The past few years I've been a bit slow-going into the Christmas spirit. Because of my well-documented love for fall, I always feel kind of sad on Thanksgiving knowing that there are only so many more hours to enjoy the likes of leaves and pumpkins and Bon Iver. It is my deepest wish that Christmas move back a few weeks so we can have a bit more of fall, but I don't expect this to come to pass in my lifetime. I expect that in heaven it is always fall (God's favorite season, obvs).
The other day I brought this up to Joe, a fellow fall fan but Christmas enthusiast to the Starbucks level. I complained about the usual stuff: my job, my hair, how I don't know if I'm ever going to really make it (my definitition of "really making it" is having a different perfume for every season). I talked about how I wasn't really feeling Christmasy yet, maybe because of its destruction of fall, or maybe I just wasn't ready to be totally full-on joyful, or maybe it's just hard to get excited about a Savior when we celebrate his birth every year and people are still killing each other and they still don't sell OPI nail polish at CVS. (Despite multiple requests.)
Joe's response was: "Remember that darkness calls FORTH light, it doesn't smother it. Remember also remember that winter is a rough time for you, even in a city as beautiful as Baltimore. I also want to add that while your spirit isn't christmasy NOW, it is CERTAINLY Adventy."
(Joe uses a lot of caps, which I appreciate.)
He was so right! I am not exactly in the Christmas spirit these days, save for my obsession with Justin Bieber's new classic "Mistletoe" and also peppermint bark, but I am SO in the Advent spirit.
During Advent, I think a lot about Mary and Joseph. Not the dishy ones portrayed in the giant plastic lawn nativity sets you can buy at Walmart, you know, the ones who are looking at baby Jesus like he's the Hope Diamond or Tickle Me Elmo or something.
I mean the knocked-up teenage girl and her meek, smelly teenage husband with callouses on his hands. The ones who were bullied in the town square because no one understood their weird personalities and no one believed that Mary wasn't cheating on him. The ones who gave birth in a cold barn with no painkillers on shelves or midwives on call. The ones who were terrified of a murderous king who was killing all infant boys. I mean them.
I get the feeling that Mary wasn't in the Christmas spirit during her pregnancy, and I get the feeling that Joseph had a lot of other things on his mind than rocking around the Christmas tree.
I get the feeling that Jesus' birth flipped their world upside down and actually made it kind of terrible for a while, but his birth gave them tangible hope and faith. It is possible to be terrified of a murderous king and still have faith. It is possible to be bullied for being a poor rural laborer married to the town hussie, and still have faith. It is possible to give excruciatingly painful birth to a screaming homely baby who is apparently God, and still have faith.
This is all rather impressive, because all Eddie's has to do is run out of the kind of mini pies, and I'm threatening to change religions.
A couple weeks ago, I saw a video on facebook of beagle dogs who had just been released from years of living in a lab. Normally I would never watch such a video because I can't stand animal abuse stories, but I was promised by YouTube that this would be uplifting. Indeed it was. Beagles are famously intelligent and mild-tempered, which makes them ideal pets as well as test subjects. This video depicted the efforts of an organization that takes beagles out of labs and puts them in loving homes.
The story was pretty remarkable: these dogs had lived for years in a lab and had never known a life outside the cage or among other dogs. They looked healthy, but their lives resembled nothing of what they had been bred to do (hunt, run, be loved). As soon as they began coming out of their cages onto sun-bathed grass, you could see how joyful they became to finally get to live the life they were made to live. They played with each other, delightedly received attention from humans, and ran around happily as though the last few years had just been a bad dream.
This video happens to be the best depiction of Advent I've ever seen. The beagles had never known what it felt like to live outside of their cages. They weren't actively miserable, but they're smart enough to know that they weren't happy. Something inside of them made them flip out when given the chance to live how God made them--loyal, playful, and active. It was like they knew all along that this was exactly how it should be. In cages, they looked like like personality-less lab animals; in the sunshine, their personalities emerged and they looked as beagle-ish as beagles can look.
Til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth is the line I kept thinking while watching that. When Christ appeared, it was as though we knew what we were supposed to be doing for the first time. So THIS is what it's about. The great confusion and madness and terror and pain are all part of the story, and the story is about Love.
Brett Dennen sings in one of his lovelier songs, "My soul has known a better life than this." I will stop talking about beagles soon but let me add this last thing about those beagles: their souls had known a better life than the one they led. And as soon as they experienced it, it was like they knew about it all along. Their souls had a memory of the lives they should have been living.
Our souls, too, have a memory of Love and how we are part of the Great Story. Tales of Good vs. Evil resonate with us because of this memory, as does falling in love, being a mother, giving to the needy, doing something heroic, eating a slice of really good bread. These moments all point back to the Love that formed us and dwells in our souls.
So I write my Christmas cards knowing that these snippets of heaven are moments of a life to come--a life full of figurative sunshine and grass. Or, in my case, neverending fall.
2 comments:
This is really great.
(and the word I have to type in for "Word Verification" is "chains," which reminds me "Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease.")
Wonderful post!
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