To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
—Wendell Berry

We only have another minute to lose of light as we make our way to December 21st and the Winter Solstice. This threshold time stands in the midst of some of Minnesota’s coldest and darkest days. The door at this threshold sits in the season of Advent and will move into the celebration of Christmas. These, of course, are not unrelated events though we in the Christian household have sometimes tried to deny the fact. But the honoring of the Sun’s return and the celebration of the birth of Jesus, called the Light of the world have been entwined by human’s need to make sense of what they experience and what they believe about that experience. The common denominators are darkness and light.

Several years ago my husband and I traveled to Newgrange in Ireland. This ancient place of worship and history is full of mystery and a sense of power that defies words. Most believe it to have been built by humans as a way of measuring the ways sunlight seems to recede and then return. Looking like a giant earthy spaceship it rises out of the lush Irish countryside. Stone carvings lay in various spots around the outside of the mound. Walking around its perimeter allows the imagination to see the ancient ones circling, dancing, and moving in ways understandable and confounding.

But it is inside that the real mystery and amazement happens. We stood in the center of the cave-like structure, humans who did not know one another just a few minutes before crushed together in silence and awe, looking at the cave drawings pointed out by our guide. Giving us a sign that the electric lights rigged up to keep the curious safe would be turned out, we fell even further into a deep quiet. We were plunged into darkness that was so black it was disorienting. The only thing that allowed me to know where I was came from the breathing of the people around me. I was still surrounded by humans even in this deep darkness!

Using an enormous flashlight, the guide then began to simulate how the Sun would rise and hit a stone at the end of a very thin opening in the path ahead, striking it just so. It shown so brightly it seemed impossible. She then explained that this is what those who had built this place had probably intended. Out of the pitch darkness they would know that the light was returning. I am imagining that planning for planting for the next months could then take place. But my imagining was, and is, still held in the mystery of this place and the darkness I experienced at this created threshold. What must it have been like for those who did not know, did not have even the most rudimentary understanding of how the planets work?

The next few days will be the darkest of this year. Even with the twinkling lights we have hung on trees and in our homes, the darkness is our companion. The threshold that welcomes us is shrouded in a mystery we partially understand. But once that turning happens and our planet creeps ever so slowly into the light of Christmas the mystery does not end. How does the light brought into our faith story by this infant we celebrate illuminate our path? How do we allow this Light to become not only the beam we follow but the light we become? How do we make our own cave paintings telling of the stories of the darkness in our lives and where the light came in?

There are only a few days left before we know the turning of the light once again. Until then, the invitation is to go dark, to watch for what is blooming and listen for what is singing and how we are companioned by dark feet and dark wings.

***This blog was created in December 17, 2007. Much can happen in 10 years. We all know this. Yet the rhythm of the seasons is a constant that holds us. As we anticipate the Winter Solstice and the returning of the light,we continue to rest in the message that the light does overcome the darkness. Sometimes it may take longer than we hope. As people of faith we continue to light candles and to hold out to the world this nonconformist notion.

“A candle light is a protest at midnight. It is a nonconformist. It says to the darkness: “I beg to differ.” Samuel Rayan

It was not a candle light. It was much bigger than that. It was a bright orange dinner plate sphere that rose on the horizon this morning. After nearly nine hours of darkness, the sun finally rose at 7:46 a.m. I was privileged to be driving toward it this morning as it rose, gloriously, into the pale blue and misty sky. In its rising it shouted to the world: “I beg to differ!”

We are in the last of the darkest days of this year. As we approach the Winter Solstice on December 21st, 12:09 a.m., the Sun will once again start returning us to days with more light. I recognize that the majority of people walk through these days with very little awareness of this movement, of the variance of light and darkness but this year I have been particularly watchful. Seeing the growing darkness has informed my experience of Advent, of the waiting, the watching, the anticipation, the hope of new life to come.

