The Winter Solstice--The Happiest Day of the Year (You Could Be Time)

Perhaps it's strange to you that the darkest day of the year is my happiest day.  I start talking about it in September.  

"Only three more months to the solstice!" I say.  "We can make it!"  My husband thinks I'm crazy, as does anyone with earshot (this conversation sometimes occurs in public).  But then I add:  "And then the days start getting longer again!"

Here in the Pacific Northwest, where our winter days are so very short, and the winters chilly, grey, and wet, we do love our sunlight.  And a few more minutes of daylight each day is good news indeed.  If I can keep my good cheer up until the solstice, it gets easier every day after that.  

The winter solstice happens just a few days before Christmas, and then the days begin to get longer and baby Jesus makes his entrance and New Year's Day signals the renewal of all our hopes, dreams, goals, and plans and eventually we can drive to work in the light and come home in the light and the sunlight stretches itself into spring and we go see the tulips up north and the melting snow cascading over Snoqualmie Falls to the east and then we teachers pack up our classrooms for the year and it is summer--glorious summer!

I am an optimist at heart.  My optimism begins as soon as the days give evidence of growing shorter and it continues until it is no longer needed.  Light is the symbol and substance of my hope.

Recently, I was asked to compose a written piece to accompany one of the scripture passages for the Christmas Lessons and Carols Concert performed by the choirs of Bellevue Christian School.  I wrote in response to John 1:1-15, which reads (in the NIV) as follows:  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testifyconcerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

I hope you enjoy the poem I wrote in response:

You Could Be Time


You could be time
time that flies in joy or urgency
drags in grief and anticipation
time that marks our planting and our harvesting
our killing and our healing, our silence and our speaking
time measured by bells and whistles and alarms
time that measures our days and
marches us inexorably to our deaths
time that bends, stretches, and contracts
according to our speed, our destination, our location
inconstant, limited, limiting time.
But you are not time.

You could be matter
matter that gathers, grows, decays
disintegrates, re-integrates, shape-shifts
moves, changes, destroys, is destroyed
matter that ages and betrays itself
matter, our very flesh,
not willing even when the spirit is willing
fickle, mutable matter.
But you are not merely matter.

You could be space
space so vast, expanding
space that seems limitless
dark, cold, impersonal, empty
space that once was not but now is
that one day will contract and swallow itself
and us with it
space that will cease to be
You cannot be space.

You call yourself Light
You have come into our world as light
our everlasting light
Light the first gift in creation
to the heavens and the earth
Light by which all living things have their existence
In which all needy humans find life
light warms, illuminates, reveals deep and hidden things
nurtures the awakening of spring and the flowering of summer
the fullness of harvest
light sweeps away darkness and reveals our lost coins
the near-constant in our universe
by which speed and time are measured
light returns every morning, the sign
of your constancy, your faithfulness
light guides our feet on the path
the way, the truth, and the life
we who dwell in darkness have seen your great light
our armor, our knowledge, the gospel of the glory of Christ
revelation to the nations and glory to your people Israel
your glory in the New Jerusalem
You are light
And that light is life.

No Rush to Thanksgiving

It has been my practice the last few years to post on Facebook something for which I am thankful, every day during the month of November leading up to Thanksgiving Day.  I didn’t do that this year. It’s been a demanding year for us, and I have dutifully tried to practice gratitude in the midst of those demands, but the words get stuck in my throat and don’t make it down my arm to the computer screen.  When I have tried, the words have felt forced, compelled, not without meaning but perhaps without sincerity:  words I should mean but could not feel.  I felt like a fraud.

Maybe, occasionally, you have experienced something similar. 

Amidst my first world comforts, and growing more and more in my understanding of the sufferings of others, both here and around the world, I felt mostly—guilty.  Guilty for allowing my own suffering to prevent me from expressing gratitude.  Guilty for even thinking that my discomforts amounted to suffering.  Guilty for not being able to summon up compassion for the suffering of others on demand.  Guilty for the resentment that sometimes bubbled up when I was called on to serve in ways that I had not foreseen. 

Guilt is a terrible motivator.  It just made me feel worse that I couldn’t summon up even a dutiful gratitude. 

Some days I couldn’t even form a charitable thought towards suffering people in my immediate circle of influence, even though my own discomforts pale in the light of their experiences.  At times, I thought I could just not bear to hear one more story of loss, illness, reversal of fortune, or disappointment.  And that’s before I even heard the news:  human trafficking, Ferguson, corporate greed, hit-and-runs, abducted children, school shootings very close to home, and you know the list goes on.  And on.  And on.

