Advent 2020: A Season of Opposites

Advent is a season of anticipation and expectation. My faith tradition marks the four Sundays of Advent by lighting four candles, each symbolizing a different theme. While there are slight variations, four that are quite common among many denominations are hope, peace, joy, and love. This past Sunday we lit the first Advent candle.

If ever we were in need of hope, it is now.

And yet, the pandemic rages on and the race for a vaccine is far from over.

If ever we were in need of peace, it is now.

And yet, the battle for the better angels of our collective nature rages on.

If ever we were in need of joy, it is now.

And yet, the days grow shorter and the nights longer, shrouding our outer world with the same darkness that threatens our inner light.

If ever we were in need of love, it is now.

And yet, we must choose loneliness over love as we cannot gather with those we love the most because we love them the most.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize the hope of better days to come and the despair of how long it might take for them to get here. Both are true.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize the peace that passes all understanding and the battles that make no sense. Both are true.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize joy to world and the sorrow that is engulfing it. Both are true.

We light an Advent candle to symbolize the love that is all around us and the loneliness because those we love are not. Both are true.

Advent 2020 is as much a season of opposites as it is of anticipation. Hope and despair, peace and strife, joy and sorrow, love and loneliness.

We light the candles, because both are true.

(With gratitude to Pastor Laura Robinson)

No Laughing Matter

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

— Proverbs 17:22 KJV

Today, I feel great, as in awesome. I haven’t felt this good, this upbeat, this happy, in, well, in since I can’t remember when. And it’s not because vaccines for the Coronavirus have gotten FDA approval and are being widely distributed. It isn’t because the current president has graciously conceded defeat and authorized a peaceful transfer of power. Nor is it because I can hug my family and friends with abandon, gather together around a table to share a meal, or see fewer wrinkles when I look in the mirror.

None of those things have happened.

And it’s not because the Seattle Seahawks beat the Arizona Cardinals Thursday night. Which did happen. (Well, maybe that helped just a little.)

It took me awhile to figure out why I woke up on the bright side of the bed, which isn’t how I normally roll. It turned out to be pretty simple.

It was laughter. Laughter was the magic sauce that brightened my day and lightened my load.

Last night just before crawling into bed I received a text from one of our daughters about our four and a half month old grand-boy. His bedtime routine includes feeding him just before he goes to bed. Last night he stopped nursing, looked up at his mom and just started laughing. And couldn’t quit. He just laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more. He was , she texted, like a little person who just found out how good laughing feels.

Drifting off to sleep, just thinking about that little happy-to-his-toes-boy laughing, made me laugh.

This morning over my first cup of coffee in the pre-dawn dark on our porch, I watched a Taylor Calmus, aka dudedad, story.

It.

Was.

Hilarious.

I couldn’t stop laughing. (Do yourself a favor and watch it— maybe more than once.)

Yesterday ended with laughter. Today started with it. Psychology Today suggests that laughter can boost our immune system and our mood, lower anxiety, help us release tension, and foster resilience. Sounds like good medicine to me.

Life is no laughing matter right now.

Which is exactly why laughing matters more than ever.

Photo by Rodolfo Quirós from Pexels

Shake A Stick At It

It was a cold, wet, dark, drizzly morning in our little neck of the woods. But rain or shine, Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle needs to get outside and get some exercise, and frankly, so do I.

Heading out it didn’t feel like there was much joy in the air, and to be sure, there are days when joy can be hard to come by. Part way down our road we came upon a downed branch from a nearby tree. It was almost twice as long as Gracie with smaller branches sticking out all over, and my thought was to toss it off to the side of the road out of the way of cars. Just throw it away, be done with it, and check the walk-the-dog-in-spite-of-the-cold-wet-dark-drizzly-joyless morning off of my list.

Gracie, however, had a different idea.

She grabbed that stick by one of the branches and took off at full tilt. She shook it this way, and then that way. Head held high, tail up in the air, she pranced up the road, raced in circles, lost her grip on the branch, and snatched it up again. Shaking a stick at the cold, wet, dark, drizzly morning, up and down the road she pranced, around and around the field she raced. She just simply wouldn’t, or more likely couldn’t, quit. She was brown, curly haired joy from tip to tail. Pretty soon, so was I—minus the curly brown hair and tail. Joy, it seems, is contagious.

Rather than shake our fist at a dark day, maybe we can try being like Gracie, and shake a joyful stick at it instead.

This Is The Day

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

The alarm went off at 5AM this morning. Opening my still sleepy eyes, this was the image that greeted me through our window.

The first words that came to mind were those of the writer of the words from the book of Psalms quoted above. Grabbing my phone I stepped out into the cold early morning air, the frozen grass crunching beneath my feet, and captured the image of the moon as it set, ushering in the morning of a new day.

Walking back into the house it dawned on me, again, that this day, like every day, is a gift. It is the day that has been given to us, and it is the day in which we can choose to rejoice.

Or not.

The Psalmist doesn't say, “Tomorrow is the day” or “Someday, or another day, or yesterday” She (or he for that matter) says, “This is the day”. He (or she for that matter) doesn’t say, “We are rejoicing” or “We should rejoice” or “We might, could, must, or will try to rejoice.” The Psalmist says, “We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Rejoicing is a choice. A commitment to find a way to be glad in this day which has been given to us. It is the only one we have. The day before is gone, and the day ahead not promised. It is only this day in which we can choose to rejoice.

Or not.