I have tried very intentionally to not see the darkness as a negative but as an integral part of the process of birth. Dreams, after all, take place in darkness. Babies are nurtured in the darkness of a womb. Bulbs and seeds are growing in the darkness of the cold soil….even when we cannot see. Many animals are sleeping in the darkness of caves and warm earthy holes, growing even as they rest. Creativity itself often seems to take root and grow out of the darkness of confusion and challenge. Most of us have found spiritual transformation out of what we might refer to as a dark night of the soul.

So these dark days, I believe, are not to be feared or dreaded. Instead they are meant to be opportunities for staying awake and aware to what the darkness has to teach us, to offer us. When we do we may find ourselves staring with awe at that morning platter of rich, fire red and orange…..the Sun that offers us a glimpse of what is yet to be…….another amazing day to walk the Earth with both darkness and light as our backdrop. This Sun which feeds the fields of food we eat and the trees that bring us oxygen also has its work to do…life giving work, nonconformist work. Though we need the darkness for gestation, we need the light for life.

For the next few days, darkness will continue to grow. But in just a few days, the Sun will have its say:”I beg to differ!”

“Darkness cover me like a blanket of night, oh, cover me lightly. Hidden seed, deep in the dark soil of the earth, fertile ground, womb of the night, bring us new birth.” Sara Thomsen

***This a post written a few days after the tragedy at Sandy Hook on December 17, 2012. Today marks five years since this horrific act of violence. We are still struggling with this and what it can mean to a culture that does not seem to be able to come to terms with its relationship with guns and the perceived freedom they represent for some. We are still struggling to make sense of acts of darkness writ large and how to stop them, how to heal from them. For now, our hearts continue to break while we live in hope of change that is within our reach.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
~Mary Oliver

We were given a box full of darkness on Friday. It is a gift we do not understand, did not want, do not know what to do with. As news trickled in about the horrific shooting in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, we became held captive by a darkness that threatened to overwhelm. At both times wanting to listen, watch, and wanting to run from this horrid scene, we once again felt helpless in the wake of yet another shedding of the blood of the innocents. How to hold such darkness……

It is too soon to look, as Mary Oliver reminds us, for the gift in this. The grief is too large, too raw. It will take, as she says, years to understand what may be at some time in the distant future named as gift. But even in the darkest corners of this black box, the light of hope still refuses to be snuffed out. As we learn of teachers who became superhero protectors, we see a glimmer. As we hear of those who responded first and shielded children’s views from things that would scar their eyes, for a lifetime, we get another glimpse. These are strands to hold onto until our learning evolves.

All through Advent I have lifted the image of darkness and light and the holiness that resides in both. The last few days have made that more murky, less visible even as a metaphor. And yet something inside me believes that even in those who walk in darkness, a darkness that no human heart is prepared to live, some experience of the Holy One still exists. This is, perhaps, the true hope of what can seem like sentimental notions of Christmas, of the in-breaking of God in the every day lives of people.

I have thought much about the young ones who did not come home on Friday. I have found myself looking more intensely at the children who have crossed my path. I have noticed their smiles, their eyes, the ways in which they move with confidence or reticence in this world. I have remembered to note how precious they are. To look, to really look, and to bless them. To remember that Jesus said that heaven belongs to them.

But I have also thought about the young man who visited such violence upon this world. I wondered at the box of darkness that had been handed to him, perhaps from his birth, the one that traveled with him every day as he tried to find his way in an unwelcoming world. It was never gift to him and there must have seemed no one, no older, wiser adult, who could make it so. What is it like to wrestle with such darkness each and every waking moment?

We will, of course, continue to try to make some sense of this tragedy. The years have taught me that there may not be any words or way to fully understand. We will speak of gun control yet again. Hopefully, we will speak of mental illness and how to help those who suffer, their families, their communities. We will look for answers that may or may not be present. We will chase after the haunting ‘why’?

Some day we may see some sharp-edged or luminous gift in all this. But not yet. Not yet.