Many years ago I was in the hospital after a miscarriage at sixteen weeks of pregnancy.  I was devastated.  I couldn’t sleep, and a night nurse who wasn’t too busy came to my room and let me talk for a while.  At first, I was grateful for the opportunity to process aloud with a compassionate listener.  But then she said the words that gutted my right to be devastated.  “At least.”  As in, “At least you’re young; you can have another baby.”  Yes, ma’am, let me get right on that.  Really?  I shouldn’t feel sad about losing this baby because someday I will have another one?  Could I please be allowed to mourn this loss first?

I read an article recently that said that a meaningful gesture of compassion never begins with the words, “At least.”  At least you have a job.  At least you have a home.  At least you don’t have cancer like these other people.  “At least” shuts down compassion, shuts down conversation, shuts down our right to have feelings of any kind.  “At least” says, “You should be grateful in spite of your piddly little problems.”  It says, “How dare you think that you have it bad?”  “At least” rushes us from our experience of current loss or hardship or disappointment or mourning to acceptance.  To the future.  To a brittle but false contentment.

I realize now that, although I would never say “at least” to a suffering friend or parishioner, I have been saying it to myself.  I have been telling myself that I have no right to consider my own sufferings because “at least . . .”

“At least” rushes us past lament.

The Bible contains many, many commands and reminders to express gratitude.  But it also contains many examples of lament.  In seminary, when I was studying the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, one thing I realized was that the books of Job and Lamentations—expressions of lament easily recognizable to even a casual reader—were written as poetry.  The writing of poetry (good poetry, anyway) is not, after the first impulse, a spontaneous activity.  It takes time, revision, careful attention to every word, a consideration of the range of meaning, rhythm, sound, effect on the reader.  Lament was encoded.  Suffering people didn’t just sit down and vomit out their thoughts into a journal and call it poetry.  They considered it, mined it, lingered over it, pondered it, contemplated it, sat with it, attempted to make meaning out of it.  Lament was crafted.

Biblical lament is given to us as a model.  We are meant to practice lament, the same way we practice thanksgiving and prayer and praise and service and justice and mercy and humility and compassion.  When we rush past lament on our way to thanksgiving, our gratitude becomes cheap and artificial.  At least mine does.

I need to spend time looking at my losses and heartaches and life demands and fatigue and disappointment and confusion and weakness and inadequacy in the face.  I don’t have to make meaning of them.  I don’t have to resolve them.  But I’m pretty sure I do have to acknowledge them.  I need to honestly lay them in all their ugliness at the feet of the God who knows it all and say, “There it is.  All of it.  I don’t know what to do with it.  I don’t like the way I feel.  I don’t like that I’m not strong enough to deal with it on my own.  I don’t like how petty I feel.  I don’t like suffering.  I don’t like feeling guilty.  I’m ashamed that I would prefer an easy life.”  And finally, because I’m starting to remember how God has worked in my life before, “Maybe you can do something with it.  Maybe you can make something out of it.”

And when I do, God sometimes opens my eyes to see the little slivers of light, of his goodness, of his presence that have been there all along—the small graces that soften the edges of hardship.  The wheelchair that just happens to line up perfectly with the height of the bed.  The job that I didn’t want where I am valued and respected.  A tangible, unexpected reward for service rendered years ago.  A home that delights us after we were forced to move.  Ministry colleagues with whom we find safe space to lament.  I am finally able to say, “Thank you, Jesus.” 

I recently read the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, the true story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean on a rescue mission during World War 2.  He survived an unprecedented 47 days aboard a life raft, was eventually captured by the Japanese, and was singled out for untold abuse, torture, and deprivation.  It’s a story of almost unimaginable suffering.  And yet, small graces were evident throughout his story.  His life raft was strafed by a Japanese fighter pilot, and although the raft was damaged extensively, neither he nor the two other Americans with him took a single bullet.  When their raft hit the equatorial doldrums, he experienced a heavenly choir of what seemed like angels, which brought him unexpected peace and the hope of a future.  A Japanese guard who had converted to Christianity under the influence of missionaries snuck him extra food and kept away some of the more sadistic guards.  

Eventually Louis was rescued, but it wasn’t enough.  Instead of leaving behind his wartime sufferings, he had to examine his agonies square in the face before he could call on the God of the universe to rescue his heart and soul.  Although his story took him farther into darkness that I can even imagine, at the end of it was great light and life.  He lived a redeemed life, full of health and vigor, into his 90s, and most of his postwar life was spent in meaningful service to the less fortunate.  Small graces helped him survive and eventually thrive.

