Well, it happened…on a pre-dawn walk this week, ironically after a tumultuously sleepless night of fearful dreams.
Sometimes I am surprised at the amount of low-grade terror that I feel in my mind. And, the startling thing for me is that the tendency of it seems to be growing the older I get. At the very least, this is not what I was expecting.
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
It could very well be that I just know more now, more about the things that threaten something about me. It could also be that the broader climates that are in play right now are impacting me at deeper levels than I would’ve guessed. And so, maybe it is phenomenological or maybe it is psychological. Maybe it is spiritual. It could even be physical...or some combination of all the above. Perhaps, though, I am, as L'Engle puts it, just a little more alive to things.
One thing that feels conspicuous, as I try to contemplate the realities operating in and around me, is not so much what is happening as it is what feels required. And, even putting it that way, exposes something. Something along the lines of agency that I feel I increasingly don’t have. Not unlike being thrown up against a wall, it strikes me that this doesn’t as much require something of me, in terms of agency, as it calls out something in me regarding what I am ultimately trusting in.
Perhaps, for longer than I realized, I have slowly been building a kind of self-sufficiency that increasingly adds to my sense of burden and distorts my perception of reality. A small scripture floats across my mind, “In this world you will have trouble…". One of the distortions in my perception is somehow related to that observation. I actually think, more than I realize, that because of that simple truth, something more is needed from me in terms of mitigating that trouble.
But, the reality is that my capacity for such (not to mention the range and depth of threat itself) is diminishing, not increasing. And, so, what is needed, at least the more part of it, is not more effort aimed at agency for myself. What is needed is more acknowledgment. More acknowledgment of my dependence, as opposed to my independence. What is needed is an increasing awareness of the lack of ultimate jeopardy I really am in.
In other words, faith. Not the simple, desperate finger-crossing kind of hoping that something will prevent my demise (as if it would be a stroke of luck of some kind). But, the kind of faith that ultimately rest more, rather than strives more. A kind of faith that not only acknowledges, but understands the degree to which I am held by divine goodness. In our culture, we sometimes call this God. That works, for the most part. I am held by God, especially with regard to the ultimacy involved in my existence. This is what the world misses much of the time, as it struggles for our self-sufficiency rather than God-dependency.
The Scriptures basically tell this story over and over and over the one about the with-ness of God, with us. Perhaps this is why there is some kind of cord that is struck within us around times like Christmas. Because over the centuries, the real story of Christmas persists. There is an undeniable nexus of both the rawness and innocence of it. It meets us something in us. Something that we need as we struggle to embrace the realities of the threats that we feel.
The trifecta+one of the power words of Advent, our simultaneously, systematically and mysteriously, timeless. When we lose our hope, we come as close as we ever do to losing everything. It is hopelessness that leads to war of one kind or another. But with hope we experience a kind of peace — the kind that we ultimately need. That kind of peace is what enables a kind of joy that confoundingly undermines our prevailing atmosphere of fear. And, it is from that base that our true capacity for something actually surprising can happen — love. To love ourselves, to love another, to love the world. This capacity — to make love — is ultimately what it means to love God.
And, it is in these dimensions of existence that we are able to move from the normalized condition of human fear that is isolated from reality to an open, embracing, joyful ability to both experience and distribute the love of God.
In the light of eternity, we’re here for a very short time, really. We’re here for one thing, ultimately: to learn how to love, because God is love. Love is our origin, love is our ground, and love is our destiny.
-- James Finley, Wisdom in Times of Crisis
Some of the greater hymns of the season have surely captured the essence of these core truths. Perhaps that is why when the words are combined with the melodies we often innately repeat this time of year, we sense something sublime, and we bow our knee in adoration of it…for such a miraculous depiction of the relationship we have with reality through God.