Angels Amidst the Dark

I remember Christmas Eve services at Northminster Presbyterian Church in Endwell, New York. My father was the minister and I was in high school. My friends and I would sit in the same pew rather than with our parents. At the time, we were quite cool and utterly unaware of our shining youth and hopefulness. We were the gang—Steve and Jeff and Kathy and Lynne – the boys and the girls and the endless longing in between.

I did love the singing. Angels We Have Heard on High – ‘singing sweetly o’er the plain, and the mountains in reply, echoing their joyous strain’. The words and melody appear magically in my mind. Like my father after his stroke. When words had fled, he and I practicing slow walking down the corridor. One day I began to sing an old family song – a camp song. And my father who could barely shuffle his feet and had not spoken for days, smiled hugely and began singing with me – word perfect.

So even now the music and words of Christmas Eve are with me. Singing still, together in the dark night, listening to the familiar and comforting readings about ‘certain shepherds.’ Nowadays I wonder how certain they were. Those men in the cold fields watching over their flocks by night. When the angel of the Lord appeared and said ‘Fear not.’

Fear not. The angels of life are terrible and wonderful—descending and vanishing in their own times and places. Dark and light alternating endlessly. Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy. Fear not. In the midst of the dark and cold life and love itself are being born.

But I’m trying to get to the end of the service at Northminster—the part where we sang Silent Night. My father was talking about Christmas the day he died. He kept apologizing for ruining it. I found out later that in his middle family, it was a time of drinking and fits of terrible anger and depression. Not so lovely. But the attending minister at the hospital suggested we sing ‘Silent Night’ – and we did – his first family and his third family joining in together around his hospital bed. Minus the second family and our mother from the first family who weren’t invited.

I didn’t mean to get lost in the darkness of my father’s death again, but it is very present with me. Now his life AND his death are part of the story. The light and love he gave me. His passing was the loss of one of my biggest supporters – someone who never tired of telling me how proud he was of me, who I had become and what I had accomplished. And also the dark gifts – the family legacy of the terrible loneliness and longing – the breaking of vows and sacred trusts. All of this passed on to me.

But on Christmas Eve, at Northminster Church in the mid-1960’s, we would each have a small candle with a round circle of paper half-way up to (supposedly) catch the drips. My glowing father would light his candle from the altar and pass it on down the center aisle of the church and from there down each row until everyone who was old enough to stand on their own two feet would be holding a lit candle.

And then, my father, his face alight with joy above his black robe, would say some magic words to invite everyone to lift their candle up. And the whole sanctuary would glow – bright as day. Angels everywhere.

Call to Action

I recently read the transcript of a talk by Paula Green given on December 7^th in Northampton, Massachusetts: “Despair and Empowerment in Our Watershed Moment.” Paula is a peace activist, founder of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding and recipient of a 2009 “Unsung Hero of Compassion’ awarded from the Dalai Lama.

She spoke of the election exit polls that reported one in five people who voted for Trump didn’t believe he was qualified to be president. In reflecting on what causes people to act in such a desperate way she turned to the issues of respect and humiliation, saying: “The felt sense of being respected, or its opposite of being ignored or humiliated, has a much more powerful influence on people’s opinions than rational arguments…The pain of being humiliated and excluded is unsustainable. Sooner or later, shame seeks a scapegoat, someone to blame in a misguided attempt to reduce the pain. The excluded demand their place at the table.”

She goes on to say: “I watched this play out so viciously in the former Yugoslavia during my years of intensive engagement in that region. Milosevic, an opportunist demagogue, rose up by cleverly appealing to the grievances of one ethnic group in the region, promising them status, prosperity, and glory. Demonizing all the other ethnic and religious groups, especially the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims, he slowly tightened the noose, inciting and baiting his followers to commit plunder, murder, and war crimes. The parallels are chilling, the lessons are clear.”

Trump certainly is “an opportunist demagogue.” He has been utterly consistent in his disregard for shared standards of truth and his relentless undercutting of reasoned discourse. He has come to power through fanning the flames of grievance in those who have felt unseen and disrespected. He dependably points the finger of blame on Muslims, Mexicans and people who ‘are not like us.’

How do we, as Paula Green says “enlarge our boundaries of inclusion?” How do we join with those who have felt so disrespected and left behind by our country? A friend who voted for Trump is also appalled by the racism and violence he incites and suggested we might form a ‘coalition of the reasonable’ to protect those who are vulnerable.