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
~Dylan Thomas

I was sent out onto the streets of Quebec City to look for images of the Sacred. The assignment was that, once I saw something, to take a photo with my smartphone and to email it to the retreat leaders. They would create a photo meditation of the images captured by those on this retreat in this beautiful, foreign city of French speakers. It was November so blooming things were out and snow, ice and a fierce wind were in. And so I bundled up and headed out with my eyes wide open.

Of course, there were the people…various ages and shapes of humanity doing the things humans do on any given day. Shopping, talking, reading, sweeping, making coffee, selling bakery, laughing, rushing, resting. I thought of snapping any number of photos of the interesting faces that breezed by. Certainly all were made in the image of the zone who breathed them into being.

I stopped for some time in front of a quirky sculpture by Salvadore Dali that stands in one of the city squares. Certainly this was an image of the creative Spirit as it worked through artist and metal, holding forth with a whimsy and movement that brought the cobblestones on which it stood to life. Creator and Creation were present here.

Turning from this dancing creature I was confronted by one of the churches that anchored the same square. Ah, I thought to myself, I should go inside and look for images of the Sacred there. Entering this probably centuries old church, there was the visceral sense not of holiness but of neglect, the smell of mold in the air. Paint chipped off the walls and there was a general messiness that made me uneasy. This seemed to be the opposite of an image of the Sacred. I left feeling sad.

Walking out the door and across the street I began window shopping feeling a bit of a panic at my inability to find something to photograph. And then I came upon a store window filled with lamps of all shapes and sizes. Glowing back at me from the window were colorful mosaic shades of brilliant colors. Each tiny piece of glass moved together to form something more than itself and the composite was lit from inside causing glowing illuminations that made my heart sing. I stepped back from the window and focused my camera on the window. This was my image of the Sacred. I sent it off to the retreat leaders and headed into one of the coffee shops for a treat. When in Quebec, right?

Later that evening those of us who had been on the scavenger hunt for images of the Sacred watched as our photos came alive on the screen underscored with lovely music. Some of the pictures were simple and literal while others were abstract, even confusing. When my image flashed on the screen I loved its colors and its glowing lights. For me, it was a lovely representation of how the Holy moves in these dark days of Advent.

And then I noticed that among the lights and shapes of the lamps was reflected the church which had seemed so lifeless to me. I wondered what to make of that and I still do. I think about it every now and then hoping that the church was more vital than my impression of it. All I know is that on that particular November day in a city where I had difficulty making myself understood in language, I saw beauty and light and a reflection. The visual memory can still move me to experience the Sacred. This dance of light and dark plays itself in us in countless ways and we are wise to open ourselves to it. Even if it takes a long time to understand its meaning.

**This post was written on December 14, 2009. Amazing to think that the children not yet born are now eight years old!

“The world has tilted far
from the sun, from colour and juice…..
I am waiting for a birth that will change everything.”
~ Hilary Llewellyn-Williams

Here in the northern hemisphere, more particularly in Minnesota and regions near, we are experiencing the darkness of December. We have only two more minutes of light to lose before the Winter Solstice on December 21st. The interesting thing is that it does not get dark sooner in the evening but instead stays dark longer in the mornings. With the fresh snow that fell over night, I watched the neighborhood children run toward the bus this morning, white springing up from their feet as they moved through early morning shadows. Our world, tilted toward darkness, or away from the sun whichever way you tend to think of it, is the landscape of Advent. We live tilted….toward something….away from something.

As I look out my office window the twisted limbs of the strong oak tree is dusted with snow that clings to its gray branches making a silhouette of jagged edges against an even grayer sky. It is difficult to look at it and remember the full greenness of its alive state. And yet, its roots are still reaching down into the earth, tilted toward the life that will travel through root and branch and limb to form the leaves of next summer. It is in a stagnant time, a dark time, waiting for life to once again course through its full body. It seems almost to be in prayer.

