Tis the season of the longest night. Darkness arrives earlier and the sun takes its time waking in the morning. We are worn out by the Christmas rush and feeling the long stretch of winter’s yawn, inviting us into stillness.
In this time of speeding up to slow down it is not uncommon to sense feelings of sadness creeping in around the edges of our hard earned joy, once we slow down, that is. But if our first instinct is to chase the sadness away with some kind of distraction, we would be robbing ourselves of the hidden gift of winter. The wondrous gift that is given silently in this season of the longest nights.
Ancient holy people referred to this time of year as “thin space,” a time when heaven moves a little closer to the earth. Whenever this time of year approaches, it can be both wonderful and frightening.
For Christians, it’s also the season in which we celebrate the birth of the Christ child. Another event of the heavens that prompted the angels to inform humans that even though the whole world was about to change forever, there was nothing to fear. Tidings of great joy delivered into frightful times.
Following Jesus’ birth, Matthew’s gospel tells us that the infant boys were massacred throughout the region of Bethlehem by order of King Herod. But, as the angels said, we simply have nothing to fear.
I’m not sure why heavenly events are also terribly fearful, or why the emotions of sadness and loss accompany supposedly joyful holidays, but these are things I’ve come to accept…sort of. Or let’s just say, I’m working on it.
I suppose it’s all about perspective. When I can view winter solstice and the annual always-coming-before-I’m-ready re-birth of the Christ child as an opportunity rather than a burden, things get better.
I’ve come to realize that each of us is given the tools of our lives, and when we begin to apply these tools to our partnership with heaven, we soon find that we all have one material, a very necessary one without which we can become nothing at all. It is our own woundedness. Our wounds hold years of stored loss, sadness, and layers of grief. Like a big gray, cold, blob of hardened clay sitting there inside of us, uninvited, wanting to be expressed, wanting to become something useful. Often stuck and keeping us from moving forward.
But Old Man Winter brings a unique opportunity with his spinning wheel of transformation, always turning. It’s a great season to go sit at this wheel of time and learn how to work with the material of our pain. Reaching in to pull out a little evidence, a little substance to offer up to the spinning wheel.
Stubborn pain and loss sits there, shapeless and dark, and has become a constant reminder of what has not happened in our lives. We need to take it in hand and shape it into something, but we have no idea how to do that. We would love to believe that our lives could become a vessel of good, but we don’t know how to work with it, we are not artisans of our pain. We’ve never worked with anything so stubborn and hard, so unwilling to be molded into something practical.
We reluctantly pick up our blob of pain, we spin the wheel, we poke some holes. We cry, we get therapy, we join a 12 step group, we do yoga, we go to church, it gets worse, it gets a little better, maybe our pain is becoming something more than pain. At least we are willing to acknowledge its existence.
The point is, it will never move if we just let it sit there, we have to touch it, throw it on the wheel of transformation, scream at it, caress it gently, add water, pray to God to show us what it is to become; pray to God to give us a clue about what to do, the master potter, who knows our pain by heart.
We need a Higher Power to help us sort out the information of our grief and lift from us the burdens, the overwhelming emotions that are too heavy for us. What happens in this process is nothing less than amazing. Season by season of working with grief, we see God, the master potter, working with us and turning it into a vessel we can use, a vessel that can be filled with joy to pour out to others.
Eventually, the season that we dreaded so much becomes a springtime. And we have something forming on the wheel of our lives, a new thing, a vessel, that we can use to hold love.
If we see grief as something we need, if we understand it is our grief that holds the vital information we need to move forward, then we can accept this winter as being one of the greatest transformational periods of our lives. If we don’t seek to distract ourselves from it. Rather, taking the risk of turning into it. With God’s help, and with the help of a group or a community, we can see this winter as an opportunity.
God takes the information stored in our big blob of grief and turns it into something we can use to hold our wholeness and become that fully alive person God intends for us to be.
It will get messy, no doubt, you will get your hands dirty, there will be ugly tears, and sorrow, but each time you press against the edges, it takes a different form. As you identify your grief and offer the layers to God to be lifted, something new begins to appear, a hollowed out place within, big enough to store joy, peace and love.
This is God’s promise to us and it will be met as we become willing.
At the heart of this season may be a dark night of the soul, but it is also the place where we find God looking back at us, ready to meet us and get to work with all the various materials of our pain. Saying, just as the angels said on the dark, silent night in which the Christ child was born, “Do not fear, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.”
Each Christmas is an opportunity for the Christ child to be born anew in all of us. From the churning chaos of the wheel of time, out of the elements of pain, comes joy.
“How Silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”