This is a wartime Christmas. This is not a Christmas where I have been overworked and am on my way to back to work which wearies me, thinking of a terrible winter at work, thinking of a world that is unredeemed. This is a time of war. This is a time of magic and prayer and concentration and determination.I think before Christmas has been a semi terrified retreat into childhood and a fight against the horrible things. But a few weeks ago the horrible thing happened and this is new territory. At the very beginning of the year I was terrified. Around Easter I was absolutely frightened because of COVID and not really frightened of getting it, but of passing it on and killing my parents, especially my mother. All this year the possibility of my mother's death hung like--not pun intended--a spectre, but now she is gone and the life I feared is the life I am living in everyday. This year is the world I prayed would not come. I live in that world every day ,and every day I discover something new, a new strangth, a new magic, a new resolve.I get to the end of myself, to the end of things, to the end of great grieving and terror. And I find new country. The country is not always beautiful. It is often ugly rough country. I need determination to walk through it or wait through it. The determination comes. I need patience and faith in a place where nothing is stable but me and this quiet internal temply that I build.
I prayed over and over for my mother to live, and she did live, but then I knew that this prayer must have one end sooner of later. One night, after being overcome with worry and fear I released herself and myself from this prayer. She was dying the next dead and dead that day after.So that is my loss, my little loss in the great work. But in the time of trial so many other things are happening, slowly. This president who has shamed the nation is leaving and things are not getting good or necessarily better, but they are moving away from the downward spiral. There is so much left to do. So much left to do to make it on earth as it is in heaven. And my devotion to this has been weak, and my fire has burned low. As Advent draws to a close I am steering away from the Christmassy feeling and moving toward the resolve of determination.
Well, where does lying in bed eating chocolates and wearing wooly socks fit into this? Where does a big greedy Christmas Day meal fit into this, and naps and hiding from the world? I think because we need rest. A bear needs to hibernate in order to be a bear. The Sabbath of joy is absolutely necessary for the slow work of change and protection and nurture. In the Lord of the Rings it is Aragorn I think who says that the Hobbits are stupid and well fed and comfortable and don't know much about the world and so despise the Rangers, but that this is fine because the work of the Rangers is to keep the Hobbits and other people safe and therefore stupid. I've always had a problem with this. It just sounds wrong. But one thing it does is create a dichotomy between the Rangers and the protected. The comfort of Christmas is a self protection, a self nurture. One who fights, who works, who creates visions and lives by them cannot do so successfully if he does not also live a life of comfort and joy and celebration. One who only struggles, works and suffers will most certainly lose his soul in the process of trying to save it.
Scenes from a Rorate Mass early Saturday morning before Rorate Sunday
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