Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge...

T. S. Eliot once wrote:  "Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" For a few days this past week, I lost touch with the life and wisdom of this season because of grief.  Like most, I was stunned by sadness and imobilized by an aching encounter with darkness.  It was in the darkness, however, that I caught a glimpse of the light - and for that I am grateful.

Intellectually, you see, I know that sorrow fades. Theologically I understand that in God's own time creation moves from Advent to Christmas and Epiphany - or from Good Friday to Easter - or even from solstice to equinox.  And experientially I know what it means to journey through the dark night of the soul into a deeper grace.  But I had forgotten how small rituals can act as friends of the holy along the way towards healing. 

During the week between Thanksgiving and Advent I, my daughter and I had put up our outdoor lights.  Usually I would follow this by pulling out the Christmas decorations and eventually cutting a tree.  She had already opened our suitcase of Christmas CDs and had started filling the house with the sounds of the season. But for a variety of reasons this is where things stopped:  lights and music. When the massacre in Sandy Hook took place last weekend, it felt sacriligious to go hunting for a tree.  It just was not the right season for decorations.

In time, almost in obligation, I found one in a mostly discarded tree lot on the way home from a meeting and grudgingly brought it home.  But when we set the tree in its stand, and the deep pine aroma drifted through the house, I felt something within me shift.  The next day, while putting lights on the tree, I found myself wanting to hear some of the lonely tunes of Advent and put on Lorenna McKennitt's CD, "To Drive the Cold Winter Away" followed by George Winston's classic "December."  As Dianne and I began to decorate this tree - telling stories or simply remembering the history behind each ornament - I sensed more shifting taking place within my soul.  Memories of joy and sorrow visited for a while, thoughts of the children growing through the years passed by as well as recollections of those who have come and gone in our lives as each unwrapping revealed yet another connection with a shared past.

And when the tree trimming was over - and our Southwestern ornaments hung by their new friends from Quebec, Scotland and London - it hit me:  like praying the Rosary, this physical act of reverence helped me reconnect with a wisdom greater than the limits of my current sadness.  Opening the boxes, unwrapping the ornaments, hanging the glass iciscles helped me remember the stories.  LIke making the sign of the Cross before prayer and after Eucharist, these small embodied rituals opened my heart and alerted me to the Life that exists even beyond my current living. 

Today I'm ready to go shopping for our family feast.  The grief and sorrow are still with me, but so is something of the grace and joy.