life Archives – James D. Hogan

More Light

On December 22, 2025

A winter night’s grace.

Last night at dinner, I felt a twinge of emotion spring into my throat. It caught me by surprise, not that it shouldn’t have: we were sitting down to Sunday supper around the table, each of the children lighting the candles of the wreath the fourth week of Advent, our plates piled high with steaming-hot food on the darkest evening of the year.

Our anniversary.

It’s been too long now for me to remember with any accuracy whether we thought much about the symbolism of getting married on the winter solstice. Rather, I suspect we chose the date because it was a Saturday. That it happened to fall on the 21st was lovely enough–we first started dating on a 21st, and my birthday is on a 21st. Kelly, a young teacher, and I, a poor college student, both knew we’d have winter break to count on for time off from work. The church was available–and, importantly for a budget wedding, already decorated. So it was that we spoke our vows to each other four days before Christmas.

Before the mountains were born

By James D. Hogan

On December 31, 2024

In diary

Life continues to move pretty fast.

Yesterday I lit a fire under my own rear end and decided to put together the family video for the year (a tradition of sorts that started way back when I began making videos documenting each month of our kiddo’s first years), and if nothing else, I can say with confidence that the Hogan family has been on the move.

In the course of this past year: Atlanta, Miami, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Labadee (Haiti); Washington, D.C. with Thomas (the kiddo-trip-with-Dad experience); Cherry Grove (the annual Beach Week); out west–Denver, then Las Vegas, then Zion National Park, then Grand Canyon National Park, then Phoenix; then to Toronto for a Springsteen concert, then to New Jersey to visit family. Not to mention a bunch of trips around Cackalack.

It was the year a hurricane came and devastated so many towns and communities here in western NC, an occasion where I found myself sitting in for my boss while he was out of the country. (This, coincidentally, was roughly where my commitment to working out every week sort of fell apart. See more below.)

Advent 1: Point Nemo

By James D. Hogan

On December 2, 2024

In writing

When lighthouses go dark.

In the early dark of December, I recall walking down to St. David’s in Cullowhee. I was a college student, a junior I think, and it was Advent. My friend Brittany had been invited to read a meditation she’d composed, and we were both going.

These meditations were a weekly occurrence at St. David’s. We arrived in the cold, entering into the nave directly from the red door at the side. Inside was a narrow room with a vaulted ceiling. The Advent evening prayer services were candlelit; there was a podium in the aisle for reading. A chest organ at the back provided some music. Dr. Lillian Pearson–Kelly’s piano professor–usually supplied.

I cannot remember the subject of Brittany’s meditation. I can only guess it was something literary. (We were English majors.) But the reason I was there in the first place had more to do with the rector who led the parish.

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