Dear Friends,
In a few days, on December 21, this year the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, we will enter the shortest, the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice, the day when light is most needed and celebrated. This past week we have witnessed the need for light in the gloom, the aridity, the darkness of sin as we move towards the darkest day.
The shootings at Brown University during finals as students looked forward to winter break and reuniting with friends and family. The mass killing of Jews in Australia on the first night of Chanukah, the season of welcoming and celebrating the light. The murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, allegedly by their own son; then, the ugly response by the president, which sought to divide and blame rather than unite after tragedy. The return of government forces to Chicago to frighten our city and harass and arrest our neighbors and friends.
Yes, as we spin, literally, into the darkest day of the year, which can be a lovely, thoughtful day for stillness and quiet, we seem also to be spinning into the dark recesses of the human heart.
While it is normal and human to be angry and shocked about all of the above, to line up on “sides,” to point fingers, I have been thinking lately about the importance of sorrow and grief. Death and division are cause for deep sorrow, sin is cause for deep sorrow, feeling helpless is cause for deep sorrow.
Then I remember this poetry from Isaiah that we hear every Christmas Eve and Day:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined. (9:2)
Then I remember this poem from Anglican priest R. S. Thomas that captures how our God responds to our gloom and sin:
The Coming
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
Even in the darkest night, a light shines. Look for it. Trust in it.
See you in Church.
Faithfully, Suzanne+