Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 7: LIGHT

I find as I get older the times and places I use to need light, I don’t need it so much any more. But, there are times and places when I didn’t need it, now I do.  For instance, when I was a child, I always needed to have my bedroom door open and the hall light on.  The light kept the night at a manageable distance.  I could sleep, but I before I slept, I could feel certain of my surroundings and safety.  Now – I need no light to fall asleep, and I prefer the dark.  I trust the dark of my bedroom and my home. As I said yesterday, it is a sanctuary of rest.

However, now, at 57 years old,  I need more light to read than I did when I was younger.  I prefer to drive in the daytime because the lights of oncoming cars at night create distortions and make me nervous.  I don’t like those limitations.  The dark is fine when I want to rest…but when I want to do something or go somewhere, turn on the light, please!

As I said yesterday – we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 largely because it was an annual time of celebration in many northern hemisphere ancient cultures as the days were getting perceptibly longer after the winter solstice.  Spring would soon be around the corner: new crops, warmer weather, a new lease on life for another year.  It wasn’t a big leap to build on celebrating God’s light come into the world through the Bethlehem baby – who would later be quoted to say “I am the Light of the World.”

He would also be quoted to say, “YOU are the light of the world,” meaning, of course, all of us.

So, one of the sanctuaries that Christmas offers is the Sanctuary of Light – the light of day getting longer,  the Jesus Light come into the world, and the hope and promise that in some way - each of us too, will be and are lights of the world as well.   That’s a lot of light.

We look forward to Christmas to remind us of all that light that can chase away some of the dark uncertainties and obscurities we still, like children, hold on to.  We need at least once a year when we can remind ourselves that we are the Lighters, we have that power, we have that gift. Darkness is only absence…light is something. It is energy, an energy that knits us together.  We can light our candles, we can put lights on our trees and bushes, and even our deck our houses out in grand displays, to remind us of the stings of energy that connect us.  

The Sanctuary of Light reminds us that we are not alone in this universe of ours.  The endless view of stars in the night sky reminds us that there is something greater. The promise of eons-old light rays reaching  earth, reaching our eyes and soothing our puny fears, reminds us that there is something good behind all this cosmos, something trustworthy, something that wants us to see and know, to be warmed and empowered, to then to shine ourselves out.   No darkness can overcome that!

Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 6: DARKNESS

We know that one of the reasons that Christmas is placed where it is in our calendar is not because Jesus was actually born on that day but it had more to do with the movements of the sun than a real birthday.  In the 4^th Century, the Western Christian Church settled on December 25.  Many pre-Christian and non-Christian faith practices within and around the Roman Empire had celebrations at the time of the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  After the solstice, light began to return to lengthen the days and shorten the nights leading to spring.  True, we think of Christmas as a festival of light – which I will get to tomorrow - but it also offers a sanctuary of darkness. 

Darkness is a mixed bag.  It’s often used as a metaphor for evil, for sin, for void, for ignorance, for the unknown.  Yet, it also offers us the sanctuary of sleep, rest, quiet, relief from distractions, privacy, and intimacy.   So what kind of sanctuary is it?  Is it one we really seek out?  Or, is it something, a pit, we tend to unwittingly fall into? Because it is so mixed in meaning, it is both; and that’s why it is such a potent symbol for humanity. 

 Frankly, I think the Eastern religions have trumped Greek-influenced Christianity  in being able to embrace the “both-and-ness” of our human experience.  They don’t demonize the yin forces of the cosmos (darkness, gentleness, moon, feminine) and divinize the yang (light, strength, sun, male).  They see both as essential and balancing each other.

So, I choose to see darkness as a sanctuary that Christmas offers us just as much as light.  There is something tender and sensitive about Christmas Eve. There is a vulnerability to the beleaguered Mary and Joseph, trying to find a place to spend the night, a baby born in the dark hours, and shepherds resting on nighttime hillsides.

