Around me the trees stir in their leaves
And call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine." *
It is almost a new year and a time when we may find ourselves
looking back and looking forward in a way we perhaps only do at this time of year.
Sometimes, I suppose, we hardly want to look back if the year has been a
hard one for us - illness, sorrow, financial problems - whatever
troubles our lives. Looking forward can be more hopeful I think
but it is also a bit unsubstantial because life never quite goes where we had hoped
it might. Sometimes it is even more wonderful than we dreamed;
sometimes it is a bit worse.
But
in all this: the good, the hard, the unexpected, I believe that it can
all be seen with a heart of gratitude. Does that seem odd when you are
faced with hardship? sorrow? terrible difficulties? It isn't that it
makes light of hardship but that
somehow, a gift of gratitude lightens the burden of our sorrow. It is
still sorrow but it is lightened by a sense that there is much that we can be grateful for - perhaps most especially that we are loved and cherished by our God.
Here is a beautiful meditation on beauty and gratitude that I hope you might think worthwhile to take 10 minutes to watch:
http://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude.html
*Mary Oliver: Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006 The poem is "When I am among the Trees".
It will be Christmas this Wednesday. For many people it is a time of celebration and joy. For some others it is a time of pain and loneliness and for many throughout the world it is nothing in particular. So, why do we make such a big thing of it?
The way I see it, as a Christian, we are celebrating the birth of a very special person who showed us through his life, what goodness and truth and compassion look like in the flesh. And though we sometimes seem to portray Christmas as a kind of fairy tale - it wasn't at all. Jesus' life was hard and full of challenge and suffering and rejection. He knew though that he had a gift to give that was unlike any other and yet many, many people turned against what he had to share.
I do wonder at times,
how we can reject goodness. I am pretty sure we all admire it as a
human quality and wish we could be like it. As people did with say,
Nelson Mandela whose recent death has been a reminder of the goodness in
his life. Perhaps it is that we are not good at accepting the
messenger, the carrier of goodness or compassion or truth because they
also seem too human, too much like us. We focus on the flaws, trying to
tip the pedestal we ourselves have put them on not realizing their flaws (and our own) are part of the gift of their humanity. Without the flaws perhaps they would not be the people we also admire.
I thought about all this recently
because someone wrote an article about Nelson Mandela headed: N.M. Saint
or Sinner? I found myself saying, but of course, he was both. We all
are.
As Christians we do believe that Jesus was the one person who could show us perfectly
what humanity could be. Even so lots of people criticized him,
hated him and thought he was a fraud. So maybe the lesson is to see the
best in others, be grateful for it and keep on working to be better
ourselves.
The message of God at Christmas
comes to us in a human being; someone who had a race, a personality,
ideas, a family, a culture - someone, in other words, amazingly like us.
People used to say of him ' how can he be special, after all we know
his parents, we know where he came from, we watched him grow up?'...
I
believe the message in all this, is that our humanity is indeed, the
precious instrument of all that is good in our world if we allow it. Our
daily living can be filled with all the qualities we love in him. We
believe he made that possible. But it is a time to recognize and accept
our own responsibility to live out daily the gifts we have received,
the power we are given. So isn't it a time for great celebration of hope and joy?
Mary Oliver again:* 'For what is life but reaching for an answer?'
..and a journey too during which, it is never too late to start again.
* Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992. The poem is called 'Magellan'.
At *Rosedale United Church a while ago, Rev. Doug Norris spoke of the season of Advent and of being 'besotted' by it:
I am smitten, besotted, with the language of this season. Words that
are spoken and set to music and printed on cards that drop through the
door - this is a season of the eloquence of hope, and I love it!
He went on to say as he was speaking about the light which is part of what Advent brings:
... right through to the late night in here on Christmas
Eve – when we let every light go out, every last bulb, understanding
that at times for all of us and at that moment for somebody – there is
only darkness, and then a single candle is lit, brought to the front,
the apparent weakness of a candle lit at midnight, and a voice speaks :
‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who
lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined…’
To light a candle at midnight is to say to the darkness ‘I beg to differ’ – I love the words of this season… I am smitten.
Advent is indeed a time when a light shines in the darkness. And, I believe, all of us long for that light. Advent is a time of longing and of hope. But it is true, the darkness we see around us sometimes makes it all seem nonsense. We look around us and see too much that is chaotic, violent, self-absorbed and we say, 'this message cannot be true'. But we mustn't lose sight of the beauty and goodness all around us: the kindness of friends, the beauty of a baby, the exquisite detail of a flower and the peace in unforeseen places. We must not let the dark even vaguely win.
Another poems of Mary Oliver which speaks to this. It is called, *Praying:
It doesn't have to be
the blue Iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest, but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
There is much about Christmas in our society that is special: it is a time for family and for the giving of gifts to show our caring, but the core of Christmas, the reason it exists, is to celebrate the birth of goodness, the birth of light, the birth of hope made visible in a tiny baby. To believe this is not to deny the existence of these gifts in other faiths but only to say that for many, this has a face, a person we can hold on to.
* See Rosedale United Church website:http://rosedaleunited.org/ and you can hear the whole of the sermon.
* Mary Oliver: Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston, 2006
One of members of the little prayer group to which I belong reminded us of this poem by Thomas Hardy called The Darkling Thrush. It is a wintery poem - both of the season and of the heart, but it is also about hope - however fragile. I also think it is about the season of Advent whose second week we are entering. I mean by this, that I see Jesus these days, almost as the voice of the thrush in a world that is weary and dark. There is hope in what he came to tell us all and light and like the song of the thrush it warms our hearts.
I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.
I am, once again, reading the poetry of Mary Oliver. I am always touched by her sense of immersion in the world where she is at any given moment and then the questions that that presence gives rise to. She says it in the first number of lines in her poem entitled, *Messenger.
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished
There is more to this poem but this part is what has struck me especially. It relates too, to a theme often found in the work of the spiritual writer Henri J. Nouwen. He speaks about the need of each one of us to take time just to be. He says we all need moments of space in which to meet what - or who - is deep within us. We need moments of stillness and quiet in order to become whole; in order to become who we are meant to be.
For Mary Oliver that is what her poetry is all about. She would describe those moments of stillness as ones in which she is learning to 'be astonished'. That is beautiful.
December 1 is the beginning of the Christian season of Advent. Advent is the time leading up to the celebration of the birth of Jesus at Christmas. It too is a time of stillness, waiting and watching. It is a time when we are called to recognize the longing in our hearts for something MORE in our lives. It is the MORE, in a way, that gives our lives meaning - whether you are 'religious' or not.
*
Mary Oliver: Thirst, Beacon Press, Boston 2006