At this time of year we naturally focus on gratitude.  Most Christians believe in the importance of gratitude, at least on some level; I consider it a spiritual discipline.  In other words, if we practice gratitude even when we don’t feel gratitude, it changes and forms us.  We become different people, kinder people, people with some of our rough edges sanded down, people with eyes to see the goodness of God even amid difficult circumstances.

But we must not pretend.  Some things remain broken, unsolvable, heartbreaking.  We must not put on Pollyanna faces and force ourselves to look on the bright side and ignore the dark side.  We must acknowledge our pain, even if others’ pain seems to deserve more attention.  If we don’t, we might miss the small graces where God touches, encourages, heals, and clears the path before us.

Thanksgiving, yes.  But sometimes we must pass through lament on the way.

A Meditation for Preachers: Adapted from Psalm 40

Recently I missed church two weeks in a row, once for snow, once for illness.  For perhaps a number of reasons—the illness, the absence, the fact that my husband was out of town for an extended period of time—I began to feel restless and out of sorts, maybe a little cabin feverish.  I didn’t go out of my home much, for lack of energy and dreary weather. I missed portions of my two part-time jobs.  I had to cancel out on several events that usually give me energy and equilibrium.

The enemy crept in.

The restlessness became a voice of self-doubt and confusion.  What business do you have thinking you can be a pastor?  Of course this sermon is difficult to prepare; you have nothing to say and no right to say it.  Do you really think it was God telling you to go to seminary, or did you just dream that up on your own?  You know, don’t you, that you have no future in ministry?

Darrel came home and my health returned and the snow went away (although not the dreary weather) and the sermon got prepared, albeit with little time to spare and without real confidence.  I went to church and I preached.  And the whole experience—the gathering with our little faith community, the greeting of visitors and the eating of donut holes, the working with the worship team and the Scripture readers, the preaching, the praying, the offering, the benediction—brought a kind of refreshment of my calling and purpose, an affirmation that at least for today I am in the right place, doing what I am called to do.  I am grateful for this small grace.

Today I read Psalm 40.  I think most of us, when we read this Psalm, think of it in terms of sin—David’s or our own—all that mud and mire and slimy pit language.  We receive forgiveness and that’s a great thing.  But today I read it differently.  I read it in terms of purpose, specifically the preacher’s purpose, the need and call for what we know of God to spill out of us.  God’s living, active word spoke to me in my current need and hope. 

And so I have arranged excerpts from Psalm 40 as a meditation for preachers.  Perhaps God will speak to you through it also.

A Meditation for Preachers:  Adapted from Psalm 40 (NIV)

Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us.  None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.  But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me.  You are my God; do not delay.

Then I said, “Here I am!  I have come!  I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.”

I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know.  I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help.  I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly.

You put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to you our God.  Many will see and fear you, Lord, and put their trust in you.  Blessed is the one who trusts in you! 

May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who long for your saving help always say, “The Lord is great!”

Diet Coke with Jesus

For a time when I was young, I hated the word devotions.  It sounds so pretentious and pious in a way that didn’t express what I was doing—or thought I should be doing—when I took the time to read my Bible and pray.  In my young adult years, the preferred expression was quiet time, but that sounds like a nap or what you ask your toddlers to enter when you have had enough noise for a while.  I suppose I could borrow from my new favorite daily cartoon strip Coffee with Jesus,[1] but I’d have to change it to Tea with Jesus, and I don’t always have tea:  Diet Coke with Jesus?  I don’t know.  So I am back to the word devotions; at least it’s shorter than daily prayer and Bible reading. 

So on my daily teuxdeux list[2] you’ll see devotions.  Is it awful to put something that should be personal and intimate and important on a teuxdeux list?  A task to be crossed off?  For me, it’s not so awful, because I also write down such “tasks” as make cookies with grandkids and walk with BFF and plan Mom’s 75^th birthday party.  To keep my life focused on the right priorities, even the personal, intimate, desirable, wonderful teuxdeuxs end up on my list.  I am easily distracted by less important activities such as Facebook Scrabble (which, to be fair to myself, I do at least in part to keep the aging brain sharp, which all the self-help articles tell us we must do to avoid dementia and—ooh, squirrel!), things that seem to happen even though they are not on the list.  That is not a reflection of their relative importance so much as their relative “automaticness.”  Or perhaps I am suffering the effects of too many years of multitasking.

