Is there another word that "sounds" so much like it, uh, reads as does the word "bleak?"
Seriously. What other word in the English language sounds more like the word's meaning than does "bleak?"
In the darkness, there lies bleak. In the midst of powerful pain, there is bleak. Below the deepest layer of financial difficulty there is bleak.
Bleak is a man clinging to a buoy after a hurricane-induced tsunami. It is a field of sun-crisped plants, so lacking in water one can crumble the plants with a touch. It is that moment where those who have loved us in spite of ourselves somehow in the end, in the very end, have given up on us.
It is bleak.
Bleak is, bare, desolate, cold and piercing; without hope or encouragement. It is sinking sand that is the world without Christ.
It is, well, bleak. It is black way out beyond the color black. It is warfare without conscious or guilt, in a land where children are warriors.. It is laughter-less night, without the thought of any games or grand talk or wise notions.
You can almost "feel" the desolation in that world, almost sense the bareness, really know the piercing. It is a land of shadows, a plain of grayness, a lake of salt. I know no other word quite like it in that regard. It is austere, chilly, bone-breakingly dreary and grim, climbing onto our backs like impossible weights and furious stress and never getting off or giving up.
It is bombed out, blighted, bulldozed, deforested, deserted, exposed, flat, given way to for lack of a better description. It is gaunt. Raw. Scorched. Wind-swept, weather-beaten, unsheltered. It was and is exposed.
It came, and like a visitor who never stops talking or never pays for food or never puts the toilet seat up or down, it never leaves.
It is, above all else, you guessed it, bleak.
It was to this word and to this description that hymn-writer (and by the way is there really such a thing since no one sits down to write a hymn does one?) Christina G. Rossetti gathered herself to write a poem like some of us would write a letter.
She wrote this:
In the bleak mid-winter / Frosty wind made moan, / Earth stood hard as iron, / Water like a stone;/ Snow had fallen, snow on snow,/ Snow on snow, / In the bleak mid-winter / Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him / Nor earth sustain; / Heaven and earth shall flee away / When He comes to reign: / In the bleak mid-winter / A stable-place sufficed / The Lord God Almighty, / Jesus Christ.
What can I give Him, / Poor as I am? / If I were a shepherd / I would bring a lamb, / If I were a wise man / I would do my part, / Yet what I can I give Him, / Give my heart.
In verse one, Rossetti describes the physical circumstances of the Incarnation in Bethlehem. In verse two, Rossetti contrasts Christ's first and second coming. The third verse dwells on Christ's birth and describes the simple surroundings, in a humble stable and watched by beasts of burden.
I love the fact that the journey she takes us on goes from frosty winds to giving the God of heaven and earth a gift, her own heart.
That journey is in one case austere and plain, and in the other so colorful.
Hear it briefly again:
In the bleak mid-winter (ever had a better use of the word bleak?)
Frosty wind made moan (can you feel that wind taking the edge right off your morning coffee even as the steam swirls like wind in a football stadium?)
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; (in this word description, she paints the scene with hard, frozen earth and water so cold it is like a stone in contact with the skin)
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow (again, can you feel the wind dancing mid-winter's tune, as snow on snow literally paints the country-side white, the sun's rays gray?)
In the coldest movie I know (in every way you can be cold), Jeremiah Johnson, one of the things I remember most about the film is the bleakness of the winters for that mountain man. Wind whipping snow over snow over snow. But the bleakest part of that movie, starring Robert Redford, came when a series of events took his loved ones from him.
Bleak is alone. Bleak is depressed. Bleak is lonely.
Rossetti's life as a poet wasn't joy-filled. Certainly she wasn't as recognized as much as a contemporary like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I'm no judge, but to me they might be a French loaf to a slice of cornbread. Both are fine in their setting.
To me there is an irony that of the two poems she is most famous for in terms of them being turned into Christmas hymns, there's this bleak, difficult, longing piece, In the bleak mid-winter.
Then there is another that cries out to what Christmas is all about, written 13 years after the bleakness of mid-winter had passed for Rossetti.
The hymn? Love Came Down at Christmas.
Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love diving; Love was born at Christmas; star and angels gave the sign.
Bleak? Only if one is an unbeliever.
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