I am blessed to be surrounded by several pregnant women these days. I watch them move in the cold of these days knowing they house life within the darkness of their wombs. While everything seems to be in stillness, in suspension, these women carry a life that will change everything for them. Families will grow. Houses will need to take new shape, find new space for an addition that will alter how things have been done before. Parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors will embrace a newness that will surprise them and change how they relate to one another.

This winter season can be a burden for many, a nuisance to others. But for me, I want to embrace this darkness, this chill that is void of color,lacking juice. In these days when we are tilted from the sun that brings warmth and greenness and life, I believe it is important to remember all that is nurtured in darkness, in Mystery. I want to spend these days waiting in expectation for the return of the Sun…..and the birth of the Child….that will change everything.

We began our worship on Sunday with a poem by Jan Richardson called Blessing the Way. It begins…

With every step
you take,
this blessing rises up
to meet you.
It has been waiting
long ages for you.
Look close
and you can see
the layers of it,
how it has been fashioned
by those who walked
this road before you,
how it has been created
of nothing but
their determination
and their dreaming,
how it has taken
its form
from an ancient hope
that drew them forward
and made a way for them
when no way could be
seen.

As we read the scriptures for the second Sunday of Advent…the prophet Isaiah and Mark’s gospel story of John the Baptist, I was reminded of this long history of which I am a part. I did not choose this Christian household but was born into it. Like most, we adopt the traditions, faith or otherwise, of our parents. Though I can wrestle with what it means to hitch my star to this complex and often flawed expression of what it means to be human and our relationship with the More, I am never far from remembering that I am connected to a long line of others who have faithfully wrestled. I stand in the ‘determination’ and the ‘dreaming’ of so many. We all do, don’t we?

We live in a culture that often over emphasizes the individual. When I look at my life story it is all about relationship and the invisible lines of connection that weave through community and time. The path I now walk was opened up to me by all those who have suffered, celebrated and sacrificed in an effort to create a more just and beautiful world, by those who have offered lessons and kind words for the journey, by those who held an ‘ancient hope’ that kept drawing them forward, a hope they lovingly placed in my outstretched hand.

Look closer
and you will see
this blessing
is not finished,
that you are part
of the path
it is preparing,
that you are how
this blessing means
to be a voice
within the wilderness
and a welcome
for the way.

Standing at this threshold time of year, as darkness descends a little bit more each day, we can take all the blessing we can get. I am thankful this day in particular for those who have shaped my journey and urged me to claim my ‘voice within the wilderness’. These encouragers are too numerous to be believed. But it is safe to say they have been the light that has illuminated my path and for that I am grateful.

Who has been an ‘ancient hope’ for you? Who has been a light in your darkness? May we name them and whisper their names into the winter sky as we continue on this Advent journey.

***This post was originally written on December 14, 2007

Mary nurtures a Son
in her womb:
His birth a blessing to those who
discover him.
He goes forth like the sun,
great is the number of his company.

-An Old Welsh poem

It is the practice in many churches to set out Nativity scenes before Christmas with an empty manger….no baby Jesus in sight. We have a large,beautiful set in our chapel. Earlier in the week we were having Advent devotions there and commented on the oddity of Joseph looking into an empty manger. It seemed kind of sad in a way.

I read recently that it is a custom in Wales that each Nativity scene has Mary, Joseph and Jesus accompanied by a washerwoman. The belief is that if Jesus is not born into our daily lives then it makes very little sense to celebrate his birth in Bethlehem. The further intention of placing a ‘real’ person within the scene is to say that each child born is sacred, that Jesus’ birth reminds us that each household is important to God.

I began to imagine the many Nativity scenes that grace the lawns of houses and churches with additional characters…the morning bus driver, a nurse, the school lunch lady, the person who delivers my paper before 5:00 a.m every morning, the teenage checkout clerk at my local grocery,the President, the man who stands at the freeway exit with the sign that reads “hungry, please help.” All important to God.

