Advent Week 4: Love

I am alone in my house this morning. When I grew up, as a middle child in a group of eight, I was rarely alone, even in a room; I was never alone at home. I equated being alone with being lonely, and being lonely with being unloved. 

Fortunately for my peace of mind, I've since learned these are false equivalences. I can be, and am, alone but not lonely. My phone has been lighting up all morning with Christmas wishes. I am not forgotten. It feels good to know this - the Peace of the season is with me today.

That I am loved more deeply than I'd dreamed is the best lesson I took from the hard days of my run-in with cancer. Despite the fact I had a brand new address, my people found me, and sent cards and notes letting me know they cared; I knew I was in their thoughts and in their prayers. When I needed help, they came out of the woodwork to do all they could to ease my path. They walked with me and cheered me on, providing the support I needed to make it through to the other side.

Love Is.

The last Sunday of Advent ran smack-dab into Christmas this year, and I gotta admit I felt just a cheated yesterday when the Love candle didn't get its moment alone in my meditations; I felt like it was crowded out by the Christ candle; a lot like getting rushed through the last chapter of a good book. 

But this is how life works: as one story ends, another begins on its heels and the light has come back into the world! 

Winter's solstice was neatly tucked into the middle of last week, and even though we had just two seconds more of daylight on Saturday than we had on Friday, just knowing I'd made it - again - through the darkest days of the year lifted my spirits. 

Days of Dark are followed by Days of Light are followed by Days of Dark are followed by Days of Light and if there has been a constant in my life this is it. Knowing the cycle will turn both helps me keep taking steps through the Dark, and helps me to treasure the Light.

May the Light of Love be with you this holiday season - whichever holidays you celebrate.

Advent Week 3: Joy

 

Joy.

Even the word itself is fleeting. It's a little bubble of sound, gone almost before it has arrived. Joy leaves a taste of effervescence lingering in memory long after its moment has passed.

I hope to long remember finishing my walk to Fisterre, the end of the world, in September. The cool air on my face during my early morning walk up the long hill to the lighthouse. The warmth of the rising sun at my back; the glint of diamond sparkles on the ocean waves far below. The quiet as I took the last steps of my journey, found the right spot, and settled onto the rocks. The feeling I'd found a precious puddle of holiness; mine alone in that peaceful morning hour. The joy that seeped from the puddle into my soul, quietly filling all the spaces, sending all other emotions elsewhere for a time, leaving room for nothing but exultation. I'd done it!

Such joy, such fulfillment, could not stay; letting go of the moment and continuing on is a required condition of the human experience. (I don't have to like it; I just have to accept it as truth.)

As I lit my candles last night, stilled my mind, and focused on the moments Joy has graced my life, not only the memories returned - to my delight I felt echoes of the actual feeling surrounding those highlight experiences.

And, because it is what it is, Joy dragged along its friends, Hope and Peace, from the earlier weeks of Advent. 

Again this week, I've struggled to keep my balance amidst the tide of hard news coming my way. For a few brief moments, none of it mattered. I wouldn't have thought there could be such power in the light of a few candles, but there it was, and I am so grateful it was there.

May Joy also come to you, my friends.

Advent Week 2: Peace

 

As I sat down to light my candles last night, the night's theme started out as a hard sell. Peace, really???

In the outer world, the news is full of conflicts, ongoing and pending. So many lives lost. *sigh*

In my inner world, yesterday coincided with the fifth anniversary of Libby's death. I miss her. *sigh*

My thoughts tumbled and rolled about, tangled like sheets in the dryer.

But as I watched the candles glow, banishing the darkness, my heart began to quiet, my thoughts to settle. I began to pull one loose end, then another, and the shape of pieces began to separate from the jumble. A favorite church song from my youth came to mind: "Let there be Peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."

There is so much in the world I cannot fix. Despite my best efforts, I've found, time and again, the only thing I can reliably change is myself. So, I turned to my thoughts about Libby.

Survivor's guilt was at the fore. Logic doesn't enter into it, and part of me still thinks God took the wrong person home that day. She was just 51, still had a teenage girl to finish raising, while I was at loose ends, trying to find a new purpose for my days. Why did I survive my bout with cancer (so far), and she didn't? It isn't fair!

Truth. But, could I work to hold two opposing ideas simultaneously? Was it possible to both mourn because there is a Libby-shaped hole in my life, and to celebrate the joys I've found in these past five years?

I worked to find the balance and, to my surprise, the balance I found. (Libby would not have been happy with me for following the trail of should-have-beens anyways.) So, I let some of the tears that had been threatening all day fall freely, and I told her, Someone, of the Good I've found in life since she's been gone. Which freed me to be grateful for the good Libby brought to my life when she was still here. 

My thoughts followed the path to memories of light and laughter. To those long-ago days where I watched her grow up (she's six years younger than I), the sunshine in her hair reflected in her quest to bring that same light to her life. To love shared and treasured.  

And the quality of my tears changed, from grief and loneliness, to gratitude for the days we got to share. 

Peace begins with me.

Advent Week 1: Hope

 

While I've fallen off the church wagon in many respects, I see no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and so went out this week and got myself a set of Advent candles.

I've always loved the ritual surrounding the lighting of the candles as the earth completes its journey to the darkest days of the year, here in the northern hemisphere where I live. (I'm guessing it's safe to say this tradition was not born in Australia...) 

Even though my holiday season is not the hectic rush it once was, it's still good for my soul to pause for a moment in the darkness, then spark a small light to dispel the gloom.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

I can extrapolate from there: Despair cannot drive out despair, only hope can do that.

My mind was caught in the darkness as I sat down to light that first candle last night. War, climate change, political divisions, disease; Oh, my! I lit the candle anyways, then turned my mind from those dark paths to retrace the ways Hope has come into my world this past year. After a moment or three the darkness was no longer overwhelming; it was balanced by the light.

My new part time job as a gym rat - and the friends I meet there each week. The many good memories I can now revisit with a thought from all my travels this year. This Thanksgiving holiday just past, when much of my family gathered. It's a long way to travel for dinner, even when there is excellent pie to be had, but they came.

This is not to forget or to deny there are, yes, many ills in my world. But those ills are not the whole picture. Good is also ever present; I find evidence of it every time I remember to open my eyes to see.

Hope Is.