Devotions is something I plan to do every day, although I don’t always get to it, even though it is on my teuxdeux list, waiting to be crossed off.  The days I don’t get to it become a sort of control group to compare to the days I do.  I have noticed, especially in recent months, that the days I get to devotions are better days than the ones I don’t.  I do not want this to be true, but it is.  Don’t get me wrong.  Devotions are about my relationship with God, and he does not punish me for “missing” my daily devotions by giving me a bad day any more than my husband does if I forget to ask him how his day went.  Regardless, the days that begin (and yes, the earlier the better, in my case) with devotions have a different feel to them, a different smoothness, a better light.  Why?

When I wonder about the quality of my relationship with God, I often ponder my relationships with people I love, with the hope of gaining some insight into how that vertical relationship might work.  For instance, the days when my husband and I have time together to talk, to play games, or even to work on household tasks or run errands together are just plain and simply more fun, more satisfying.  I work at home, alone, much of the time, and often I am more productive when my husband is physically present, even if we are not talking or interacting.  My best friend and I rarely see each other because of our busy schedules, and in between visits I sometimes forget how important our friendship is.  But when we are together, we can tell each other things that we cannot tell to a single other living soul, and our burdens are lifted and we remember how grateful we are for this friendship.  If I am worried about my children, even if I am regularly praying for them, the best cure for my anxiety is time with them:  playing games, running errands, doing craft projects, cooking a meal. 

Nothing beats physical time and space.  When I am actually present with the people I love, my days go better:  I am happier, more productive, freer, and calmer.  But still, I do not plan to spend time with them in order to get happiness, productivity, freedom, or calm.  I spend time with them because I love them, because I long for their presence in my life, because our lives are intertwined and we have committed to being responsible in some way for one another.  The joy is a bonus.

And I love Jesus.  I long for time with him, even though it’s a little more esoteric, harder to grasp, than when my grandkids come for a visit.  Our lives are intertwined.  He has given his life for me, and I have given my life for him in the best way I know how.  And when I spend time with him, my days go better.  I don’t think I spend time with him so that my days go better; but when I’m having a rough day, I look back to see what’s missing, and I realize sometimes it’s Jesus.

Again, don’t get me wrong.  My good days often have the same kinds of tasks and interruptions in them that my bad days have.  What’s the difference?

Yesterday started off with tea with Jesus.  The day was filled with both have tos and get tos, and even though some of the have tos were filled with purpose and delight, some such as folding clothes took up very little space in my active attention.  In the afternoon, after seeing a movie with my younger daughter, I returned my attention to a repeating task, one that requires some thought and concentration and creativity.  It presented some difficulties, and I had to re-do a portion of it before I was satisfied.  I had some interruptions, some of which were urgent.  I kept getting distracted. Small portions of the task remained unfinished at the end of the day.  (I’m big on closure, on getting things crossed off the list, so that could have been upsetting.)  And yet it was a good day. 

In my experience, I realized, the good day is not necessarily one that is perfectly productive or without interruptions or without problems.  My project did not go smoothly; it had bumps and fits and starts along the way.  I was occasionally stymied.  The difference was that I felt satisfied with the process and the progress.  I persevered.  The obstacles and setbacks felt almost necessary to the task, as if I were growing and changing and adapting as the task presented its difficulties.  The frustrations did not frustrate me!  They were part of the goodness of the day.

Jesus invited me into his presence a long time ago, and I accepted his invitation.  But on a daily basis, it’s as if he says, “Are you home today?” and I say, “Yes, please come over!  I have some things to do, but you are welcome to hang out.  As a matter of fact, I’d appreciate your help.”  And when he gets here, we sit down and have our coffee or tea or Diet Coke, we have our intimate conversation and talk about what’s on our minds; he might even suggest some changes to my teuxdeux list or give me some new things to think about, and I remind him of some of the things that are beyond my control that I need him to tackle.  Then we clear the dishes, and I pick up a hammer and he picks up a measuring tape and we get started on the tasks of the day.[3]  Maybe I’ll have to do some backtracking and redo some things, and maybe the work will go smoothly, and maybe it will present some frustrations.  But Jesus is here.  And it is a good day.

Actually, Diet Coke with Jesus does have a nice ring to it.

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[1] http://radiofreebabylon.com/Comics/CoffeeWithJesus.php; http://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Jesus-David-Wilkie/dp/0830836624

[2] www.teuxdeux.com; I don’t know how I ever functioned without it. 

[3] Computer and white board, dish cloth and broom, chalk and eraser, choose your own tool metaphors!

