Winter's Flame

 

Pastor’s Epistle—December 2021

I was recently given rather some good advice regarding the holiday season.

“Never bother about getting ‘in the mood’,” this fellow said. “The older one gets, the less important that is anyway. Just do the few things that you enjoy. Focus on your spiritual life and on those whom you love, especially children.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: “And read a few ghost stories. Good for your mental health.”

Getting ready for the holidays can have a strangely melancholic effect on one’s mood. I sometimes feel as though the season rushes upon us, too chock-full of chores and preparations to foster any real inner peace, while still too short to do all that I wish I could do, all the holiday traditions and activities I’d ideally enjoy.

Mostly, though, I wish I could just sit by a fire with a warm spiced drink in hand, breathing deeply of the mysteries of life—the juxtapositions of hot and cold, light and dark, joys and sorrows—while silently watching the snow.

Up to this point in my ministry, Advent has tended to be a more stressful season, when my workload has traditionally doubled. But in these days of Covid and its variants, writing two to three sermons a week has become the new norm; and by switching to Taizé prayer at midweek vespers, things might actually slow down a bit, God willing.

Dare I practice what I preach? For Advent is indeed a time to step back, to simplify, to calm down. I know it doesn’t feel that way. I know there are a thousand-thousand things we hope to get done through the month of December. And I know that after the slow-burning chaos of the last two years, we are all of us eager for the miracle of Christmas.

But if this pandemic has taught us anything, I hope we’ve learned that going back to the way things were isn’t really an option, and shouldn’t be. I hope we’ve learned that we are our brother’s keeper: that the health of one affects the health of all; that we all need help when things get bad, economically, emotionally, vocationally. I hope we’ve learned some empathy through our own vulnerability.

Most of all I hope we’ve learned that the answer to our various and sundry existential crises is not to buy more, have more, work more, play more. The answer is to love more, dream more, think more, pray more. Advent is the season for that. Nature herself will help us to stay at home and look within: that’s the entire vibe of winter.

Take a pause. Take a breath. Learn to sit alone in silence. Because that is silence’ greatest secret: that she isn’t empty, that we’re not alone; that there in the quiet, there between breaths, God is present: steady, silent, patient, waiting for us, waiting with our soul. God is always within us, because we are all of us within God.

There’s the warm fire amidst the snows. And there a place is ever prepared for us, if we would but take a moment and be.

In Jesus. Amen.