A Duty to Share, to Sing it Out

I want to add one more short post about the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. May's book is filled with story and wisdom about getting through the winters, literal or figurative, in our lives. Her writing fuels courage and resilience, it ignites compassion not only for others but for ourselves. Her writing is generous. She shares what she's learned. I didn't want to let the book go before copying out one more paragraph from the book, words in which she encourages we who have made it through winter to help others do the same.

"It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation nests, away from the glare of the sun. But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings. And besides, we have a kind of gospel to tell now, and a duty to share it. We, who have wintered, have learned some things. We sing it out like birds. We let our voices fill the air."

~~~

[This post first appeared in my monthly newsletter. Click here to subscribe.]

Wintering: listening for a robin's song

Every winter my good intentions and plans for things I will do seem to disintegrate at the beginning of December. I turn off my alarm in the morning and sleep longer. Goals I thought I could meet get revised. About the end of February, though, I begin to re-energize. I’ve blamed this pattern on holiday-related exhaustion or winter colds, but in the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, author Katherine May has opened my eyes to the fact that in winter, we are supposed to rest more. We are supposed to retreat. There need be no blame. There need be no apology.

I’m writing this during a ten-day polar vortex with an outside temperature the last few mornings in the vicinity of minus 20 degrees. (Please don’t skip over that “minus.”) Importantly, though, May opens up her definition of winter to more than the months of December through March, extending the definition to cover any season of difficulty. The middle of July may be a January for you, dear reader. And of course, this year of Covid has been one long winter.

There are many sections in the book that I’m tempted to copy out for you here, but I’ll choose just one. It’s a section of hope. Hope as delivered by a robin.

“Other birds call in the winter, too, but these are often defensive notes, aimed at warding off predators. Robins, however, engage in full, complex song during the coldest months, when it’s far too early to consider breeding. One ornithologist found that robins will sing as soon as the days begin to get longer, provided they have energy to spare. A well-fed robin—one who has laid on sufficient fat to survive the lean winter months and has found a reliable source of nutrition to top up his reserves—will sing well in advance of the time that he expects females to act on his display. In evolutionary biology, this is known as costly signalling, a gesture that advertises superior strength and vitality, yet by its very nature is potentially dangerous to the creature. A robin sings in winter because he can, and he wants the world—or at least the female robins—to know it. But he is also in practice for happier times.”

Costly signalling. Practicing.

I could have copied out any of the many beautiful sections I underlined in my copy of the book, any of the many deeply encouraging passages, any of the many kind and wise sentences and paragraphs that assure readers that winter is cyclical, that winters pass, that we get better at wintering, that we get better at finding its joy and beauty, but I chose this one about the robin, because each of us can listen at a window for a robin to come and start singing. Each of us can practice our song for times with more light.

Tonight the polar air here in Minnesota will begin to go back where it belongs. Tomorrow, when my alarm goes off the temperature will still be in the negative double digits but will rise above zero for the first time in a string of days. I will stand at my back door and listen for a robin’s song.

Enough light to find your way by

Enough light to find your way by. In his sermon a few weeks ago, which my husband and I watched on YouTube, the minister of our church spoke of an Icelandic term that I’d never heard before.

Ratiljóst

He told us it means having “enough light to find your way by.” He likened it to other words from Northern Europe that have served a good purpose among us in recent years in terms of expanding our sense of how to live. Like “hygge,” the Danish word for coziness. Or “lagom,” the Swedish word for “not too much, not too little; just right.” Or “sisu,” Finnish for grit in the face of great adversity.

Ratiljóst, enough light to find your way by.

This word, or to be more honest, this definition, has been rolling around in my mind ever since I heard it. Enough light to find your way by. Isn’t that the longing of each day? Particularly in these days of Covid stress and fear and grief, these days of political angst, of economic angst, of division. Enough light to find your way by.

It reminded me of a time when I spent a couple 10-day periods on Whidbey Island on Puget Sound for graduate school residencies. To go from the building that served as the student center to the houses where we stayed, you had to walk through a wooded area. There were no lights on the path and at night it was pitch dark. Being already in a rural area with no nearby background urban lights that could share their glow, walking that path alone at night was unnerving, even if walking with a friend. The span was only that of about a long city block but in my memory it was much longer. We used the light from our flip phones—it would be several years yet before smartphones with built-in flashlights—to help light the way, but the faint light that shown from a phone’s open face barely illuminated where our next step would land, let alone what was on either side of you in the woods or a preview of what or who was approaching. Enough light to find our way by, but only just enough. If I’d known the Icelandic word then I may have been tempted to go to the nearby town some afternoon while there and have it tattooed on my hand as a reminder of all that was truly needed. Just enough light. For now, I’ve written the word on an index card and pinned it on my bulletin board above my desk. Maybe it’s a word you’d like to consider as well. Ratiljóst

~

The mention of light came again in the days after that sermon, at the presidential inauguration here in the US. The part of the inauguration event that I want to call to your attention has nothing to do with whether or not you voted for the man who is now our president. The part of the event I’m calling your attention to is when Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old inaugural poet spoke. Two lines soared for me at that moment, and I quickly wrote them down:

"There's always light if we're brave enough to see it.
If we're brave enough to be it."

Let’s be light for each other, shall we? I need your light, and maybe you need mine. When walking through the dark wooded area I described above, it was all the better to walk with a friend by the light of two flip phones rather than one.

