Blue Christmas 2009
by Rev. Colin Bossen, December 21, 2009
This is the third year that the Society has hosted a Blue Christmas service. Unlike the regular Christmas Eve service or the other services leading up to winter holidays, Blue Christmas is a time to acknowledge that the holidays can be a difficult and lonely time. The bright lights and celebration can be especially hard to face if you are struggling, isolated or challenged by loss. Instead of uplifting your spirits the tinsel, food and festive songs can cause them to sink.
The winter holidays come at the darkest time of the year. They mark the return of the light. But they also remind us of the turning of the year and the passage of time. This year is slipping away. The next is almost upon us.
The changing of the year provides us with opportunities to both let go and to remember. Perhaps opportunity is not exactly the right word for it. The changing of the year comes whether we will it or not. As Pierre Reverdy writes, "It is another year / A new wrinkle." The year turns and we are forced to consider how we will address the changes in our own lives.
When faced with change we only have two options: we can pretend that a change has not occurred or we can acknowledge it and try to learn from it as best we can.
Often the changes that we face during the winter holidays are ones that we do not want to acknowledge. This may be the first holiday without a beloved partner or spouse. The first family gathering without a parent or grandparent. The first holiday alone and away from home. It may be a holiday season when the loss of a job or a transition in employment has rendered past holiday traditions impossible.
All such changes are difficult. They alter the sense of self. They upset the comfortable order of things. They shift our understanding of our place in life. They can cause us to experience what Saint John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul."
The dark night of the soul is a time when everything that we have faith in abandons us. It can come in the moment when we experience a shocking loss. Alternatively, it can appear when we realize that we cannot reconstruct what we have lost. It can be when we realize that we are stuck, utterly stuck, in our current situation. We cannot turn back the march of time. Whatever it is that we have lost is gone forever.
Tina Morris's poem "Trees" speaks to just how bleak such experiences can be and how hard change can be to acknowledge. She writes, "we wait in vain / for the slow unfurling of buds / and no amount of loving / can stir our weary tree / to singing." The wreckage of life has been used to try to recreate the old. What has been made is something different. Expecting it to be the same only leads to futile waiting and the lack of movement.
Moving on and letting go can be difficult. They require skill. They are something that we have to learn to do. Recently, as a parent, I have come to understand the extent to which facing transition, letting go and moving on are learned behaviors. For my young son transitions are the most difficult moments. It does not matter that the transitions in question are only shifting from the crib to the breakfast table or from playtime to bath time. Change is hard. When confronted with it we often want to respond the way my son does. We utter, "no, not yet." And then we resist with all our being the impending bath.
Denise Levertov's poem "Writing in the Dark" provides with an alternative to pretending that change has not happened. Instead of ignoring the dark night of the soul, Levertov urges us to work through it. There are important lessons to be learned in times of transition. Staying present with one's self will bring unexpected rewards. Words, insights, may come that open you "as flowers of a tree that blooms / only once in a lifetime." Such "words...may have the power / to make the sun rise again."
Waiting for the sun to rise again. That is why we have gathered tonight, is it not? The winter solstice is upon us. As much as it provides us with a reminder of the passage of time and the changes in our lives it also reminds us that after dark always comes light. There must be night for "light," as Blake writes, to "rise from the chambers of the east; and bring / The honied dew that cometh on waking day."
And so we are here tonight, seeking light in the dark. Waiting for the sun to rise. Hoping to find some comfort in our gathering together. And that is the final thing about change, it is easier when faced together. One of the wonders about a religious community like ours is that in it you can often find someone who has gone through a dark night similar to yours and emerged the other side. They can point the way to the light.
And that gives us something to be thankful tonight, each other. In the face of all of the losses, the challenges and the sorrows in our lives let us be glad that we have this warm place in which to gather. We might be far from our families and friends, we might be facing difficulties or feeling the absence of loved ones long gone but in this moment we have each other. That, I hope, may make a Blue Christmas a little less blue.