I heard the holy melody as I crossed the threshold of the church door. The organist went between the piano and the organ playing so radiantly and triumphantly it almost made me ache from the beauty of the chords. The congregation was provided a bulletin with the song lyrics and the Scripture readings. I came home and highlighted the phrases I loved from the leaflet. I provide them here as they comprise such a lyrical Christmas poem.
O come, O Bright and Morning Star and bring us comfort from afar!
Dispel the shadows of the night and turn our darkness into light.
Bid all our sad divisions cease and be yourself our King of Peace.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might.
For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Let loving hearts enthrone him.
And he shall be their peace.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light.
How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is given!
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
And of his kingdom there will be no end.
For nothing will be impossible with God.
O tidings of comfort and joy.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.
Son of God, love's pure light.
Radiant beams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace.
Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus Lord at thy birth.
Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.
Glad tidings of great joy I bring to you and all mankind.
Good will henceforth from heaven to me begin and never cease.
For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
God from God, Light from light eternal.
O come, let us adore him. O come let us adore him.
O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
His Peace, His Light, to you and yours. Merry Christmas.
The Aramaic uses a metaphor, "a beautiful testimony from the wilderness." This means he has passed through his wilderness journey and is now seen as tested and proven.~ Footnote from the The Passion Translation referencing I Timothy 3:7
Tomorrow we flip the calendar to 2022. What geography will you discover in the New Year? Maybe some of you feel as if the territory of 2021 tested you mightily. "Proven" may still seem a glimmer in the distance. Wherever you are, you have a story to tell, and you've kept traveling. Well done! As you step over the threshold into 2022, I send a blessing...
As you put away the Christmas ornaments, take down the tree and remove the lights on the roof, may you not dwell on the fact that the festivities are over, but rather on the surety of God's faithfulness, and the expectation of His goodness that trails you, even if you believe you're still on the wilderness pathway.
Or perhaps you're thrilled that the celebrations have ended and you can get back to your routines. No more weird or awkward family gatherings or too much sugar. Revel in His mercy that supports you still.
As you move ahead, may you love others deeply with a pure heart.
May you be flooded with incredible grace, like a river overflowing its banks.
May you embrace the mysteries of faith.
On the hard-packed, cracked soil of the trail, may you use your promises from God as weapons as you wage spiritual warfare--praising the King even in the austerity--the King of all the universe who is indestructible, invisible and full of glory.
And when you travel amongst emerald green fields that bring you pleasure, may you receive that abundance with great relish and thanksgiving.
May you escape the empty echoes of men and trust instead in the One who lavishes His love upon you.
Don't minimize the powerful gifts that operate in your life. He's given these gifts to you for such a time as this.
May you remember that you are captured by grace, and may this abundant grace, mercy, and total well-being from God the Father and the Anointed One, our Lord Jesus, be yours!
Savor your beautiful testimony. Happy New Year.
Amen.
(Blessing taken from sections of I Timothy in The Passion Translation)
Poem In The Night Watches
You are the beloved.
Hide in me.
Shelter in me.
For this is the season of healing favor.
And I will help you like a father.~Poem I heard in my dream, December 10, 2021
Perhaps my dream manifested when I opened a Christmas card that contained the image you see in the post. The photograph is described as "A shelterbelt in Aurora County, South Dakota." The inscription on the card said, "You hide them safely away."~Psalm 31:20.
I ponder my dream now too. In the dream, I sat at a desk in a room with a high ceiling. Light streamed in through long-paned windows that created dappled patterns on a wooden floor. A few high-backed dining chairs were positioned around the room. There was no other furniture or décor. I heard a knock on the door outside the room and called out, "Come in." A young man, maybe 25, entered the room and stood before me. His dark hair was short, shaved closely on the sides, his eyes deeply blue, cobalt. He wore jeans, slashed at the knees and a gray long-sleeved shirt. He didn't speak, but he didn't really need to. His expression was profoundly sad, like his face was about to melt. For a split second, I almost told him to go away. But I could tell he was friendly, just very, very sad. Then I said to him, "You can stay, because you've helped me to process some of my own sadness and disappointment, especially during this god-awful Pandemic. But you have to promise me one thing, if I let you stay, you'll have to agree to sit down and take care of yourself, drink some hot tea. We need to invite some joy and laughter into this big room, fill it up with some other things besides sadness. Will you do that?" I asked. He nodded his head, a smile beginning to bloom on his handsome face and sat down. I poured him some tea. It might have been peppermint.
