Dark Days

December 15, 2024December 15, 2024 / Apple Hill Cottage / 4 Comments

It is the third Sunday in Advent: the Sunday of Joy.

I write this with only a little touch of irony, because in this season of dark, on a gloomy December day, one of the longest nights of the year, I’m struggling with finding joy.

And I know I’m not the only one.

Just today in church, two friends shared their own distinct struggles with the elusive words of the Advent season: hope, love, joy, peace…And then this afternoon another friend’s battle with anxieties became a prayer. And when I pray, I always remember my friends in Haiti, and that results in more distress. My prayers don’t bring me peace. It’s an anxious time–from the personal, to the political, to worries for the world.

So I’m sitting here wrapped in a blanket, staring at my beautiful light-filled mantle, praying for myself and my friends and the country and the world. Meditating on joy–how we miss it, how we long for it, how we try to make up for its lack on our own terms, in our own ways.

In the sermon today, I heard that Joy is a gift from God, but it is also a decision we make. Choose joy. It’s a familiar phrase, a book title, a piece of music, and the source of many quotes, both familiar and not, But often such quotes simply seem like platitudes when we are going through dark times. When there is nothing to look forward to? Perhaps a good thing to do is look back. Look back and see how God has blessed you through your life. Look back with gratitude at the good things that have happened. Acknowledge your grief of today, and remember things past that made you smile. That make you smile still. Yes, it’s a way of choosing joy.

Remember a few years ago when gratitude was a thing? There were books, there were gratitude journals, there were blogs on writing down your blessings. Isn’t it silly, Isn’t it human, that something like gratitude can be a fad? Gratitude and Joy are related–if we decide to be thankful, if we decide to live life gratefully, then joy will simply be a byproduct of those attitudes. Except, there is nothing simple about joy.

Especially if you are, if one is, if I am, a glass-half empty type of person.

I have a book on my bookshelves called Living Life as a Thank You. The subtitle is The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude. I don’t know how I came by it; I’ve never read it. Looking at it now for the first time (the cover creaked and groaned when I opened it) the authors are Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons and the copyright is 2009. And there is a chapter on Staying Thankful in Difficult Times. And the next chapter is The Power of Gratitude to Make a Difference in the World. Perhaps I need to read this book.

I think most of us who are struggling to find joy right now are really asking the question, How long? How long, Lord, will you allow this injustice to continue? Injustice can be the shape of the world and what the evil powers are doing to it. But injustice can also be the personal–illnesses that can’t be cured, problems that have no solution, anxiety that won’t be calmed, poverty that can’t be escaped, sorrow that can’t be assuaged…And the feeling that you’re tired, exhausted, actually, and nothing that you can do will relieve the endless suffering.

The other book I’m reading right now is Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and The Praying Imagination by Eugene Peterson. I’m spending much time with it and taking many notes because what Peterson says to us right now in this time and what he is saying to me right now in my brokenness is just invaluable. Listen to what he says here:

“The persistence of the prayer ‘How long?’ issues, apparently, from a deep, unshakable conviction that God will bring an end to injustice even though he shows no signs of calling the court room to order…So what accounts for the incredible persistence of the cry? In the general abandonment of prayer, in which great crowds of people give up on God and plunge into the streets to get what they can with their fists, what accounts for the remarkable minority who do not, but who stay, and cry, and wait? We are accustomed by now to St. John’s answer: Worship…St. John’s recurrent representations of worship are not pious, escapist fictions, but theological convictions. The conviction is that God’s action, not the world’s action, is what we want to be involved in. The world is not the context for dealing with God; God is the context for dealing with God (and the world)….Worship is the act of giving committed attention to the being and action of God.”

It is God’s actions, and not the world’s actions that we want to be involved in.

But there’s also one more important thing to remember, or we could easily just try to withdraw from this world’s ugliness. Everything we do is of eternal importance. (I’m summarizing Peterson, here) : Everything we do is political and we can choose the way of God or the way of the world. Every one of our “…encounters is a significant detail in the life of faith. But we are not aware of it. Most of the time we are not living in a crisis in which we are conscious of our need of God, yet everything we do is critical to our faith, and God is critically involved in it. All day long we are doing eternally important things without knowing it…”

At the grocery store, talking with a friend, taking someone a meal, choosing silence over argument …it all counts.

If you are still reading after all of this meandering, thank you. I’ve no answers on finding joy except two: Focus on gratitude and Focus on God while we are waiting (and working) for the injustices of this world to end.

He promises that we will know someday.

And it will be joyous.

And there will be no more sorrow, no more injustice, no more grieving.

