We spent our first day of the new year with a good friend in grief. We did our New Year’s walk together through the snowy Minnesota landscape at the arboretum of one of the colleges in town. We walked on fresh snow, watching people skiing by, couples walking their dogs, kids sledding down a slope near by. It wasn’t as cold as we are used to in Minnesota winter and so we could still hear the little creek flowing under its light snow and ice cover. We took in the crisp air, the silence of the big trees bending over our path, and the quiet squeeze of the snow under our feet. We felt we were walking through a big outside cathedral wondering why we would so rarely walk this quite ordinary path. Snow has healing capacities. It quiets everything. Voices, steps, thoughts. We walked beside each other watching Hannah taking in her surroundings with great big eyes and some giggles. We talked about times passed and people missed.
Afterwards we went for some hot chocolate, and later continued our conversation at home in the glimmer of a candle.
Oddly, being with a friend in grief was probably the most fulfilled time we have spent on this journey through the 12 days. There is something sacred about the pain we carry and the pain we share. And as the cries of our baby child require immediate attention we must tend to the sorrows of our heart, too, when they come to the surface.
In our fast consuming culture feast days are often spent with the expectation of happy, harmonious days, splendid food and happy smiles. But in reality we all walk with sorrows we only can postpone for a short while. Therefore feast days truly start with the night. They call our attention first to the dark, to our feelings of grief, pain, loneliness. Only by walking through this night do we arrive at the dawn of the day at the other side. But the good news is, as each feast day reminds us, there is light waiting for us at the other side of the night.
Karl Gustav Jung, the Austrian psychiatrist and pastor’s son saw this deeper meaning underlying religious feast days quite well. Participating in them, not only in the happy days, but also in the dark nights, he says, has therapeutic quality. Religious traditions can be hollowed out empty, but it can also provide us with forms touching on the deeper levels of our beings. They can help us to tend to all of who we are: celebrating the merry hours, and being comforted in the lonely hours, filled with feelings hard to bear.
The Christmas story does not start with Hallelujah choruses. It starts with a long and difficult journey into unknown land, with a manger in a stable, with a dark night when labor sets in.
So it is for all of us who experience lonely and painful hours on this journey through the 12 Days of Christmas. For all of us who have found experiences of loss and pain while looking back on the past year. For all who still struggle with how to carry on, or wonder if there will be another day waiting after the night. Do not be afraid of the lonely hours. Do not be afraid of sharing your pain with others. Do not be afraid of your tears and sorrows. Instead tend to them as you would to a baby child. Carry your experience tenderly. Sing a lullaby. Shush your sorrows until they fall asleep. Tend to your dreams. For in dreams our soul speaks to us already from the other side of the night. And do not stay alone in your grief. Cry out to some one you trust, to a caring person, to God, and ask them to help you carry your burden.
If God Almighty had wanted to send a loud message to the world he could have stuck to Hallelujah choruses and angel choirs. Or a mighty king proclaiming the will of God. But instead God bends down deeply, silently, into the night of our sorrows, where we feel little and vulnerable just as a newborn child. Here on simple straw in a tiny stall somewhere in a cold desert night, through the labor pain of a courageous mother and a loving father God chooses to be born. Right here, in the heart of the weary, God wants to take shelter. Right here, in the stable of your sorrow, the holy wants to break through.
The practice for today is big and small at the same time. Do tend to your sorrows. Do light a candle for each of them. Do look on the photo I made in a little chapel hewn in stone somewhere on a cliff in Greece. Look to the candles in the dark. Look to the light through the door. Do it again. Simply breathe. May the eternal comforter be right at your side, and wait with you for the new day to come.