Day, 2025, as I write these words down.

It is a most peculiar thing, time.  The Christmas holidays, with the Advent buildup, the great feast itself, New Year’s with its simultaneous looking backwards and forwards, and the Epiphany with its ongoing revelation of Christ to the Gentiles are a forest of liturgical and popular customs.  Varying as they do from rite to rite, place to place, and country to country, they are truly a light shining in the darkness, and just as truly uncomprehended by that darkness.  …

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