Somewhere amidst that dream, I heard the poem. Over these past months, many of you have contacted me. Life during COVID has brought such pain and sadness. Death, divorce, job loss, financial instability, chronic health problems, injuries, surgeries, anixiety and drepression. Suicide. Some are experiencing compassion fatigue caring for elders and children with special needs. Others are in difficult relationships that seem impossible to maintain. We are all weary. And COVID continues. It's like the movie, Groundhog Day. It's the same day over and over and over. Perhaps my dream may be a way to create ideas that could provide ourselves respite. We don't boot out "sadness," because it's a worthy emotion that helps us process grief and loss. But maybe we could ask him to sit down and take a break. Pour him a nice cup of hot, fragrant tea. Perhaps we could invite some joy inside the lovely, light-filled hall. Call in some musicians to provide some merriment. Hire a comedian to make us laugh. Maybe we could shelter inside that conviviality for a while. (The room is huge, so we could social distance.) Show ourselves some compassion from all the ways life gets hard. Create our own shelterbelt and allow God to hide us safely away.
The air is warm and sweet. Stars burn here and there. In the distance little strands of glitter climb the hills.~Anthony Doerr (From Four Season in Rome)
I almost didn't go. I was out Christmas shopping and running errands. But I was so close, so close to the ocean, the coastline only a few miles away. My mind attempted to talk me out of driving the short distance. "There's the issue of parking, not to mention you'll probably need an app to pay. You don't have time to figure that out." Yet I kept thinking, too, "But I'm so close."
Only an old blue pick-up sat in the gravel parking lot. I didn't need an app. I typed in my license plate number at the parking meter, slipped in my credit card, and for two dollars I bought an hour to walk along the beach. I felt like I might explode with happiness. I could see a couple of surfers in the distance bobbing in the silvered waves, like sleek black seals. I walked in solitude, no one else around. It was as if I couldn't gulp down all the beauty surrounding me. The tide was out, and shards of burgundy, amber, bronze and sepia-striped shells lay embedded in the hard-packed sand, like elegant gemstones. A seagull glided above me, winging its way through cirrus clouds, blue slices of sky peering through feathery shapes. I inhaled pungent salty air, listened to the ocean.
It was the light, though, that I couldn't get enough of. Glittering, dancing, gold-shimmering light that glistened on the water. It was as if that glinting beauty spooled down into the retina of my eye and filled my whole body with its shimmering brilliance. I walked, I ran with joy to be accompanied by that light, holding fragments of pink-hued shells in my sandy fingers. On my way back to the car I noted graffiti written in green paint on a concrete block. "It's Never The Wrong Time."
As I pulled out of my parking spot, I wondered, for me, what it's never the wrong time for. It was the light. That glorious light. Sunrise, sunset, midday sun, moonlight, starlight. Little strands of glitter climbing the hills.
Then Jesus said, "I am light to the world and those who embrace me will experience life-giving light, and they will never walk in darkness."~John 8:12 (From The Passion Translation)
It had come down to the simple fact that life was harder than anyone had told him it would be.~Elizabeth Brundage (From The Vanishing Point)
The movie was a cinematic tributary I seldom navigate. Science Fiction. The premise was so intriguing that I couldn't resist. The movie, Nine Days, follows a man who spends his days in a remote outpost watching live Point of View on TVs of people going about their lives until one subject perishes, leaving a vacancy for a new life on Earth. The man then gathers several unborn souls to consider for providing them an opportunity to live. For nine days, each candidate is exposed to a multitude of experiences, both positive and negative, so they can get an idea of what they might expect if chosen to live. Eventually, the interviewer begins to rule out the candidates, one by one. However, before they are let go into oblivion, he asks each of them to write down one pleasurable, memorable event that he will re-create for them before they depart.
One candidate chooses a day at the beach where he experiences the tide breaking in and the low soothing rushing sound of the ocean--the feel of sand sifting through his fingers, a warm breeze. Another chooses riding a bicycle on a pathway that takes her through tree-covered hills and a wide blue sky overhead. All of the candidates beg for a chance to live. The interviewer is empathic toward their craving to keep living, as he has once lived on earth. He knows it will take extreme resilience. No one can tell them how difficult it will be, nor how wonderful.
Watching the movie triggered something sentient and vulnerable inside me. What memory would I choose? I thought about the day Giovanni and I got married. I would re-create that memory. I wrote in An Ocean Away:
Thirty years had passed since 1974, almost to the day, that Giovanni and I last saw one another as adolescents--that hot August day I climbed into the taxi, when I looked back and he was gone. And now I looked at him, that one glance spanning decades, as we drove to a small chapel in downtown Charleston to exchange our wedding vows...I wore a simple ivory-colored dress with sheer sleeves and elaborate, seeded pearl beadwork around the collar.
During the ceremony, images flashed through my mind of our extraordinary history, and the boy blended into the man who stood before me...I suppose I really have never felt as supremely blissful as I did that day.
Life is bittersweet. There is no perfection. Living takes buoyancy and courage. But let us remember, too, all the moments we'd live again. Let's collect as many as we can while here, while we're alive.
All of you who congregate at the site each week, how grateful I am for you. Writing these posts brings me such delight and pleasure. Some of my best and most memorable days are spent on the page. Thank you for being here with me. Much love and life to all of you. Happy Thanksgiving!