 |
| Looking For The Light In The Dark |
I love this time of year. Painful though it may be, the transition from autumn to winter is synonymous with the death of old things played against the hope for new beginnings.
Sunday marked the first of the advent season, an occasion steeped in history and the trappings of holiday rituals. One of these rituals is an advent wreath. The concept of a round, evergreen wreath adorned by candles is a tradition intertwined with overt religious meanings and medieval rituals dating back to the 4th century.
A round wreath and five candles within a never ending circle of evergreen in which the first, single candle symbolizes hope. It is masterful. It is singularly powerful. It re-ignites a really, deep down gasp of need within my very soul.
Battered by routine elements of just living these days, then slapped with the commercial tackiness of holiday shopping, I find I want more hope with which to wrap myself from the continual drenching by events in a dark world. Who hasn't of late felt the hunger for something to feel good about?
Turns out the hunger for hope is still just about as great as the desire for love. Literature lauds hope, perhaps, more than anything but love. Wrote Emily Dickinson, "hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all."
In other words, it's that little ditty you sing unconsciously at the back of your eyes day in and day out. It's that melody without words that gives you pause and graces your prayer.
Given that Dickinson suffered advanced hypertension, severe kidney and kidney stone issues, painful endema (for all of which there was no known treatment at the time), the poet's words take on a profound meaning. This is a woman who felt very poorly, if not frightfully so, pretty much all of her life. That she lived to be 56 is testament to hope.
Manifesting itself as symbolic of hope is the sparrow. I am not surprised. Many times have I spent observing these intrepid tiny birds living hope against hope here in the seasons of the Sanctuary. They live audaciously, undaunted by whatever Mother Nature seems to throw their way.
And in all this time in watching these creatures, I have found I no longer regard hope a subject. Hope is a verb. It requires you to conceive, to think, to imagine, to expect. It's visual. Distinguishable. Perceptible. One can see it.
And everyone talks about it. Many of my favorite authors in their work thematically incorporate hope ... JRR Tolkien, JD Salinger, Amy Tan, the Dalai Lama, Barbara Kingsolver. John Lennon wrote a song about it. Cartoonist Bill Keane drew a strip about it. Shel Silverstein admonished children with it. And Anne Frank clung to it against overwhelmingly crushing odds.
Hope can dim, and like the candle, it can flicker and sputter. It can be unpredictable. It can die. Thankfully, hope can bloom again and again, providing that barely imperceptible bit of grace in an inherent belief that situations, people, things can be, will be, better somehow, someway.
Hope lights a path for better things, better people to come ... a tad unnerving, slightly exciting and oh so encouraging. A season of deep introspection, now embodies a time for real heart work.
While the season permits me to celebrate what I believe, it also affords me a chance to pry loose those icky, broken and forgotten pieces my inner self has clung to this year. It is a time for lighting up, routing out what hasn't worked, what is no longer viable, of no real use to me, of letting go. It is of growth and preparation ... marking the advent of a new season.
"Light a candle for the broke and forgotten. May the season warn their souls. Can we open our hearts to shine through the dark? Light a candle, light the dark, light the world, light a heart or two. Light a candle for me, I'll light a candle for you. Oh and in this special time of year, may peace on earth surround us here and teach us there's a better way to live." ... Joel Lindsey.
