He looked at the clock face that stood in the living room : 00.00 AM. A feeling of completeness invaded him. This big clock gave to the total silence that reigned in the room a kind of content, almost an hidden meaning. The piercing December chill was silently knocking at the door. "Life is a cycle," he thought, looking at the icy drizzle that had settled on the windowsill.

It was officially Christmas. December 25, 2014. Actually, in people's minds, Christmas was more likely to take place on December 24, with the gift-opening ceremony. But he was a purist and only referred to what the texts he had read so many times said... So much so that he had been called a rigorist. No matter, he no longer gave any importance to any belief whatsoever.

The death of his companion in a bicycle-car accident had stunned him and brought him back so violently to the very material reality of his absence that all his certainties had collapsed. He had never been close to death until then and when it had come to crash into his daily life, shattering his habits rooted in the affects with a wave of the hand, he had found himself speechless, astonished by the violence of the brutal end that had been given to this nascent story by the life. A story that had, slowly but surely, taken root in their beings with that unique shyness that hearts have when meeting. Without promises, but always with the whole world on the edge of their lips to share in the silence of the depth of a gaze.

No rational or spiritual explanation had been able to overcome the dull worry that now permeated his heart. This worry that the light was not finally at the end of the tunnel. That something greater and more beautiful did not transcend human stupidity and that any harmony in the world was only accidental, thus condemning the entire universe to agnostic penance as well... 

No words were of any comfort and did not persuade him of the legitimacy of inhabiting this world now empty of his fellow, empty of meaning. Nothing that had happened found the slightest valid excuse in his eyes to exist, nothing justified the pain endured, initiatory spiritual journey or not. Him who had spent so much time consoling people in the confessional where he once worked in the parish... He had been wandereding for a long time, wandering from one religious or spiritual belief to one another, and when he undertook to think about the slightest thing, he always did so in an intense and profound way. He had been wandereding, had even traveled a little around the world, had merged a few beliefs together to find his own path to God or whatever original force could explain the architecture of life and its philosophical essence... He had carried out this work of deep introspection and research, like a rabbit digging its burrow, in a frantic and rigorous way, rationally, to say the least... Until he settled down, until he joined the church.

And just as he had emerged from this existential fog, having found a sort of mental stability with these charitable rites and habits, this accident occurred. This accident that had forcibly removed him from this relative state of appeasement the one he had imposed on himself by force, as one would impose a daily bodybuilding exercise on oneself. Finally, this accident had brought him out of a certain spiritual torpor, an artificial sleep from which he had abruptly emerged, more skeptical than ever as to the reason for his presence in this body of flesh and on this Earth.

He had been looking for signs that could have put him on the path to the reason for this accident, abandoning mental methods and other rational turpitudes in favor of the famous "letting go" that the New Age keeps drumming into our ears. He had tried the path of providence. Watching for a mirror hour, a white feather or some music reminding him of the moments shared on his sofa bed listening to various pieces that made them float, transporting them both into a kind of bubble...

He had worked in this parish for years, receiving anyone who came to him, conducting consultations from this kind of wooden kiosk, away from the benches facing the hotel. Of course he didn't count his hours, nor the hours he gave to each of the people who came to see him. If they needed an hour, so be it. If they needed 3, that was fine too. So much so that sometimes there was a queue in front of the confessional and the priest was obliged, kindly, to be strict, asking these gentlemen and ladies to wait their turn discreetly outside the church or even on a bench in the church.

He didn't just listen, and sometimes he also allowed himself to give advices. Advices that never came from him, but that he received, so to speak, very intuitively. He knew that he knew and that was it. If only he could have been endowed with this same intuition concerning his own person, here, right now... He had nevertheless continued to work in the parish, even if he was no longer animated by this same passion, this same faith, this same spiritual hygiene. He felt empty, but he continued nonetheless, so as not to abandon those he had helped before and perhaps also a little so as not to tip over himself...

He found himself, so to speak, speechless before his own fate. Him who had consoled so many people, of all origins, social classes and even religions ! Because yes, it happened that women of Muslim faith came to ask him for advice, by one means or another... Wasn't it ironic, after all ?

So, tonight, there would be no celebration at all. He hurriedly left the living room and behaved in the most atheistic way possible. He went to the kitchen to make him some hot tea, as if it could warm his own heart.