Searching for Calm and Bright
Today’s sermon (December 18, 2011) looks to the Winter Solstice for inspiration in bringing more peace and calm into our lives during what can be a high-pressure time of year.
“Come into my arms and rest, child,” [said Night.] … You were born out of my darkness, billions of years go, and you will return to me when all things end.” (From the story, “The Rebirth of the Sun” by Starhawk, retold in Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions.)
I have to say, that sounds pretty nice to me. As the calendar hurtles toward January 1 and the sun disappears from evening skies, I wouldn’t mind a little bit of respite with the timeless origins of the universe. December means a lot of things to people in our culture. It can mean bringing things to completion, or showing up to annual gatherings, or figuring out what to say in the holiday letter. Those aren’t bad things. Holiday busy-ness can call forth our creativity and remind us of our values. On the other hand, sometimes the season is so crowded with demands that we produce and perform, it’s hard to remember to simply be.
Let us remind each other that, as Universalists, we know human worth is unconditional. Our place in this world does not depend on our usefulness, our productivity, our decorative qualities, or our ability to be entertaining. You belong here. When each one of us makes time and space to acknowledge ourselves as human beings rather than human doings, it is easier for us to practice acceptance of one another.
The Winter Solstice is the perfect time to celebrate acceptance and renewal. It can be argued that axial tilt is the reason for the season, so let’s search for meaning in this time of chilly temperatures and late sunrises. With the next harvest so far away, we may be able to use this time to experience ourselves apart from tangible results. If this is a time of year when we search for words to write in cards or to say in party conversations, perhaps it is also a time ripe for silence, to allow words to come to us. With the hope of growing light and fresh calendar pages ahead of us, perhaps we can connect with wonder and meaning as it happens right now, before we get caught up in planning for the future.
This Winter Solstice, let us rest in the heart of night, valuing ourselves in process rather than product. Let us receive words and silence as they fall like snow, finding beauty in both their dance and their stillness. Let us attend to the year being born, holding off on answers as we honor the mystery of beginnings.
Rest in the Heart of Night: Focus on Process
As you may recall from the “Stone Soup” service, I committed to a spiritual practice for the month of December. I’m calling it my “rediscovering gifts” practice. I try every day to do something that involves a not-entirely-store-bought gift. So far, that has included quality time with extended family, sending just-because notes to friends, baking muffins, re-gifting clothes, and a couple of small craft projects.
This practice has been good for me, and not in the ways I envisioned. I thought I would make time to create pretty things and spice up my holiday giving. I imagined that I could show off some of my products on my blog, or that I might journal to keep track of what I’ve done and plan what to do next. Not exactly. Most of the craft projects have reminded me that I’m not a professional artist. There have been no recipes involved in my baking so far other than the directions on the box. I thought I might miss a day here or there. I’m not sure how many days I’ve missed, but it has been more than one. I haven’t journaled, but I have been paying attention to what this practice has been teaching me. Mainly, I’ve been re-learning that process matters more than product in the search for meaning.
One of my projects was to gather the clothes that I hoped to pass along to friends. I wanted to choose items that I had loved, but didn’t fit me. Once I got started, I realized that there were more such items in my closet than I had thought. I considered putting the whole idea on hold until I could organize all of the clothes into neatly folded stacks separated by size and occasion. Then I realized that this ideal was probably the reason I still had clothes that haven’t fit me for two years. I picked out the ten most obvious items, found friends who wear those sizes, and shipped them off over the next few days.
Several times, I have made bookmarks to send to random friends. I used rubber stamps, stickers, and simple drawings. The bookmarks haven’t come out looking incredibly polished. Often, I would realize that I only had a half an hour or so for my practice that day, and I would start creating without a plan. I would decide in the middle who was on my mind and might appreciate the gift without judging my skill. It seems like I’ve been right most of the time.
Choosing to enter a time of spiritual practice together with anyone here who cared to participate, I felt both a greater sense of accountability and more reassurance of forgiveness. Both of those factors have helped me stick with it. Because I want to do something every day, and the rest of my life hasn’t gotten any less busy, I have been giving the practice as much time as I could manage, not as much time as I would need to be perfect. That’s exactly what I needed. Being focused on the process rather than the product has created the space for finding calm and bright, practicing for just a few minutes instead of none. I am curious about what kind of data others among us are collecting about spiritual practice.
I am reminded of art-based ice breakers I’ve participated in before. There’s the one where people who can usually see are blindfolded and attempt to draw something without looking. There’s also one where two people both have their hands on one crayon and are supposed to draw together without speaking. The facilitator is usually looking for some kind of reflection on leadership or self-evaluation or testing our limits. The rules are supposed to get participants to let go of expectations about how the drawing will look at the end. It works sometimes.
The winter holiday season often includes a lot of activity and deadlines and pressures. At the same time, the early sunsets and late sunrises, for many of us, cast a mood of contemplation. Perhaps we can allow these conditions to be like the ice breaker rules, inviting us to settle into the here and now. This Winter Solstice, rest in the heart of night and know that you don’t need to earn your place there.