In our lives, there is a time for strength and light, but we also need to savor the darkness, the rest it offers, the times of quiet intimacy.  This year, after the Christmas Eve worship service was done, and Rich and I were back home, we were about ready to go to bed, and we remembered the Christmas Eves we spent early in our marriage before our children had arrived.  We’d sit on the couch quietly, with only the Christmas tree lights on, feeling our exhaustion, but allowing the sacredness of the night to calm us.  It enabled us to transition from professional demands of ministry to a family focus.  The darkness, the quiet, the calm allowed us to reconnect with each other after the harried weeks of co-ministry.  In recent years, we had forgotten that ritual as we usually strained into the night to get presents wrapped, or put on finishing touches if we had a Christmas day service. “Let’s just sit,” I said. “It’s late, but let’s just sit.”  We did, and the sanctuary of darkness nurtured us.

It seems to me that when we don’t allow the sanctuary of darkness to be a nurturing, calming, resting  and vulnerable experience in our lives, then the darkness has the potential to shift in us toward evil.  When we are tired – yet don’t allow ourselves to rest,  when we are hurting - yet don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable to another person but try to hide, when we are weak - but try to pretend we are not, darkness, which is meant to be a gift and sanctuary, becomes a pit of despair and destruction. 

Instead, we can enter the sanctuary of darkness and let God nurture our weary souls. We can sing its most beloved anthem: “Silent night, holy night – all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child; holy infant, tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.” 

Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 5: WONDER

Coming on the heels of Mystery is the sanctuary of WONDER. Wonder is our human response to mystery.  And again, we allow our children to be our best guides into this sanctuary, and Christmas is the time we allow ourselves to linger in its space.  Wonder provides the fibers and yarns that weave through our Christmas season and celebrations, knitting the sacred time and the sanctuaries together. 

We yearn for wonder, but often don’t recognize it.  We may mistakenly pursue instead the goal of making sure everyone is happy…happy with the right gifts, with enough gifts, with the right food, the right decorations, the right invitations, etc. regardless of any deeper meaning.  But, wonder is not found in our scurrying around and stressing out, in our acquisitions and achievements.  Wonder is only found when one quiets down, when one looks around, when one allows oneself to savor and see the presence (the true presents!) of mystery.

The shepherds watching over their sheep, resting beneath the starry cosmos, are the images in our Christmas story of wonder.  They are startled to their knees by the sound and sight of what they perceive as angels singing God’s glory and announcing some amazing news of great joy.  They go to find the Holy Family, and they are the first to bow down before the baby in the manger with wonder and adoration. 

A couple of Christmases ago, I experienced a moment of wonder and awe during a Christmas Eve worship service.  Before this year, all of my Christmas Eve services were spent with congregations of 50 to 100 people.  The time came usually at the end of every Christmas Eve service when “Silent Night” would be sung and everyone’s candles would be lit.  It normally is the moment of Christmas Eve that carries the most awe and wonder for me.  What I hadn’t anticipated in my new church during my first Christmas Eve with them was the effect of a congregation of 500+ people standing and singing “Silent Night” with raised candles!    It took my breath away. 

Without the sanctuary of Wonder, we as human beings are quick to succumb to the seduction of the superficial and of quick gratifications. Our rituals become empty and inadequate.  Our Christmas season becomes about as meaningful as a haphazardly erected artificial Christmas tree, with a few scraggly ornaments, stuck in the corner of a convenience gas station, near the racks of potato chips and spare windshield wipers!  The sanctuary of Wonder, which appears on the other side of the threshold of Mystery, is what feeds the deepest parts of our souls.  Without it, we starve.

Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 4: MYSTERY

The next sanctuary of Christmas I want to talk about it is a little less – actually quite a bit less – tangible and definable.  Actually, that’s its nature. It is the sanctuary of MYSTERY. It is a deep part of Christmas, not always recognized.  Yet, once we recognize it, it can bring a kind of serenity that we have yearned for, often without knowing it.

When we ask a question like, “Was Mary really a virgin?” or “Was Jesus really conceived by the Holy Spirit,”  or “Did angels really appear to shepherds in the fields?” – we are entering the sanctuary of Mystery.  Most of us know that there are no real answers to those questions.  We may have a hunch or even a firm belief that goes one way or another, but deep in our heart of hearts, I would venture to say most of us know there is no way to answer those questions without running headlong into a molasses-thick murk of mystery.

