The First Noel

I dread Sundays with a special dread.
For at times, quite suddenly, in stillness, in music, the realization of a love betrayed sears across my heart in a flash of unexpected pain.
I sing mechanically, entertaining myself with the task of finding a harmony, or perhaps merely the sound of my own voice. And suddenly I find myself shaping the words to a song which I have sung just a few years or months ago in a passion of adoration and trust, and the stabbing sense of loss brings tears. 
I think as little as possible about religious faith during most weeks. I generally succeed in focusing on things that have more pressing interest or import to me right now. My marriage, my job. Things I need to get done. Creative hobbies- gardening and homemaking, cooking and planning special meals, writing, painting, homesteading, sewing and collecting antiques- dreaming the life I want to live and create for my family, trying to forget the things that hurt or worry.
Yet there's an internal voice which won't be silenced entirely ever, which raises itself at moments of confusion like this to wonder if everything that passed before, my whole life, my whole way of viewing the world, can really have been only a shadow and a dream built on a false system of belief.
To describe the Christianity I remember as a 'system of belief' seems so sterile.
Mustn't there be, somehow, somewhere, existing in some form, something that is God?
Can't we find Him, know Him? Does He care about us?
Will I ever trust again, ever 'worship' again, ever find any concrete meaning in the Universe greater, more noble than myself to demand sacrifice and loyalty, to give hope and serenity in exchange?
This beginning Advent season is the worst, the most agonizing, because so recently I loved it so dearly.
How can it move me, still, so powerfully- the beauty, the harmony, the exquisite balance and detail of the great Story? It bathes the history, literature, art of my culture, of all Western Civilization, in the reflected brilliance of its colors and light.
Not long ago I was a Christian repulsed by my religious community and its practices, wracked by doubts. I think now that I am an agnostic in love with Christianity. 
At this season of the year the wonder deepens- the joy, the solemn mystery of this faith attain their climax. 
Into the darkness and the cold, across the miles of silent snow, through the heavy gray clouds and mist or the icy brilliance of our million stars there comes the soft glow of candlelight and the glad sweetness of their singing, growing in strength, pushing back the night to the very blackest edges of the universe. And the old names seem to shine with a new radiance- Adonai, Emmanuel.
Messiah.
This year, for the first time, I stand apart entirely, outside in the barren dark. Without, an icy wind rakes through the emptiness, and the windows of their churches, bright with candles, vibrating with song, throw this new grief into stark relief.
For unto us a child is born. For unto us a hope is given. 
There is such a hopeless sadness in this loss of faith- so much weariness and confusion, even anguish in this journey out of Christianity. That vanished faith, imperfect as it was, immature and at times self-serving was built upon a sincere and hopeful love.
There is excruciating loneliness. A lifetime of relationships are in flux- changing, fading, vanishing entirely. I can't replace the friendships, don't know how to plough through the distance and experience community in new and meaningful ways.
The beloved, familiar melodies of Christmas make this isolation tangible, make the solitude a humming in my ears and a bitter taste in my mouth.
I forget my frustrations with the churches and Bible studies, forget their blundering and lack of nuance or compassion, their ignorance and incurious complacency, their distrust of art and intellect, their click-bait religious and political screeds on Facebook that murdered the last vestiges of my respect and I feel only a desperate envy.
I envy the simplicity of their belief.
I envy their sense of belonging.
I envy their joy, even as I doubt its sincerity.
I envy their Savior, their God-Man, their God With Us.
I envy their Christ Child, snug in his manger.
I no longer believe in Him, but at moments like these I am forced to accept that I love Him, still, with an absurd and tortured love.
Lord, to whom shall we go, when there are no words of eternal life?