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“In the Bleak Midwinter . . .”
Pastor Glenn
Ludwig
Sometimes ideas for articles, sermons or presentations come out of
nowhere, seemingly almost, as a gift. The idea for this month’s article
came as I sat staring out at a gray, cold day during the beginning of a
Staff Meeting while listening to Pastor Easton share a devotion based on
a recent article in Christian Century. After the meeting, I
asked her for a copy of the article, titled “In a dry season,” and have
been ruminating on it ever since.
You see
(and here is a bit of self-revelation), I find myself secretly enjoying
“the bleak midwinter” or the “dry season” of life, as Rodney Clapp
called it in his fine article. Which has led me to ponder why this is
so? Why is it that I find myself staring quietly at the dead trees
standing in relief against a gray, dull, flat sky? Why do I look
forward to Advent, with nights getting longer and the dark ever more
present? Why do I even look forward to Lent (beginning February 22 with
Ash Wednesday, by the way) with its call to prepare and examine and
reflect on life in deeper ways? What is it about the midwinter that
opens up my mind, heart and soul in ways that are different and
mysterious?
So, walk
with me for a moment as I try to answer these questions in such a way as
to shed light on our common life together.
First,
perhaps, we should find common ground in understanding that which I
experienced that Staff day and know often during this season. One of
the Desert Fathers, St. John of the Cross, called it “the dark night of
the soul.” He was referring to those times, even stretches, of
emptiness in our lives that all of us face or will face; those times
when our minds and hearts seem heavy, the world around us appears in
shades of gray, our souls seem filled with dust, and we just don’t feel
or sense God’s presence.
Christina
Georgina Rossetti put such feelings to poetry in a bleak January in
1872. An Italian poet and refugee living in London, she suffered a
nervous breakdown at the age of 14, and had to deal with illness and
depression much of her life. Her poem took hymn form in 1906 and
appears in our own hymnal as one of the great Christmas hymns in the
Christian tradition. Although the version in our hymnal contains only
three of the original five stanzas, her words stand as a witness to
faith, as a delicate finger of a frail and fragile fellow pilgrim
pointing us to a reality beyond our current experiences of the “bleak
midwinter.” (Unbelievably, the hymn just came on my IPhone as I
continue to listen to Christmas music even days past our celebration.
That must be the Spirit’s way of telling me I’m on the right path with
this article. I’ll take it as that, anyway.)
This
solemn and quiet hymn holds the key, as I’ve discovered, to why I find
meaning during the gray dullness of winter, because even if I don’t see
or feel or taste God’s presence, I have grown over the years to trust
God’s promises to me as his child. The contentment I feel in the midst
of the cold world is only possible because I have known God’s presence
in my life time after time after time and, even though I may identify
with the lonely tree blowing in a cold wind against a slate sky, I
know God is with me. As Rossetti points to in her second stanza,
after describing so poetically the human condition:
Heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
Heav’n and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
So, the
mystery of the “why” has an answer after all. My dry life in a bleak
midwinter rests quietly in the arms of a God who sent his Son as the
fulfillment of his promises and, further, my bleak life sits amid and
among your lives, where I find warmth and comfort and support. “In the
bleak midwinter” we gather together to find, once again, a Word and a
Spirit that will fill this dry season with hope and promise.
Ah, yes.
Being a part of the body of Christ means we are never alone – God’s
Spirit and Christ’s Body surround us. God promised! |