Let Words Fall Like Snow: Silence and Waiting
Ackb has been taking short breaks in the evening for a video game (Glitch). It’s a new game, “in beta,” as they say, which means the creators are still working out the final details. It’s one of those games where you play a character who wanders around a fictional world, picking up items of interest and talking to other characters in order to solve problems. She told me about one part of the game where your character goes to visit someone for information and is directed to a waiting room. In most cases in a video game like this, when another character tells you to wait somewhere, you’re supposed to rifle through the books or turn over rocks or dig in the flower bed to find something. Ackb said it took her awhile to figure out that, in this case, you just have to wait. Moving your character, typing words for your character to say, taking any action re-sets the clock for the amount of time you have to wait before you can get the information you need.
Perhaps the Winter Solstice is a seasonal waiting room. There are significant dates on the calendar that aren’t going to get here any faster. Some of us may have packages we’re waiting to receive or to be received on time. If you’re looking forward to the return of the sun, it’s still a few weeks before the effect of the year’s turning becomes obvious.
For me, the anticipation and the weather conspire to bring words more slowly to mind. I have to wait for words to form, like crystals growing on a snowflake. Again, like the snow, the words take their time on the way down, drifting where they will until they land in a place where I can gather them up. My colleague Nancy Shaffer has a poem about this (from her book Instructions in Joy: Meditations):
In Stillness
I have been looking for the words that come
before words: the ones older than silence,
the ones not mine, that can’t be found by thought—
the ones that hold the beginning of the world
and are never used up, which arrive loaned
and make me weep
The Christmas story is also one of waiting. The nativity stories portray a family and a culture, tired from living in oppression and from long journeys. They are expectant, waiting for meaning and direction to emerge from among them. In the book of Luke, when the shepherds relate what the angels told them about the child, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)
Mary has plenty to say elsewhere in the Bible. When she visits her cousin Elizabeth, she has a beautiful speech about a coming time of justice, framing her words as if God has already done it. Her song includes things such as, “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:46-56). Powerful stuff. Mary has a voice. And. Here she directs her attention to contemplation. In the nativity story, as events are new and concrete, she ponders words in her heart.
At times of great transition, waiting in silence may have more impact than words of cleverness or wisdom. Advice and pronouncements may fall short in the face of the heights and depths of life. When we face birth and loss, progress and starting over, it matters how we listen to ourselves and to each other. As the earth spins through the solstice, we face a transition together. If only a few flurries of words rest at your window, that is fine. Hold moments of silence and waiting in your heart as they come. Receive words as they fall like snow.
Honor the Mystery: Let Questions Go Unanswered
In this morning’s Time for All Ages story, the sun is reborn at the Winter Solstice. It’s a mythic story. The metaphor might mean different things for us at different times. What is clear to me, in season after season, is that there is always something being born and re-born at this time of year. Just what that is may not be clear at this point. We don’t need to know that in order to honor the mystery.
When I was in seventh grade, we had an exercise in science class that made a tremendous impact on how I see the world. The teacher put a slide on the overhead projector and asked us to name our observations out loud. We said we saw paw prints in the snow. There were two sets, one big and one little. We talked about the path of the paw prints. Finally, one of the students said, “I see black spots on a white background.” You could have heard a pin drop. That was a holy moment, with a roomful of young adolescents suddenly grasping the difference between observation and inference. We can get into philosophical discussions about how much we trust our senses, but for young scientists it was important to acknowledge that difference, and to realize how fast we jump to drawing conclusions.
In the moments of the sun’s rebirth, or gathered around the baby, or lighting the first candle of the menorah, we don’t yet know what will come to pass. Running ahead to answer questions skips the part where we connect with meaning as it emerges. If calm and bright are to enter into our hearts, they pass through the door of unknowing. Predicting and controlling are rarely calm activities. Deep questions, sacred questions, do not require immediate answers.
Perhaps that’s part of the draw of the song we’re going to sing later, “Silent Night.” The picture painted with this hymn is the scene around the child. There are a few hints about what the writer foresees, “the dawn of redeeming grace,” for instance, but most of the details in the song imagine the nativity itself. We have the sense that a story is just beginning, yet right now we rest in the glory of one moment.
In the story of the Winter Solstice, the reborn sun looks out on the wonder of what has already happened. The sun sees and hears joy and gratitude from the earth. The next year may see a familiar turn around the spiral, some things repeated as the seasons turn. The next year may see something new. We don’t know for sure. Direction and meaning are still emerging as the sun is reborn. When we allow some of the big questions to go unanswered for now, we leave room for calm and bright.
Conclusion
My prayer for all of us this Winter Solstice is that, like the sun, we find some sanctuary for rest and renewal. May we find in the sacred dark a connection to that which is timeless and accepting, that which binds us to the rest of the universe. May we take pleasure in the process of being human, realizing that our inherent worth does not depend on productivity. May we gratefully receive meaningful silence as well as words that fall to our minds and ears. May we leave open the doors of unknowing, honoring the sacred mystery as a new year comes into being.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
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(In addition to the resources linked above, one of my inspirations for this sermon comes from Mills Baker’s essay on leisure, which resonates with Jean Beaudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation.)
