For Grace in the Season to Be Grumbly

photo by Josh Scholten

written in 2003 on the solstice night

We are in our darkest of dark days today in our corner of the world–about 16 hours of darkness underwhelming our senses, restricting, confining and defining us in our little circles of artificial light that we depend on so mightily. Yesterday, we had a sudden power outage at home around 5 PM, and our bright, noisy, Christmas-tree-lit carol-playing house was suddenly plunged into pitch blackness and silence. Each family member groped around blindly, looking for elusive candles and flashlights in the dark, each running our toes and knees into things, and then found that each of us had to share a little circle of light to navigate. Dinner, which was almost ready in the oven, was eaten gratefully by candlelight, and became a sacrament of sorts as we huddled around our advent candles, now burning out of necessity, not just in a ceremony of anticipation.

The light this morning is just now finally coming up in the southeastern sky, blending the gray of the ubiquitous clouds with the mist over the fields and barns here on the farm and over the mountain peaks and waters of the bay in the distance. Even the golden Haflingers are gray in this light. It all melts together with the deep green of the forests and fields–a blended water-saturated palette struck by rays of piercing rosy light here and there, creating alpenglow on the distant mountain snow, and sporadic pools of brightness in our barnyard.

It is so tempting to be consumed and lost in these dark days, stumbling from one obligation to the next, one foot in front of the other, bumping and bruising ourselves and each other in our blindness. Lines are long at the stores, impatience runs high, people coughing and shivering with the spreading flu virus, others stricken by loneliness and desperation. So much grumbling in the dark.

I had a conversation with a remarkable young college student recovering at the hospital this week reminding me about the self-absorbance of grumbling. A week ago she was snowshoeing with two companions in the bright sun above the clouds at the foot of nearby Mt. Baker. A sudden avalanche buried all three–she remembers the roar and then the deathly quiet of being covered up, and the deep darkness that surrounded her. She was buried hunched over, with the weight of the snow above her too much to break through. She had a pocket of air beneath her and in this crouching kneeling position, she could only pray–not move, not shout, not anything else. Only God was with her in that small dark place. She believes that 45 minutes later, rescuers dug her out to safety from beneath that three feet of snow. In actuality, it was 24 hours later but she had been wrapped in the cocoon of her prayers, and miraculously, kept safe and warm enough to survive. Her hands and legs, blackish purple when she was pulled out of the snow, turned pink with the rewarming process at the hospital, and a day later, when I visited her, she glowed with a light that came only from within–it kept her alive.

One of her friends died in that avalanche, never having a chance of survival because of how she was trapped and covered with the suffocating snow. The other friend struggled for the full 24 hours to free himself, bravely fighting the dark and the cold to reach the light, courageously finding help to try to rescue his friends.

At times we must fight with the dark–wrestle it and rale against it, being bruised and beaten up in the process, but so necessary to save ourselves and others from being consumed. At other times we must kneel in the darkness and wait– praying, hoping, knowing the light is to come, one way or the other. Grateful, grace-filled, not grumbling.

May the Light find you this week in your moments of darkness. Merry merry Christmas.

November Gratitude–pay in kind

photo by Josh Scholten

One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay ‘in kind’ somewhere else in life.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Some people like to express their gratitude by “paying it forward” through doing “random acts of kindness”.  They might secretly pay for the coffee for the car sitting behind them at the drive through coffee stand, or put coins in an expired parking meter to prevent a yellow parking ticket on the windshield for someone who hasn’t kept track of the time.  These are generous gestures that express gratitude by providing an undeserved gift of momentary grace to another.

Undeserved grace is not momentary in our lives; it is extended to us forever.  It was paid in kind, paid in full, and never ever random.   We can only respond in unspeakable gratitude and joy at the gift we have been given.

November Gratitude–Still Water

photo by Josh Scholten

I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

Stillness is rare these days.  To find it, I have to reach deep inside.   I don’t make the effort often enough.  Today I will try, if even for a minute, to be still, resting in grace and finding that moment of freedom.

November Gratitude–Even More So

http://www.cascadecompass.com photo by Josh Scholten

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. –G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton has it right.  No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first.  Even my waking, my breathing and my sleeping.  Continual and constant thanks and praise.  Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, taking it all for granted.

So I plan to say grace daily before “dipping pen in ink” during this month of thanksgiving.  Even more so.  Ever more now.