How do we go beyond being shocked and outraged and begin forming new coalitions and taking strategic action? This is not the time for playing nice and pretending everything will take care of itself. All of us who pay lip service to compassion, democratic principles and economic justice need to being behaving in new ways.

Ms. Green challenges us all saying: “Governments cannot last without the acquiescence of the governed. If we are determined not to acquiesce, give up, give in, normalize, or cooperate, and* we are equally determined to become more inclusive and to remain nonviolent, our revolution will triumph over obstacles that otherwise will threaten and divide us.”

*my emphasis

A Matter of Perspective

Our human minds are designed to compare one thing to another.   This wonderful capacity allows us to buy groceries and build electric cars but also leads us into a near constant state of dissatisfaction. We often wish that things were different: It’s too hot or too cold. I’m too anxious or too tired. Our team should have won the game. Our woman should have won the election.

Since we can imagine that things could be or should be different, we often think that someone must have done something wrong to get us here. It might be us or it might be others, but someone is to blame. We can spend a lot of time looking to find who is at fault. Or we spend a lot of time wishing that things were different—regretting the past and complaining about the present.

But what if this is it? What is our current situation (inside and outside) is not a mistake that should have been avoided, but it is exactly where we need to be? What if our whole lives have led up to this moment and if we are the ones who have what is needed to meet the current challenges? Or what if the conditions around us are exactly what we need to wake up to our birthright of freedom and power?

From a scientific perspective, these are not testable hypotheses. We cannot ‘prove’ that things, as they are, are an opportunity rather than a trial. But we appear to have the freedom to approach them from either perspective – and many others as well.

Whatever perspective we hold on our current situation, it probably serves us well at least to be aware of it: What is the story I am telling about where I am now? Without being aware that our perception of any situation includes some creative assumptions, we experience our personal view as fixed reality rather than one of many possibilities.

As we become aware of the multiple views that are inherent in any given situation, we can sometimes choose new possibilities for ourselves and for the world we live in. We will continue to struggle and complain, but maybe we can find more ease and be more effective in our actions as well.

On Days Like This

The sun will rise over our neighbor’s rooftop to the southeast and shine right into my face in the middle of our second round of morning meditation – right around 7:45. It will rise on a low diagonal trajectory and soon be lost behind a tree trunk and the window’s lattice. Our sitting will end just before 8:00 and we will chant the four Bodhisattva vows. Then at 10:44, winter solstice will officially arrive.

This is shortest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere. The solar powered light we installed over the Temple stairs is now receives only enough power to function intermittently. The gardens lie frozen and fallow. This is winter, or rather, just the beginning of winter. Though it has always puzzled me that the sun should be rising in the sky and the days growing longer as the winter grows deeper. Brighter and colder coming.

But today is the darkest. It matches my mood. The fall of Aleppo and the continuing Syrian tragedy. The truck rampage in Berlin and the random acts of terror that appear to be part of our new normal. The actions of DT that reinforce my fears that his will be an authoritarian administration that feels entitled to disregard any and all democratic processes. Everywhere I look there is suffering and the foreboding of worse to come.

I try to remind myself that sometimes human beings feel depressed and discouraged. This is not new and may even be a rational response to a world on fire. I can’t fix things and I don’t have to pretend it’s all OK. These are dark times. This is a dark day.

On days like this, I try to remember to narrow my focus. There is so much to despair about and so much I cannot change. But I can make my bed and straighten my room. (I’m sure this brings a smile to my mother’s face.) I can be kind to myself and to the people I meet. I can continue take steps to strengthen the relationships that support positive work in the world. I do my best to open my heart to this suffering world and try to remember to appreciate the grace of each breath and the miracle of the sun rising on a cold day.

Just One Thing

When the time comes
to say one last thing,
sing one further song,
make one final choice,
how will it be?
On that last certain day
when so little is left—
what will you say?

Maybe you will have
run out of options on
the white bed bound with
respirator mask pulled
too tightly on tender skin.
Maybe you can’t remember
where you are but familiar
voices say your youngest
daughter is on her way
to see her father and you choose
to wander on a little longer.

Perhaps finally
you wish to speak
the dark secrets
that have cost so much.
Or your final words open
you to joy concealed
and now revealed.

But for now, this certain day
in the great rush of being,
in advance of the conclusion,
what is the one thing
you will choose to say,
to be, to sing?