~~~

[Photo: taken of light on a nearby lake just after the new year. The winter solstice is now behind us and the days are getting longer. Thanks be to God.]

New Year's Intentions — 2021

I’ve posted this list of intentions a number of times over the years, although with slight edits each time. Here it is again for several reasons: because there are readers for whom this list has meaning, because this blog has new readers for whom this list might be of interest, and because I need to put it in front of myself once again as a reminder of a chosen way of being, particularly after this past year when even being was particularly hard. “Intention,” rather than “resolution,” is a good word to use in this setting because it implies something to work toward, move toward, rather than something at which you either succeed or fail. This isn’t about succeeding or failing.

Here's the list:

Experiment more.
Create more; consume less.
Trust more; worry less.
Read more; write more; watch less.
Write more of what lasts longer.
Waste less time.
Spend more time in "creative idleness."
Spend less; save more.
Pray more, including for the people who read the words I write.
Use more paper, lots of paper.
Use a pen more, a keyboard less.
Love more.
Talk less but say more.
Figure out how patience and urgency co-exist.
Hope always.
Cook more; eat less.
Play the piano more.
Pursue truth, beauty, and goodness at every opportunity; realize every moment is an opportunity.
Stand up straighter.
Speak more often in the strength of my own voice.
Find the way to do what needs to be done; sit quietly and wait for the Lord.
Accept paradox.
Pray more, pray without ceasing.
Hope more absolutely.
Be more available to and vulnerable with God and others.
See the signs, ask for signs; be more willing to step into the unknown.
Use less; have less; give more away.
Shorten my to-do lists.
More intentionally be a conduit for the flow of God's grace to the world.
Be silent more often.
Pray more fervently for safety coast to coast but live less fearfully.
Remind myself as often as needed where true hope lies.
Start fewer projects but finish more of those I start.
Be encouraged.
Be excited.
Hope more purely.
Be more attuned to the burdens of the people I pass on the street as well as those
with whom I share a table or a home.
Pray for the world and its leaders.
Love God with ever more of my heart, soul, strength, and mind.
Thank more.
Eat less sugar but more dark chocolate.
Practice not worrying.
Embrace joy.
Seek joy.
Share joy.
 

I'd love to hear some of your intentions. If you want, you can share them in the comments below.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a most inviting scene I saw inside a planter pot.]

Peace of the blue variety

At the start of Advent, my sister gave me a book, A Weary World: Reflections for a Blue Christmas by Kathy Escobar. I don't remember when I first learned the term "Blue Christmas," apart from when Elvis used it in a song long ago, but last year my church held a Blue Christmas service on the night of the winter solstice for those of us whose holiday spirit was dampened by any aspect of grief or loneliness or fear or depression or [fill in the blank for anything apart from the traditional spirit of Ho-Ho-Ho]. It was a beautiful service, one with meaning that has stayed with me. Little did we know then what would be coming in 2020 on a personal and corporate level. I'm glad now that I have had this book with me for these four weeks.

In one of the readings for this week, Escobar offers words on peace. Peace in blue times is worth gold. I remember many years ago, in the days and weeks after losing a baby halfway through a pregnancy, the words of peace from Jesus in the book of John are what got me through, minute by minute. I would repeat over and over again to myself, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives." While a part of me questions why I should include that sad little story here now during Advent, I'll let it stand because so many of us have had one loss or another in recent months, and a word of the peace of Christ, an outcome of Advent and all that followed, is never more relevant than in such times.

