Advent 20
Friday, Third Week of Advent
16 December 2022
“We are all stardust and stories” ~Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea
Where are you in your story? Are you at a beginning, building your personal background, and meeting new friends? Are you at a climax, finding new heights of joy or depths of despair? Maybe you find yourself on a downswing, with storylines cracking and tumbling down around you. Perhaps you’re almost at the end of a tunnel, with that tiny bit of light just becoming visible.
This year, I found solace in a book by Erin Morgenstern, called The Starless Sea. I am currently a third of the way through my fourth time listening to the audiobook in the last six months. It’s a perfect, “curl up with a book and a hot cup of tea and be happy” book. While the plot is complex, intertwined, and difficult to describe, I think what I love most of all is how much it loves and respects stories.
Zachary Ezra Rollins finds a book in his college library (located in my home town of Burlington VT no less!). Through various twists and turns, the book describes (and eventually leads him to) a hidden, underground library; a harbor on the Starless Sea. When Zachary finally enters the harbor, he finds himself not in the heyday of grand parties and bustling halls, but in the quiet beauty that remains. The life of the place is past the events he read about, he struggles to find his place in it.
Personally, I’ve always liked the “training montage” part of a story. The highly productive part, when I reach new goals, and learn new things. But as fun as that part is, it can’t last forever. No matter how hard I train, or learn, or smile, sometimes injuries happen. And I can’t recover overnight. Sometimes, it takes a while to rebuild. Wounds take time to heal, and when they do, things aren’t always quite the same. Sometimes I find myself in a part of the story that I don’t particularly care for. Sometimes it’s an awful part. Sometimes it’s just not where I imagined I’d be.
When we need to find our way through these unexpected storylines, it is our connection to each other that leads us. As Zachary navigates the unexpected edges of his story, it is his connection to another person that guides him. The connection that bridges the gap from what the story was, to what it can be. Understanding where we are at in our stories, or the stories around us, is easier with help. Maybe it is a friendship with someone who you’ve known forever, or maybe it’s a moment with someone whose gaze you caught briefly across the library. For me, it’s the love of a person, the one whom I wake up next to every day. The one who stands next to me, helping balance out this crazy world where everything seems to be constantly turning topsy-turvy.
When the savior was born in Bethlehem all those years ago, he wasn’t an ethereal creature of light, he was human. He came to us as a person; someone who could love, and laugh, and cry, and live, and die. Someone with whom we could connect. Someone we could love, or hate, or help. Perhaps he came to help us understand our own stories, wherever and whenever we might be within them.
This Christmas, remember that wherever you are in your story, it is important. Sometimes we need to see the darker parts in order to appreciate the perfect moments. Maybe we need to live through the breaking down of our story in order to truly love the building up of our story.
And if you find you’re not happy with where you are, remember that it can always change. You may be stepping into a new story this very day, and have no idea.
As Erin Morgenstern says, “A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.”
Merry Christmas.
Rachel Haskins ’17