For some, that is unacceptable and excruciatingly uncomfortable.  For others, there is a tentative acceptance. And, for still others, we readily plunge into the murk allowing ourselves to be immersed in the rich creativity of imagination that can take us higher planes of possibility.

Christmas, like Easter, is a threshold.  It is a “thin place,” as the Celts would have called it.  As we might think of Easter as a threshold place between death and new life, Christmas is a threshold between what is divine and what is mortal and temporal.  It confronts us with questions about exactly what is the doorway, the connection, between our mortal, temporal lives, and whatever, whoever is beyond us.

The gospel traditions of Matthew and John shape for us this sanctuary of mystery the best, I think. Matthew highlights the divine guidance of angels in dreams and new stars and the wise ones from the East that understand the movement and portent of the cosmos, and follow the leading of the star.  John does not have a nativity story per se, but frames the mortal and temporal life of Jesus through the perspective of the earliest Creation myth – that somehow this human Jesus was the Word of God going forth over the primordial cosmic soup of chaos, and all of creation was brought forth through that Word. And now that Word was made flesh.  Whew!  Talk about mystery! 

And…that mystery is or can be a sanctuary for us.  In our mortal, temporal lives so thoroughly controlled and permeated by rationality and empirical thought, we need a haven of mystery where we don’t have to have all the answers, all the proof, all the explanations and logical rationale. 

Our children are often our excuses to hold on as long as we can to “Christmas fantasy and magic.”  This is our yearning for mystery, a sense that more is possible than we can imagine, that there just might be powers greater than our puny selves that live in stars and dreams and in strangers carrying prophetic messages that all can be trusted to carry us across thresholds of chaos and creation,  of human and divine, of flesh and spirit.  When entered, the sanctuary of Mystery assures us that what is true – deeply, authentically true – is not always what can be rationally explained or proven. 

Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 3: HOME

Another sanctuary that Christmas offers most poignantly is the the sanctuary of HOME. It may be our own “home” - however we might define it, but it is also more than that. It also may not be the place our family lives, or even a place or experience that is well-defined.

The parts of the Christmas story most sentimentalized and emotionally evocative have to do with a pregnant couple arduously engaged in a long journey, finally reaching their destination only to be turned away from lodging. But then, they are offered the nurturing space in the midst of a barn with the companionship of the quiet and gentle animals. This obviously is a huge embellishing leap from what Luke actually says simply that “ She wrapped him in cloth and and placed him in a manger, because there was no room available for them.”

Nevertheless, with the weight of centuries of storytelling, art, and tradition behind us, the stable is a symbol for the sanctuaryTradition & Remembrance of Home. The place of belonging, the place of rest and nurture, shelter, safety and security. Most of us can also relate to the unique nurture animals can give us, which makes a stable and manger particularly poignant. We yearn for the sanctuary of home, Tradition & Remembrance.

I spent the fall semester of my senior year of college studying in England.  I had visited some of the spectacular cathedrals and great churches and heard magnificent choirs.  But, for the first time in my life (yes, at 21 years old!) I was homesick.  When I arrived home a few days before Christmas, I was jet lagged and tried to catch up on my sleep in my parent's house (a house that they had not lived in all that long, so it in itself was not a homTradition & Remembrancee to me, but being back with my parents in my home country was.)  I was still feeling jetlagged as we attended the Christmas eve service together in their small country church.  An overwhelming feeling of gratitude and amazement washed over me as I watched the motley group of choir members file in.  They were all shapes and sizes, wearing probably 30 year old choir robes.  One of the larger women with a belting voice caught my attention as I noticed her sneakers clearly visable under her too-short robe.  Their voices were mediocre at best, but they sang the carols with gusto.  I was awed by the contrast of only a short week or two ago being in the most majestic of churches, and now on Christmas eve, being home in a humble and familiar space with people who looked and talked like me.

Christmas has traditionally been a time of coming home, or trying to recreate home when we are far away. Songs are sung about it; holiday movies about homecomings pull on our heartstrings; commercials even show college students and young soldiers sneaking into their homes in the early morning hours and making coffee to surprise their unsuspecting families! We use cards to bring loved ones and acquaintances close and reconnect even if distant, we use food to nurture, we use gift-giving to express both nurture and love.

