Let's be clear, we do have an Advent wreath; actually three different Advent wreaths spread throughout the house. There are candles, Christmas CDs, fairy lights and pine boughs outside and a few other incidentals, too. But, in much the same spirit that previously impelled us to get out of the USA for Thanksgiving this year, so too our sense about celebrating Christmas 2021. Inwardly, this year feels more subdued than in years past. More tenuous and possibly wounded as well. It's certainly more "In the Bleak Midwinter" mode than "Angels We Have Heard on High." Not morose, mind you, nor hopeless. Just a bit more understated and fragile than even last year's experience of Covid Christmas Number One.
A year ago, I was grieving. The unfolding consequences of our newly mandated isolation was slowly coming into focus. I was particularly glum not to be going to worship on Christmas Eve with Louie, Anna, Jesse, Mike, and Di at Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan. Lou had been singing in the children's "peppercorn" choir for the past two years and the Christmas Eve Family Eucharist was becoming part of our family's new tradition. It's a delightful mélange of sights, sounds, and smells that integrates this young choir with oversized puppets who move about the Sanctuary as Christ's birth narrative is proclaimed and carols reverberate throughout the hall. To forsake all of this to shelter-in-place felt simultaneously anti-climactic yet life-affirming in 2020. So, we Zoomed and made the best of our disappointments.
I am not overtly grieving this year nor am I personally disappointed. I am heart sick that covid deaths in December 2021 are still over 1,000 per day and that we're about to hit the 800,000 dead milestone. I am angry and afraid about the Republican march towards fascism. And it sickens my spirit that politicians of all stripes who know better still choose to let Mother Earth burn rather than help us make the hard transition to a sustainable economy. Clearly, the big picture is part of why I feel oddly detached from the festive aspects of this season. But reality is just a part of what's going on within. Something deeper is changing, urging me to let go in new ways so that my outward activities and aesthetics better reflect this new alignment of my soul. This era, you see, demands more more silence than words, more songs than politics, more waiting than fulfillment, and more trust than proof. For a few years I've been pondering these words from Fr. Henri Nouwen and it's my hunch they are becoming part of my flesh:
We expect God to show up in “spectacles, power plays, significant and extraordinary events” that will change the course of history in their grandiosity. We, ourselves, are often taken-in by wealth, prestige, and sparkling things that glitter and shine. We can be so easily distracted. Perhaps that is why God chose to come to us as a small child of Palestinian peasants in an insignificant stable surrounded by animals and shepherds. This way we see that God’s kingdom is humble, simple, small, and very vulnerable. One of the gifts and surprises from Jesus is that he shows up for us in the most unlikely little places – and if we refuse to look for holy in what is small, we will likely give-in to despair.
So, with a quiet smile and playful spirit, we found a tiny Rosemary tree yesterday. It now stands about 10" high on our living room bookshelf. I wrapped a tiny string of white fairy lights around it and realized that this wee tree, along with our Advent wreaths is enough: no clutter, no mess and just a simple hint of beauty and light to challenge the darkness. It fits.
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