Dear Edwards Church Community,
Happy Groundhog Day! No, I mean it, really. The arrival of February means we are at – and soon will pass – an important milestone: the low point of the year, at least for many of us: Groundhog Day. What a year it’s been! “How long, O Lord, how long?” How many more weeks of this must we endure?
Here is how we can absolutely tell that things are becoming more normal. The holidays are behind us, winter has settled in, and we are all (or almost all) wishing the next 2-3 months would just be over tomorrow. Really over. And we know deep down that they will take the same amount of time to pass as they always do. But it may feel like more.
How to hang in there through the passage of time? How can I tolerate the slow melting of time over my urgent need for the return of normal life, of a way of life I will be able to embrace as LIFE, and not merely getting by?
The last year has been brutal. The virus has killed millions around the world and experts project we will lose many more before it is over. We all wish it were over. But the patterns of life itself, science as we come to understand the science of this virus, and the resources of our faith all point in the same general direction.
Winter is the time of forced hibernation, of slowing down, way down for a period of deep R&R. Although the patterns of modern life – which insist on a consistent (and consistently more productive) work week, a consistent delivery of education (with measurable progress) as if it were a product one ordered from Amazon, and consistently positive economic news, as if history were something we were meant to fully control rather than to fully participate in, doing the best we can.
In a recent episode of the radio show – podcast “On Being” (https://onbeing.org/programs/katherine-may-how-wintering-replenishes/), writer Katherine May explains how she finds comfort and consolation in the deep R&R that nature gives itself every winter. We humans, after all, are deeply rooted in nature. God came to us in Jesus fully human to show, through incarnation, the extent to which God loves and identifies with us. The liturgical season of Epiphany, which we are ending, reminds us of that, among other things. The gospels are replete with mentions of Jesus taking time to rest and to restore his spirit with prayer. He also seems to have enjoyed dinner with wine and good company, so I guess he too would struggle with physical distancing!
Katherine May has cultivated the capacity to “winter” as needed, to recognize in herself the signals that she needs the sort of R&R that nature enforces on the natural world as a matter of survival and preparing for the next cycle of growth. To get to the other side of the vaccine roll-out, and to the maximum extent you can adjust your movable commitments, I hope you will make time and take time for occasions to be gentle with yourself and “winter” on purpose.
Take a walk in the crisp midwinter afternoon. Close the “office” door for 10 minutes and daydream, meditate, or pray. Call a friend. Make a pact with your partner, if you have one, to be “wintering buddies,” taking over whatever needs attending while the other attends to the self-care we all need. These need not be “spa days” to be effective, but they do need to happen with enough regularity to help you over the long haul. This sort of “wintering” can serve to keep you in touch with the truth that humans are not only deeply rooted in nature, we are also, as the French paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, “spiritual beings having human experiences.” Keep in touch with both sides of your nature and we will all come through this together.
Soon we begin the season of Lent. This year I recommend giving up nothing but whatever prevents you from taking on those practices that will help you to “winter” more effectively. The scripture recommended for the first Sunday of Lent is a repeat of the story of Jesus’ baptism, followed by his time in the wilderness and the proclamation of his ministry: “Now is the time of fulfillment, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and put your faith in the good news.”
We repeat this cycle on a regular basis as an acknowledgement that our nature – as spiritual beings having human experiences – requires that we periodically return to the roots of our connection to God. We have hints of timeless meaning expressed in timebound lives. Keep putting your faith in the good news. That new life is already beginning.
In faith, with hope, for love,
Michael