Winter's Light

 (We are currently in the middle of Christmastide, the liturgical season that runs from Christmas Eve to Epiphany Eve on January 5th.)

 

            When the year’s shadows are heaviest, when nights become long and cold, and feelings of self-doubt, despair, and death draw close, we light candles to push back the darkness that surrounds us. The flickering flames invite us to slow our busyness, set aside our fears, and open to everything that exists in this moment. 

 

            The twinkling of the stars, the bonfires in the backyard, and the strands of holiday lights on houses in our neighborhood remind us of people we loved who’ve died, dreams we tenaciously hang on to, and mentors whose wise guidance continues to help us find our way through life. The lights call us to reclaim the passions that stir our hearts with visions and imbue our lives with hope. 

 

Holiday Black and Blues

The holiday season begins with Thanksgiving. We will take a deep breath and step on the roller coaster ride that will zip us through a gauntlet of paper-wrapped, bow-tied, fancy-clad celebrations and parties, changing out one set of decorations for another as the next holiday begins. 

Depending upon your background, your formal observances could include Hanukkah, Advent, the Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s. Many of them celebrate the presence of light, like Diwali that came earlier. It’s a time of renewing our faith in matters unseen and harvesting hope for the coming year.

Contacting the Spirits

All Souls Day, Nov. 2

Today we honor those who have shown up at crucial times in our lives and helped us survive. The roots of the observance are thousands of years old in a time when people tried to ward off Death and the wandering, malevolent spirits that took family and friends away, often without warning. While modern medicine has subdued some of these spirits, we still fear the long-leggedy beasties and queasy, uneasy, things that go bump in the night. Too many people we love die unexpectedly, and too many die young for us to rest easy.

Rumi's Stretcher from Grace

            Last night I was wandering around the house, which is something I do now and then to get my bearings, when a line from Rumi’s “Zero Circle” came to mind: “Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up.” I don’t think Rumi was addressing grief, but his words have useful insights. 

 

            The poem starts: “Be helpless, dumbfounded, / Unable to say yes or no.” This pretty much sums up our state of mind when grief begins. We no longer know what to think or feel, and find it hard to make even simple decisions.

 

The Hollow Days

            I wasn’t finding much that was helpful for dealing with grief in my Christian community. Maybe this was because Ev died unexpectedly, or because her dying in her 40s left us in shock and made each of us feel vulnerable, as if any of us could die at any time. So I went looking at other religions to see what they did. The grief traditions in Judaism helped me the most, and this is what I understand about them.

Retiring Into the Forest

I am not happy with my parents. Or my wife’s parents. Or your parents, even though I’ve never met them, because they’re probably like mine. 

Throughout our lives, we’re always planning ahead for what comes next. Getting our ducks in order. Then we retire and stop making adjustments. We settle into a comfortable routine and let life go on without us. Except that life doesn’t stop changing.

Searching For Joy

Grief, Play, and Religion

Joy is really hard to muster when we’re grieving.

So is smiling. And if we let ourselves feel any joy, we then feel incredibly guilty for taking pleasure in something that our loved ones no longer can. In the beginning of grief, it’s a struggle just to get through the day.

Holy (Death) Saturday

Last Saturday I was online with sixty grieving friends who live around the world, and I realized that this day, Holy Saturday, is where grieving people live. Grievers are Saturday people, my friend Megan says.

            For people who have recently lost a spouse, a child or a parent, they exist in this nether world between death and life for a year, unable to let go of one and unable to embrace the other. If they are Christians, they may not even be able to feel the joy of Easter Sunday this year.