When we think of the Christmas story in this way, it takes some of the sweetness and distance out of it. The lights flicker a little differently and the familiar carols that can run through our head change their tune.When we move from Bethlehem a long time ago, in a distant land, to the reality of our lives, gritty and messy, the Christmas story becomes our story. And isn’t that the point?

If you are in church this Sunday you will hear the story of Mary being visited by Gabriel.She is told she will give birth to the Christ Child. Each time it is read my mind goes to the ancient words of Meister Eckhart the 13th century Christian mystic: We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth
which God has borne and never ceases to bear in all
eternity… But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything
lies in this, that it should take place in me.

The empty manger awaits…the washerwoman watches…..how will the Holy be born in us?

We are without pets in our house these days. Our four walls have been home to two cats and two dogs. I don’t count the time the mouse from one son’s classroom was a houseguest for a long school vacation. But at this point in time only humans reside in our home. And we may be the worse for it.

Today I was reading a devotional I am following during Advent. The writer, Jan Sutch Pickard, pointed out that the donkey we so readily read into the story of the first Christmas comes from our imagination, not scripture. Our imagination and countless artist’s renderings of Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem. I suppose at some point someone began to tell the story with this added character because, really, how could a very pregnant young woman walk all that way? Those of us who have been in this physical state might ask the question, why would she want to ride on a donkey?! Speculation aside, the idea that they were headed to a stable and not a hospital makes the donkey believable and endearing.

Over the years we have infused the story with other animals…cattle, camels, and in some cultures other animals that are beloved. Because the fact of the matter is that animals can be our great teachers…if we are awake and aware. Which is one of the nudges of the season of Advent. Remember…keep awake! The animals that live in our homes or just outside our doors bring elements to our stories that words and human activity simply cannot express. How I learned the gift of stillness and tuning my rhythm to the movements of the Sun from our yellow, tabby cat Gabriel! And our English Springer spaniel, Griffin, taught me the sheer joy of life as he leapt the fence or took a running jump off the dock, airborne into the lake. And the many birds whose flyway is the sky over our yard…oh, the lessons they offer.

In downtown St. Paul, an antique store has created a quirky manger scene. It is one some might find sacrilegious but I would think they might miss the point. My husband and I happened upon it and it stopped us in our tracks, made us laugh, and has since made me think. This manger scene holds only one human…the baby Jesus…surrounded completely by animals. I wonder what the creators of the window thought while making this scene that now causes the humans moving past to stop and wonder.

In our backyard, a rabbit’s tracks in the snow make its presence known. I am thankful that it has made a home under our deck and finds sanctuary there. The days and months ahead will be cold and this courageous creature will winter storm and freezing temperatures. He is braver than I and I know it. Perhaps with no pets inside the house, this rabbit is a new teacher. Time will tell.

Back to that donkey. I am thankful to the first person who added this creature to the telling of one of our most sacred stories. Doing so reminds me of the humility, the vulnerability and the gifts of stillness and quiet of those without words who are our companions, those that also have the ability to show us the Face of God. May it be so in this year’s telling and in this year’s living. And may this prayer by Jan Sutch Pickard be ours:

“God of creatures great and small,
we thank you for those that accompany us on our journey through life,
and belong in the stories that we tell,
and for all we can learn from them – patience, usefulness, and trust. Amen”

Sitting down to write today’s post, I knew that the words that would come to my mind  would be something similar to what I had written before. Today is our younger son’s birthday and I always think of similar words on this day. In searching back through what I have written in past years I found this post with the quote I love so dearly. Nine years have passed since I wrote this and yet my feelings remain constant about the irrationality of being a parent.

“This is the irrational season, when love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.” Madeleine L’Engle

I am sure that, on this day last year, I probably used this very same quote to begin my Pause post. I think of it every year on this day. Today is our younger son’s birthday and these are the words we used on his birth announcement. They had always been meaningful to me but now they are even more so.