Here are some of Escobar's words about peace. Maybe if you are having a Blue Christmas, you will find them helpful. Even if you're not having a holiday of any sort of blue, I hope that you will still find this encouragement toward peace to be a helpful and worthwhile read:

"For me, one of the most compelling images of peace in chaos is a tree in a winter storm—harsh and cold winds whipping through, yet still rooted; battered, bruised, its branches starkly stripped of leaves but somehow still standing, planted into the earth, gathering an unexplainable strength from the Source. Surviving, enduring, living despite it all.

Peace doesn't mean our circumstances will change.

Peace doesn't mean our hearts are completely still and settled.

Peace doesn't mean we don't still weep or wail or feel afraid.

Peace means that in the middle of the storm we can be strengthened by God, by something bigger than us, by the comfort and presence of the Holy Spirit, the Prince of Peace—and that we can be rooted, grounded, and tethered in the midst of chaos."

Lonely? Here's Hope

A book on loneliness was released this past week, and I highly recommend it to you: The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other by Charlotte Boyd Donlon. If you and I are friends on social media you may have seen my post about it on Facebook or Instagram a couple weeks ago after I received a preview copy. I wondered then, before even reading it, how Donlon could have known while writing it in pre-Covid days that her book on loneliness would be released during the most lonely time in recent history. I'm grateful for the book's arrival.

Instead of spelling out "Ten Ways to To Beat Loneliness," Donlon, a spiritual director, instead models for us how to be curious about loneliness, and by being curious, to discover what there is to discover because of loneliness. Through curiosity, loneliness shifts from being something to avoid at all costs toward instead becoming a kind of wise companion on the journey of life. Through her meditations and stories, Donlon asks us to consider what loneliness is teaching us and to consider how God's grace supports us in our loneliness.

"Loneliness doesn't always teach me a nice lesson. Sometimes it offers me a chance to slow down and encourages me to reach out to my husband or a friend. Sometimes it asks me to grieve the loss of a relationship or the loss of what I hoped a relationship might one day become. At other times my loneliness is silent, with nothing to give—a child with her jaw clenched tight and her arms crossed, stubborn and refusing to speak. But I want to keep sitting with her whenever she shows up, because I never know when she might open her arms and pull me close. I never know when she might whisper some wisdom into my ear."

Charlotte Donlon also has a podcast you might be interested in: Hope for the Lonely

~

When I finished reading Donlon's book, I thought about a poem I've long loved by the Persian poet Hafiz. Years ago I wrote it out on a card and have kept it tucked inside a daily notebook ever since.

Absolutely Clear
Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

~

[Photo: taken on a recent walk. The leafless birch speak to many things, not the least of which are loneliness and also beauty.]

Throw kindness around like confetti

A group of friends—some old, some new—gathered on Zoom last week to discuss a book we'd all just read, Waging Peace: One Soldier’s Story of Putting Love First by Diana Oestreich. The book is a soldier's memoir about Oestreich's journey toward putting love first, in all circumstances. An Iraqi "enemy" modeled for her this way of being in the world and it changed everything for Oestreich. Many years later and no longer in army fatigues, she continues to live to love others, even to be the first to love, even when it costs. My friends and I were drawn to the challenge her life suggested to us.
 

"As a family, we decided to blackmail ourselves to love first. This meant that the usual strings we attached to who we showed up for—like agreement, sharing the same faith, politics, or being friends—would no longer apply. Choosing to love first meant everyone would be in our jurisdiction now. No one would be outside of our yes....

We decided that we would be the first to love, every single time, because love never fails. We were going to throw kindness around like confetti, to love like it was growing on trees, without need to determine if the person in front of us deserved it or not. This was our family's battle cry. Committing ahead of time to show up with people meant our decision was already made. We stopped talking about what peace might mean and started being peace. We did it because peace isn't the absence of conflict; it's showing up in the middle of it."

I particularly love this line: "We were going to throw kindness around like confetti." Without even needing to give any thought to a grand plan of loving every person, this sentence makes the barrier to entry to such a life of love toward others attainable.

Throw kindness around like confetti.