And in the meantime, turn off the news and focus on the good; focus on the small things of everyday life that make up those “eternally important things”. I think I will try a Choose Joy project of my own: each day I will take a photo of something that gives me joy or makes me thankful. I’ll report back in a couple of months….And here’s my first photo:

The Christmas tree is outside this year, and it snowed just enough to make it pretty.

The Darkest Night

November 2, 2024 / Apple Hill Cottage / 6 Comments

He comes to bring the light
to a dark and broken world.
    We know at some time, some place
    we will all face
    that darkness, that brokenness, that fear...
    Knowing does not make it any easier to hear
    or speak out loud.

But Remembering

He comes to bring the light
to a dark and broken world.
     Over and over, again
     I bring my pain
     to the one who knows, who listens, who calms...
     His outstretched hands are a balm
     to my weary soul.

Whether your anxiety is from a diagnosis, the shape of the world, the upcoming election, a broken relationship, or simply the coming dark and cold… Call to mind his face. He brings light, and peace, and strength to face those very fears.

Meanderings on Comfort…

April 18, 2020April 21, 2020 / Apple Hill Cottage / 7 Comments

We used to jokingly call him King Henry The First. He died on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, a cat’s life, well lived.

I never felt right feeding birds while he was around; scattered bird seed was limited to very heavy snows when Henry was kept inside.

So in December I bought a small feeder, some suet and black sunflower seeds. I hung everything outside the mud room window where Henry had once liked to lurk in the bushes. It took the chickadees a few days; the juncos were next; and then a band of blue jays appeared and I knew we were in.

I stood at the window often in the early winter trying to get some good bird photos with my iPhone, but it made them nervous each time I moved, so eventually I gave up and just enjoyed watching them and keeping track of who visited. There was no Henry to hog the chair by the window, only the two humans who politely take turns…

Lately I’ve had time to stand quietly at the window again. Spring is here and the birds still seem delighted to be fed. Earlier this week I transplanted a dozen sunflower sprouts to a spot in the sun. Spring has come. Flowers are blooming. Fruit trees are starting to blossom. I have started seeds in eggshells and planted some peas and lettuces. The rhythms of nature have not changed, though the human world is now a discordant bang. Or perhaps a better analogy is the door to the world we knew slammed shut.

Where is your comfort when so much has been taken away?

Cat lounging on porch swing

My big physical comfort was Henry. There’s nothing like a warm cat cuddling on your lap, purring at you, touching your cheek with his gentle paw… We decided to not get another cat until we came back from our ten day Scotland vacation in June… Yeah, that’s gone too… And now I have no cat to physically comfort me, and no Scotland to look forward to. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not much; I know that.

We all have lost our comfort-able-ness, haven’t we? Some of us have lost more than others, but we all can lament on what’s been taken from us. We can mourn (it’s okay to mourn our losses, no matter how small) and then we must find new ways to regain our comfort. (Just as an aside, I looked up ways, and the online definition is methods of reducing damage...)

The word comfort made me pause the other day, as I considered where my comfort comes from…

And what came into my head were the words to one of the best loved praise songs ever written:

My comfort, my shelter,

tower of refuge and strength,

Let every breath, all that I am,

Never cease to worship you…

—Shout to the Lord by Darlene Zesch.

If our comfort is in work, family, health, money, entertainment, friends, houses, skills? It’s all up in the air, isn’t it? On hold. That’s not to say, those aren’t good things, but they aren’t the best thing. Earthly treasures disappear. Quickly, as we have learned.

I don’t write about faith often. It’s a tricky thing, and one that I denied for much of my adult life. It’s an unseen, not-easy-to-prove way in our modern, rational world that needs proven science to be considered authentic.

Cat in window

But sometimes the mystery is what we need to cling to when other idols have turned to clay. (That’s a biblical metaphor, by the way…)

I know believers aren’t supposed to quote scripture to prove their beliefs, because what non-believer cares about the Bible? But this quote on faith is one that I’ve grown to love: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.–Hebrews 11:1. Faith is so personal, yet those of us who have it long to share it with those who need it. Because we know how it has changed our lives. For good. For better. For best. It doesn’t eliminate struggles or pain; it simply reminds us of God’s promises, reminds us to be grateful, reminds us to love, and reminds us that dying as a believer is not the worst thing — it is simply the beginning of a new journey.

Kitty looking over back porch

These days, if your comfort is cold, and you are thinking hard on what is important in your life, give faith a chance. Not all Christians are looney-toon right wing nut cases. :-) Some of us are probably your friends. We are struggling to make sense of all this too, but the three things we do have are comfort and hope and faith–the assurance that things unseen are truths we know in our hearts, our minds, our souls. And it gives us a glimpse, a gift of peace that’s not present in this earth-bound world.