The Limitations of the Bird's Eye View

Last week my niece Lindsey and I decided to take advantage of what will probably be the last hot day of 2013 in the Pacific Northwest by heading up to Baker Lake for a few hours of sunbathing, swimming, and picnicking.  We chose the Swamp Creek Campground beach area, a site we had never been before, having previously chosen Shannon Creek or Panorama Point, other lovely locations; Swamp Creek has a much larger beach and swim area.  On a September Wednesday, when most people are back at school or work, we had the place almost to ourselves.

We set up our beach chairs and our picnic lunch on a little flat area a few feet above the beach, overlooking the sun-drenched expanse of Baker Lake.  From there we both noticed wide alternating ribbons of dark and light in the water, although neither of us mentioned it to the other.  I attributed it to cloud shadows, overlooking the fact that it was a perfectly cloudless day. 

When we finally soaked up enough sun to want to get into the lake, we ventured ankle deep into what looked like very shallow water.  But the sand there, unlike at other beaches in the area, is very soft, and we sank in almost up to our knees and started sliding toward a much deeper spot in the water—water which was cold, at least at first, so we didn’t really want to move into it quite that quickly!  We finally got safely all the way in and realized we could stand up straight with our heads out of the water. 

Lindsey wondered aloud, then, if she could swim all the way over to a log we saw some way out.  She is a good swimmer (a lifeguard, even) and I was sure she could do it.  So she started walking towards it until it got deep enough to swim the rest of the way.  Except it didn’t.

 

She walked until the water came up to her shoulders, but then I could see more and more of her.  The water was actually getting shallower!  Then deeper!  Then shallower!  Eventually I followed her, and we discovered that we could walk almost halfway across the lake without needing to swim more than a stroke or two every now and then—good news for a clunky swimmer such as myself. 

The “cloud shadows” we had seen from the beach were not cloud shadows at all.  They were the deeper trenches between shallowly submerged sandbars that extended in bands quite far across the lake.  It struck me that we had had the big picture, the bird’s eye view, but it had no meaning—or rather, incorrect meaning—for us because we had spent no time in the trenches, experiencing it at the water level.  When we got out of the lake to dry off and warm up, and we looked back out over the water, we realized what we were seeing.  The big picture couldn’t make sense until we had the little picture.

I think about how often I have ideas and opinions—about my own life, my church, my community, my country, my world, my neighbor, the person driving in front of me, the check out procedures at the library, the customer service at the local cable company—and I think I have the bird’s eye view, the big picture, and that my opinions are clearly logical.  I have answers!  (Truth be told, I often have judgments.) 

But I haven’t always walked in the trenches first to see which details of the bird’s eye view are actually relevant, important, meaningful, or even accurate.  How do I know how insurmountable the obstacles really are until I attempt the course?  How do I know I can handle deep water until I’ve tried it?  How do I know where the trenches and sandbars lie?  How do I grasp proportions and measurements and hidden dangers?  How do I understand the costs?  How do I know when I’m just plain wrong or when I’m seeing something other than what I think I’m seeing?  Having the bird’s eye view does not mean I have eagle-eye vision!  Or to put in another way:  knowledge does not equal wisdom.

The implications are many:  I need to be cautious with my untested opinions.  I need to spend time at the micro level, testing the waters myself, so to speak, before I offer solutions.  I need empathy for others’ limitations and awareness of my own.  I need humility regarding my own knowledge and observational skill.  I need patience and a willingness to get wet or cold or sweaty or dirty—or involved.  Then, perhaps, I can step back and make sense of the big picture and actually be of use—to myself or to others.   

Another implication is that I would be wise to take advice from those who have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, instead of those who merely study from the vantage point of the ivory tower.  The ideal advisors, perhaps, are those who have tested their assumptions and hypotheses in the field, then returned to the tower to reflect and study some more and thoughtfully formulate their advice.  They wait until they have travelled before they write the travel guide.

Jesus modeled this.  He always has the God’s eye view, of course, and unlike our bird’s eye view, his view is perfect.  But he entered our story anyway, experienced our view, identified with us, suffered with us, and then offered us hope.  We were ready to listen, then, because he had walked our walk first. 

I have ideas, lots of them, about lots of things.  But age has taught me this:  ideas are cheap.  Until I’m willing to put feet under them, I don’t really know if they have any merit.  And putting feet under them requires engagement and testing at ground (or water) level, no matter how sure I think I am of the big picture.  It requires me to come alongside and enter in and identify with the problem I hope to solve.  Spectator seats have limited value in producing true discernment.

We need the big picture, absolutely.  But it’s more useful if we also have the little picture, then the big picture again, this time with the important details mapped.