There are not many sanctuaries more powerful than what we call “home.” If we don't have a ready-made place or family that offers us a true home, then we strive to create or find that sanctuary. We all need a place, a space, an experience of shelter from the outside world, an oasis from the stresses and strains, the isolation, living with masks and facades; a place of welcome, hospitality, nurture and trust. This is the powerful sanctuary of HOME.

Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 2: TRADITION & REMEMBRANCE

My deepest joys of Christmas come from memories held of idyllic pasts. I remember family traditions, rituals, special foods, stories we read and movies we watched. In my older childhood, we began to take annual family ski trips over the Christmas break during which we'd spend the frigid wintry nights in a northern Wisconsin cabin, playing games, doing puzzles, and listening to Andy Williams crooning carols on the record player. Our vacation days were spent on the snowy slopes.

I know now as an adult, I was privileged. My family traditions were rich. I also know that some of my most difficult Christmases were the ones that didn't or couldn't measure up to those idyllic memories. What I didn't understand was there was nothing wrong with changes...but I still yearned for the sanctuary of my memory and meaningful traditions.

One of the primary sanctuaries of Christmas is that of tradition and remembrance. Christmas is history, deeply rooted and blended from a number of diverse roots. Deep within Jewish tradition comes the stories of the young shepherd boy of Bethlehem chosen to be king, the prophets foretelling the coming of a servant messiah. Later, both the Luke and Matthew gospel traditions, recording the birth of Jesus are very intentionally connected to these roots of history. As Christian tradition continues to unfold and spread throughout the world, other cultural tradition and rituals become kneaded into mix of what Christmas comes to mean for each of us.

 There is part of us that yearns for roots. We yearn for ritual and meaning that transcend our own lives. Christmas offers us an annual focal point in our lives and with our families and communities , but yet connects us to something much bigger and older...a centuries-old story, stories that cross cultural and political boundaries.

When we enter the sanctuary of Christmas, we enter a space shared by countless others over the generations and boundaries of time and geography. We sing old songs, we eat special food and practice customs that may be traditional to an ethnic heritage greatly distant from our present lives, yet still a part of our identity. Each individual family has a hand in adding its own embellishments and adaptations on those traditions and remembrances for their own children.

No matter how unintentional or haphazard our childhood was, most of us who celebrate this holiday have some sense of sanctuary of tradition and memory. We need that grounding. We need that sanctuary of deep traditions and deep remembrances.

The Sanctuaries of Christmas

Welcome to the 12 days of Christmas!  Most of us forget (unless you are professionally church-y) that the Christmas season actually BEGINS on Christmas day, and not the day after Thanksgiving…or Halloween for that matter. As a way to observe the Christmas season this year, I’ll write a post each day on what it seems to me we really yearn for, seek and anticipate this time of year.  I’ll call them “sanctuaries.”  These sanctuaries are spiritual experiences we yearn for and need all the time, but they seem to be concentrated around the Christmas season.  When we say things like “let’s keep the Christmas spirit going all year round!”  -  it’s often these sanctuaries we know we want and need more than just once a year. 

A “Sanctuary” is a sacred space. It is a space away from the ordinary world, away from threats and stresses, a place usually of tranquility and protection, a place often thought of as a meeting space with God.

As human beings, we create sanctuaries in a variety of ways…

·        Traditionally -  the heart of our church buildings is the sanctuary
·        We build “sanctuaries” to protect wildlife from unnatural predators that threaten their existence.
·        Sometimes we think of “giving sanctuary” to those threatened by political oppression and violence.
·        God commanded one day in every seven be a sanctuary of time for rest and savoring the gifts of creation
 

But, we’ve gotten less attuned to our need for sanctuary as we’ve allowed our work and activities and stresses of life crowd in every corner of our lives.

Christmas has been a powerful sanctuary for us – obviously for Christians, but even in the diversity of our nation and world, there seems to be a hunger for an end-of–the-year sanctuary…a sacred space and time for nurture, meeting God, reconnection and reconciliation. 

The sanctuaries that the Christmas season offers us are:  History & Tradition, Home, Wonder, Mystery, Hope & Joy, Darkness, Light, Giving, Kindness & Love, Peace, and Meeting God.