One of my friends this week posted a meme of this giant looming Santa with a sack full of must do’s and keep ups and stress. She said: this is what it feels like!! It’s this looming terror and it’s barely NOVEMBER!!! We just finished halloween and the Christmas music is playing!!! I’m so stressed!!! Already…it’s an “impossible task” and “it’s too early”.
My favorite this week? The nutcrackers on the same porch with the looming skeletons!!
Another friend just quietly and delightfully put up her Christmas tree and posted a picture of herself cozied up with a book and a mug of hot cocoa with her dogs beside the tree. She’s probably listening to beautiful Christmas carols.
They are both dear friends. I can’t judge or take sides. One feels the dread of The List and feels it like a dark cloud of never enough time, energy, or money. That’s a familiar feeling. The other needs the light and coziness and cheery music as she heads into the dark season. Also a familiar feeling.
We also had the time change last week and it seemed like everyone was irritable and cranky. It’s too dark. It’s so stupid. It’s ugly. The SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) has already set in. We lash out at the weather, the darkness, the social system (why are we focused on the time change itself when we should be focused on why we’re working so late into the darkness to make ends meet?).
Angry and crabby are the acceptable form of fear and sadness. We hide fear. It’s “cowardly”. We hide sad. It’s uncomfortable. But we’re somehow okay with anger and lashing out at each other, the season, the darkness, the stupidity. But certainly don’t admit “fear” and we definitely don’t cry.
The time change highlights this feeling of “less time” and we become less patient. The time change is like a big spotlight on things we don’t like. It’s glaring. It sharpens the point that darkness and winter are coming, also know as times of fear and sad. It sharpens our own sharp points. It’s a week for lovers of discord!
The season of gratitude and gift giving starts with this big bang of irritable, cranky, judge-y, crabby…
Perhaps the season of change from extreme light and warmth into the cold and dark calls us to ponder…Wisdom. Perhaps we are called to accept that the light and the dark will come in their own times. Perhaps we are called to remember that the bitterness and sorrow will come and go, balanced by times of sweetness. Perhaps it is a reminder that we are human, with frazzled human nerves especially trigger by the ebb of light into dark. Maybe it’s a call to slow down and settle into what’s most important. To cultivate wisdom.
The season of darkness is a season of slowing down. Whether we like it or not and whether we accept it or not.
Artificial light is wonderful. I am grateful for light switches that keep the darkness and the fears at bay, but we can’t continue to do and be and live a Summer Life in the Wintertime. That is resisting what is real. Change happens (we know this well) and stress is resistance to what is. We could soften into the cozy blanket of a darker season. With gratitude. With meaningful gifts. With an attitude of sharing. With love.
Or we can resist. We don’t always like “soft” and “cozy”. They feel like “lazy” and “unproductive”. We feel the looming to-do of the holidays and need to get ahead (I don’t know about you, but I have never in my life been “ahead” and I have worked really hard at getting “ahead”).
This time and change asks us to accept. To accept the seasons of light and dark in our lives, in ourselves, and in others. Darkness is hard. It makes us sad and scared. We mask it with anger and irritability. This is normal. And we try to manage it, to control it…
Some need the lights and the music and the brightly decorated trees. Some need it now to manage the looming darkness.
Others need to pause in the shift to process each season as it comes and as it goes before moving on. We can’t change others, but we can know and change ourselves.
It’s okay to have a cranky week. And the time change sharpens the point that darkness is here. Winter is coming. The days are already getting shorter and the time change seems to throw it in our face. There’s no gradual transition. Boom!! Here it is. Of course, it’s an adjustment.
Adjustments take time. You know, that thing we suddenly feel short of? Maybe it’s not SAD, as in a “disorder” SAD, but an adjustment. Maybe we’re just sad…and that’s okay. It’s not a disorder or a problem. Maybe we’re just afraid and it comes out in ways we might rather it didn’t.
Sometimes, we’re not as graceful as we’d like to be in the changes of life. Perhaps these changes from light to dark are our annual lesson in the bigger themes of acceptance and grace. Practicing acceptance and grace in the seasons not of the sun, but the season of our lives. Those inevitable changes…
We can always be a little kinder to ourselves when we misstep. We can always be a little kinder to those who handle life changes differently. Who perhaps need to handle life’s changes differently. Instead of trying to make them do it our way, we might enjoy watching them do it their way.
It may seem that we’ve lost complete touch with the passages for this week. This week, we focus on seeking Wisdom. Also known as: seeking Grace/God. When we seek Wisdom, we seek to live a full and wondrous life. When we lack direction, when we forget to put Wisdom at the center, our life can become empty, a wasteland, death-like. Maybe the coming of winter brings this dread of a desolate life.
If we’re not careful, we’re led away from kindness, grace, and wisdom. We forget the light. The light that really matters…
It’s okay to have a week of cranky and sad and angry and irritable. It’s okay to have periods when we’re less able to handle life and life’s changes.
But we can’t stay here. We must come back to what matters most. This season encourages us to pause, especially when we notice we’re off kilter. This shift encourages us to step away and reset to what matters. It encourages us to put wisdom and grace back at the center.
In a week of “distracted” and confused light patterns, pay attention (stay awake) and keep Wisdom at the center. In a week of discord, remember the light and sustain the light, especially when our darker sides might like to hold court.
In the seasons around us there will be darkness and there will be light. There will be bitter and sorrowful. There will be joy and hope. In the seasons of our own lives there will be darkness and there will be light. There will be bitter and sorrowful. There will be joy and hope.
We are the light in the darkness. Our work is to seek Grace/Wisdom/God and seek good and be kind. Just because the neighbor has lit every Christmas light, does not mean you do. Just because someone seems to have all the shopping done, doesn’t mean you do. Enjoy your neighbors lights and accomplishments in whatever way and time they arrive.
Know that it might be okay to be late to the party or sitting in the darkness for a little longer, as long as you remember to bring your fuel for your lamp for when it’s your time to light your own lamp in your own beautiful way.
Be Kind.
Stay awake.
Focus on the Wisdom.
Seek Grace.
Anchor in God.
Sustain the Light.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 