Good morning…
The three of us get together each Advent to share a meal and exchange heartfelt gifts. Creatively continuing our tradition during COVID, she decorated her garage with red bows, calming light, wide open doors, and a beautifully dressed table beside a space heater. The atmosphere was warm and exquisite, enhancing the homemade food and our long, loving friendship.
It has been a challenging year. One friend recently lost her father and the other faces fresh fears as she cares for her husband’s advancing dementia. Privileged to walk in step together, I felt the Holy Spirit spur me to split one Parker Palmer quote between two handcrafted cards.
I wrote a personal note to the first friend and included Parker’s touching words.
A few years ago, my father died. He was more than a good man, and the months following his death were a long, hard winter for me. But in the midst of that ice and loss, I came into a certain clarity that I lacked when he was alive. I saw something that had been concealed when the luxuriance of his love surrounded me – saw how I had relied on him to help me cushion life’s harsher blows. When he could no longer do that, my first thought was, “Now I must do it myself.” But as time went on, I saw a deeper truth: it never was my father absorbing those blows but a larger and deeper grace that he taught me to rely on.
When my father was alive, I confused the teaching with the teacher. My teacher has gone now, but the grace is still there – and my clarity about that fact has allowed his teaching to take deeper root in me. Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being (Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer, 101-102)
The quote seamlessly continued, so I cut and pasted it into the card for our second friend.
In the Upper Midwest, newcomers often receive a classic piece of wintertime advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Here people spend good money on warm clothing so that they can get outdoors and avoid the “cabin fever” that comes from huddling fearfully by the fire during the hard-frozen months. If you live here long, you learn that a daily walk into the winter world will fortify the spirit by taking you boldly to the very heart of the season you fear.
Our inward winters take many forms – failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them – protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance – we can learn what they have to teach us. Then we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in the most dismaying season of all (Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer, 102-103).
We read the quotes aloud and shared honest tears, then they opened the wrapped gifts from my heart: a cozy hat and scarf set to “get out into” this harsh season, homemade turkey/vegetable soup, and one communion loaf split into two healthy portions. Walking together into the seasons we fear, we are fortified by the Spirit, trusting together the Creator of life’s cycles. Protected by the warm garb of friendship, at the very core of our being, we remind one another to rely on the larger and deeper grace cushioning life’s blows. Our threesome is held securely by the Almighty Threesome, season by season, year after year.
You, too, my friend are welcomed into this winter world, guided by the tender teachings taking deeper root in you.
There is a time to be born. And there’s a time to die. There is a time to plant. And there’s a time to pull up what is planted (Ecclesiastes 3:2, NIRV).
…Sue…