As I look around the world that is within my reach (and don’t even get me started on the world at large), on any given day there is at least as much heartache as there is happiness, as much pain as there is peace, and as many problems as there are solutions. It is in the midst of the complexity of our very human lives that we are called to rejoice.

This is the day that has been given to us.

Will we rejoice in it?

Or not?

The choice is ours.

The Joy Of Sadness

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

Joy is not the absence of sorrow.

Sorrow, however can be a gateway to joy.

There are few of us who look forward to pain and loss, much less the deep, dark emotions that accompany us in our  grief. It can be tempting to try and shorten our times of sadness, to move through them as swiftly as we can, and even to attempt to escape them altogether through our coping mechanisms of choice. But sorrow has a purpose. It isn’t meant to break our hearts, but to break them wide open. As I wrote in BLUSH: Women & Wine, There is a cleansing that takes place when we grieve with our whole hearts. By moving through it , rather than hiding from it, we come out the other side made more whole through our willingness to be broken.

Take heart.

Be courageous.

Weeping may endure for a night.

But joy is to be found in the mourning.

Where Did The Joy Go?

I can lose my joy in a nano second.

And the culprit?

COMPARISON

Sometimes I compare myself to others to see if I measure up, and everything seems to be fair game…Work, Money, Book Sales, Social Media Platform, Blog Following, Body Image, Our Home, Family Dynamics, Emotional Intelligence, Education, Mindfulness, Spirituality, Physical Fitness, Creativity, Stature, Puppy Training Progress…just to name a few.

As soon as I focus on mine vs theirs, joy slips out and discouragement sneaks in.

On the other hand, some of the harshest comparison comes when I look at where I am in relationship to where I think I should be in any one of the categories listed above.

As soon as I focus on who I am vs who I think I should be, joy slips out and shame sneaks in.

Our work, here on planet earth, is to become our most authentic, wholehearted self. To be the best us we can be. In other words, to be our true self. The one who is uniquely equipped to help, heal, and love the world that is within our reach.

When we live from that place, nothing can rob us of our joy.

With gratitude to Katie Meleney for this tiny wooden sign that hangs above my desk to remind me…

In A Heartbeat

Joy resides in the heart.  

Today has me thinking a lot about hearts. A few months ago my husband discovered, kind of by a fluke, that his heart was beating too fast, and somewhat irregularly. Rather than getting its signal from the sinus node, which regulates the heartbeat, his ticker was responding to a different impulse. While not imminently dangerous, in the long term it would be good to take care of it.

Today, he did.

His doctor, a cardiac electrophysiologist, put a catheter up into his heart to locate and shut down the misfiring cells. He’s out of surgery, and we will head home tonight with his heart, once again, responding to the beat of the right drum.

I think joy in our hearts is a lot like that.

We are meant to experience joy deep within, and come wired with an internal signal to regulate the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy that can sustain us even in the midst of our most challenging days. But sometimes we let fear and anxiety, anger and resentment, guilt and shame run amok, and suddenly our hearts are out of whack too. In other words, we allow the wrong impulses to regulate the state of our hearts.

Time to locate and shut down the misfiring messages, and allow our hearts to do what they were designed to do.

Beat with the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy. 

Choosing Joy

Entering this third week of Advent and its theme of Joy, I am struggling to unpack this tiny word. It feels so important, and so universal to the longings of our human hearts, and yet it so hard to describe.

It’s kind of like happiness. But not exactly.

Happiness is more like a state of mind, while joy is a state of being.

Happiness happens to us, while joy happens inside of us.

Happiness comes and goes, while joy can take up permanent residence.

Happiness depends on outside circumstances, while joy is an inside job.

Maybe joy is both a choice and a practice. Life is hard, and will always be a mixture of the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly, but in the midst of it all, I am learning that I can choose joy anyway. I can practice joy no matter what.

Rather than try and unpack its meaning, maybe I’ll just wrap my arms around this tiny word and hold on for dear life.

Want to join me?

Tiny Joy Vase: Beanpole Pottery

Beholding Joy

It is the third Sunday in Advent, ushering in the theme of Joy.

Wonder is a doorway to joy.

A Season of Waiting

“No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens 
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.

Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.

In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.

Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.”

The Nativity by John O’Donahue

Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent, a time which in my tradition is a season of waiting, expectancy, and anticipation. In our church, on each of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas, we will light a candle to symbolize one of the themes specific to Advent:

Hope.

Peace.

Joy.

Love.

Every year before the first Sunday in Advent a nativity display appears in front of the Glenwood General Store in our little rural town. This year, however, the display moved a few feet west of the store, landing the holy family in front of the Burger Shed. A gas station in days gone by, which one can imagine in ancient times might have been about the size of a small stable in which to take shelter. But not all the holy family is visible. The mother and father, on either side of a small empty manger, await the arrival of a new life on the way. These are their days of waiting, expectancy, and anticipation, as they are ours.

Come Christmas morning, anyone driving by the Burger Shed will find the babe in the manger, a symbol of hope, peace, joy, and love. No matter our beliefs, religious or not, each of those is a fundamental longing of the human heart, And as the days grow shorter, and the darkness arrives earlier, it seems a season primed for us to eagerly wait for hope, peace, joy, and love to rise up. But let’s not just to wait for them, let’s watch for them.

Let’s claim them wherever we find them.

Let’s proclaim them whenever we see them.

Let’s call them forth.

Let’s carry them forward.

Let’s offer them up.

Let’s embody them.

Let’s embrace them.

Let’s give birth to them.