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“Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
LUKE 1:78,79 (NIV)
Yesterday, I wanted to do lots of great things. But it was one of those days I often experience in the holiday season. I don’t know if depression comes first or its best friend; tiredness does. The workweek had worn me down, and now it was Saturday. I wanted to write, but my brain and heart refused the therapy it afforded me. I just wanted to be a useless lump in my house.
I’ve been through this enough times in my life that I know what this is all about. It is the anniversary week of my mother’s passing. Whether conscious of it or not, it still impacts the twelve-year-old boy living inside me. So, I sat with the turmoil of wanting to be positive versus the boat anchor of melancholy. I knew this, too, shall pass as it has done for decades.
Jenny has a collection of village pieces that began with pieces gifted by her mother, Arliss and grew to include those inherited after Arliss’s passing. A bright spot was watching Jenny joyfully arrange everything just so as Christmas music played from our Echo Show device—the idyllic Christmas theme of peace on earth and goodwill to all stands frozen in the ceramics.
We know our eleven-year-old granddaughter, Salem, will “adjust” the arrangement to how it should be in her view. Her autism and OCD impulses compel her to do so. But there is no doubt that Salem also loves these villages and this holiday season. Even though she is non-verbal, it becomes apparent when she cups a handful of plastic snow and showers it over the village and villagers like a snow globe. She loves it when it snows.
“Every sunset is an opportunity to reset.” – Richie Norton
We had tickets to the Salt Lake Men’s Choir 40th Christmas performance at First Baptist Church of Salt Lake City. I wasn’t feeling social, especially for a holiday concert. But we know some choir members and the Artistic Director and enjoy supporting them. It’s easy to do as they always provide great concerts. Plus, we had invited our friends, Jim and Cecelia. So, I summoned the strength to venture out and socialize.
Jim attended a Catholic seminary but left before finishing, served in the Army, and spent his career teaching. He is in his 80s, and his family immigrated from Malta, enabling his parents to lead a successful life. He has a personality that looks at the world with an eternal childlike wonder, just as Jesus said we should. Likewise, Cecelia, a former nun who left her order to marry Jim, is always optimistic and full of zest for life in her 70s.
We were quite the juxtaposition, sitting beside one another amongst over 300 souls at the concert. I sat beside him, masking my downward emotions, but he could tell. He’s seen me in better moods. He and Cecelia drank in the concert like enjoying a fine wine. They savored every note of a beautiful performance. Seeing their delight in the choir’s mastery and performance enthusiasm pleased me.
I looked around the crowd and could tell I wasn’t the only one struggling. Salt Lake City has a thriving LGBTQ+ community, and First Baptist Church is a welcoming and affirming congregation. But a Christian church is an intimidating place for people bearing scars from unwelcoming faith communities. People from that community were in the audience to support their friends and family despite their scars.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “The spiritual task is not to escape your loneliness, not to let yourself drown in it, but to find its source. This is not so easy to do, but when you can somehow identify the place from which these feelings emerge, they will lose some of their power over you. This identification is not an intellectual task; it is a task of the heart. With your heart you must search for that place without fear.”
We sat in the peace and joy of that gathering for two hours as their music washed over us, soothing whatever burdens we carried. We got to set aside the weight and bask in togetherness in spirit that night. During that time, I felt the spirit lift in me, knowing that I needed community, not isolation.
Sunrise has brought melancholy, but the sunset brought me to this place and these people. It reminded me that grief doesn’t have the last word. When I awoke to the sunrise Sunday morning, I felt like I could face the world again. As you can tell by reading this, I was inspired and creative again. It was a promising morning again.
I had spent my life isolating my grief, not sharing it with anyone because I had never been shown how to share it healthily. I had many ways of coping with it, but none involved deepening my life with Christ. I thank God for taking me on a healing journey for the source of my burden and giving me a community and the strength to weather these storms.
Henri experienced and wrote about all the times he experienced isolation and depression as a closeted gay priest. He never came out, but those who knew him closest saw his internal struggle. That’s why I love this devotional from the Henri Nouwen society.
A Time for Deepening
by the Henri Nouwen Society
The period before Christmas has that remarkable quality of joy that seems to touch not only Christians but all who live in our society....
But Advent is not only a period of joy. It is also a time when those who are lonely feel lonelier than during other periods of the year. During this time many people try to die by suicide or are hospitalized with severe depression. Those who have hope feel much joy and desire to give. Those who have no hope feel more depressed than ever and are often thrown back on their lonely selves in despair.
When a person is surrounded by a loving, supportive community, Advent and Christmas seem pure joy. But let me not forget my lonely moments because it does not take much to make that loneliness reappear. . . . When Jesus was loneliest, he gave most. That realization should help to deepen my commitment to service and let my desire to give become independent of my actual experience of joy. Only a deepening of my life in Christ will make that possible.
Maranatha!
Maranatha is one of the most ancient Christian prayers in Jesus’s Aramaic language. It’s meant to be repeated silently interiorly as four equally stressed syllables, Ma-ra-na-tha. That harmonic quality helps to bring the mind to silence. It is the ideal Christian mantra that means, “Come Lord.” A prayer for the early return of Christ.
This Advent season, we pray for all those struggling this holiday season to live for the promise of a new day. We pray for the sunset of brutal wars. We pray for power-hungry forces twisting religions to justify their means to be thwarted by darkness. We pray for the sun to rise, bringing love and peace to all sons and daughters of God. We pray for all the world to be made righteous and restore all we have lost. We pray for a new day where hope, peace, love, and joy reign forever. Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus.
Alleluia! Amen!
O come, Wisdom from on high,
who orders all things with might.
Maranatha!
O King of Nations, Desired One,
O come to make us one.
Maranatha!