Birth is a powerful experience for anyone at any time of the year. But to have an infant in your home at Christmas holds a special power. Singing the traditional carols, full of the images of birth, stirs sweeter feelings. Hearing the familiar story causes you to examine the trusting, irrational nature of Mary and Joseph in new ways. Identifying with their plight, their searching, their amazement at the child they hold between them, becomes even more poignant. Angels sing, people bring gifts, the world stops for a little while to welcome the child. And as parents you are simply left to ‘treasure all these things in your heart.’

Reason, for the most part, plays very little into the choice to bring a child into the world. If we allowed ourselves we could each think of countless reasons against it. And yet we continue because, I believe, each child is not only an expression of the love of two people, but also the expression of our hope in the world. Our hope that as humans will do better……as parents, as families, as neighborhoods, as nations, as faith communities. Our hope, someplace deep within us is that this child, our child, will know a more peaceful world, a more just world, that they might in fact be a part of its creation.

It is an irrational thought,in some ways. But then so is faith, and hope and love and how many of us would want any less of these three in our lives? This sweet child, now a man, who came into our lives eighteen years ago today, has filled our home with all these things and much more. He has made us laugh uncontrollably and filled us with immense pride. He has challenged us to see things in new ways and completely confounded us at times. He continues to bring a gentle spirit to our lives and to our home. His smile lights up our home and my heart.

And for all this, I am irrationally grateful.

***This post was originally created on December 14, 2011.

“We see the signs
but cannot always
divine their meanings.
You call us to move forward
not always knowing
whether what we grasp
in our hands
will prove to be
a seed of hope
or a thorn in our flesh.
Train our fingers,
that what brings life
we may with persistence hold,
and that which wastes
our souls
we may with grace release.”
~Jan L. Richardson

Isn’t amazing how often we choose to do things that leave us lifeless? Whether it is the simple, daily activities that can chip away at our spirits or the toxic, human encounters that leave us blistered and burned, it is sometimes very difficult to turn away, to instead choose what brings life. To choose a new, a different way of walking in the world. This being human is a curious thing. A complex thing. A holy thing.

Which is why when my eyes beheld these words of Jan Richardson today in her Advent book Night Visions, I was drawn to this poem tucked into the fourth week of this path toward Christmas. Certainly the scriptures we have read in worship have spoken about signs, ways we know that the Holy is on the move in the world, on the road in our lives. Even our lives. But it is often difficult to ‘divine’ the meanings of the word of a stranger spoken in a tone hushed enough to be an angel voice. Or the glimpse out of the corner of an eye of something that seems to call to us in ways that nudge at something deep in our heart. Or even the out-right booming voice that wakes us up to what we love or causes tears to spring in the corners of our eyes that feels like something more than an ordinary voice, more than an every day encounter. Are these signs? Signs of the presence of God?

The stories that shape Advent are all about bringing life. The life of a new born infant. The life that inspires shepherds to leave their flocks, their livelihood, and travel to unknown places. The life that is grabbed, that ask a young woman to give birth to the Holy in her time. The vibrant life-changing voice of an angel, speaking the truth. The life that must have been challenged in an older man who finds himself confounded by the woman to whom he has promised his life. The sacrifice of lives that chose to pay attention to stars that led them into the deepest desert.

If nothing else, Advent invites us, even challenges us to reflect on what brings life. What stirs within us, at the place where the Spirit dances, calling us to the ‘more’? How is the Holy calling to us, just as once happened to Mary, to be birthers? What signs are being made known to us that we are ignoring or are even invisible to our distracted eyes?

The rush toward Christmas Day has begun. It is easy to get caught up in the flurry of activity and the downward spiral of ceaseless movement. If we stick with the wise rhythm of Advent we will ‘train our fingers’ to hold with persistence what brings life, the precious gift of these days.

May we be held by the gift of patience, of waiting, and of being open to signs of the Divine that travel with us. Even when we cannot see.