The Old Year Now Away is Sped

 In the only real blog post I made in 2020 that was not a Christmas post, I mention the very many good and beautiful things that occurred, despite the year being somewhat more fraught than anyone expected. I still hold that 2020 was a year full of a great number of very good things, though shortly after I composed that piece, life became increasingly more complicated than need be. It is quite difficult to navigate a world in which every blessed person must have a covered face, if one happens to be prone to claustrophobia and anxiety. Work becomes difficult, involving doctor's notes, and reclassifications. Shopping for necessities becomes a great burden. Day to day life becomes odd, as one tries to navigate through all of this-- and after a while, quite demoralising-- especially when there does not seem to be an end in sight. Yet, in the balance against this, is the fact that our local Church (while not always able to offer Mass) has never closed. I have been able to make daily visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and there is Adoration every Monday. There have been lovely astronomical events, including the Neowise comet in late July, and the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, just before Christmas-- both of which we observed out at the lake, looking through my younger sister's telescope. Its just strong enough to allow you to see incredibly tiny moons lined up next to Jupiter, and just enough of Saturn's rings to understand why Galileo thought that planet had "ears". There have been many blessings in my family, and the expectation of more to come. In all, 2020 was a year that I would prefer to never live through again, but which has, in many ways, been good for me. I would like to say that I have great hopes for 2021, but I do not. I have a very modest hope that it will be better than the preceding year. (Dare I opine that it could hardly be worse? That seems like tempting fate.) But hopeful or not, I am glad to see the back of 2020 (good riddance) and please God, grant us (at the very least) normality in this new year. 

I'm posting this song today, for no reason in particular, saving that I like it. Its originally in Welsh, and it keeps its Welsh title (meaning lullaby), despite being sung in English. Nor are the words to this version of it anything like the Welsh original, which is merely a lullaby and not particularly Christmasy. This particular version of Suo Gân was originally from an Irish Tenors' CD, though I only heard it when a friend of mine recorded a long, 2 hour tape of mostly Irishy Christmas music for me: