A Recipe for Winter-Stark Days (and Nights)

What if nothing in your life—not even sadness or spiritual flatness—stands outside the Sacred? A reflection on winter-stark days and intimacy with the Sacred.

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February SMC Event: Relationships

Sunday, February 15 

LOCATION ANNOUNCED:

We will be nestled into a very warm Hogwarts-like setting at the Schroer Commons at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves. The talented Lynn O'Brien will be back to provide us with music!

Get your ticket for SMC 2/15.

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A Recipe for Winter-Stark Days (and Nights)

Since I last laid keystrokes to this blog over a month ago, a confluence of three events sent me on a little bit of a makeshift retreat. A touching/somber celebration of my mom’s hospice birthday set it in motion. A pared-down Christmas gave it momentum. Finally, a certain amount of post-surgery disability sidelined me during a family vacation. Like Mary, in Luke’s Gospel, all those things conspired to make me slow down and “ponder things in [my] heart” (Luke 2:19).

For 93 years, my mom’s birthday has fallen on Christmas Eve. As a kid, that added one more dimension of magic to Christmas. During the fat and happy years, that could mean dinner out, where mom and dad might cut a rug in the old-fashioned way. I remember watching them, with a kind of Burl Ives’ silver and gold feeling inside. Other years, I remember cake and ice cream at Grandma and Grandpa’s with visions of a consumer-friendly Santa on his way to drop off maybe a space helmet or Rock ‘m Sock ‘m Robots?!  

This year, it meant a solo drive a hundred lonely, winter miles up I-55 for 4:00 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass, a plate of saved dinner for mom, and a birthday kiss goodnight. Mom was never one given to public displays of physical affection. Eight years of dementia have sort of brought her out of her shell…just a little. During Mass, a wrinkled, spotted hand would fumble in my direction until it located my hand—a hand that’s beginning to match her hand. Holding hands, we smiled while an off-key children’s choir sang the most earnest Christmas carols you ever heard. An unlikely Christmas card—this 93-year-old mom, her 65-year-old son, and a children’s choir with not a single Von Trapp virtuoso child to be found in it.   

Back at her place, she took no more than a nibble of her birthday dinner. Lately, more and more of her meals go that way. A team of two staff and I got her ready for bed. As I laid her down and sealed her with a birthday kiss, the feeling of leaving her, while she was slowly leaving me, descended. It was hard not to notice the reality of her last birthday on this planet. The feeling that goes with that kind of realization accompanied me all the way home from Springfield. It colored my Christmas in Andrew Wyeth shades of winter-stark. 

Andrew Wyeth – Fence Line 1967, provided by Redtree Times

Lonely Lizzie greeted me when I got home that night. The family I constructed with Lisa has had thirty-one years of solid Christmas customs of our own. All of that was out the window this year since my oldest two were balancing the holiday scales of justice with their out-of-town in-laws. We had ‘em for Thanksgiving. Lisa wasn’t home because she was busy working the first of her three Christmas shifts. That left just Lizzie and me to celebrate a thing we sardonically named, our very first, “Lame-Assed Christmas.” As expected, the dark humor put things in the right perspective…and, at the last minute, a generous colleague took eight of Lisa’s sixteen hours, giving our Lame-Assed Christmas one more welcomed participant for Christmas breakfast, presents, and church services. Despite the good humor and family fellowship, the lens that had been slipped onto my face the night before, colored my Christmas in winter-stark.

Did I mention that I swapped out my right hip about a month ago for a machine-made one? I only bring it up because the Saturday-to-Saturday family vacation we took after Christmas, near Lake Geneva, WI, took on a decidedly contemplative tone on account of the recovery from my procedure. Winter walks in the woods with my kids and their paramours, ping pong tournaments, and hot tub gatherings were all out of bounds for this recovering curmudgeon. On second thought, it wasn’t so much curmudgeon-li-ness…it certainly wasn’t depression…but there was a distinct form of melancholy that attended my winter holiday—like I said, “winter-stark.”  

Given my mood and all of that downtime, I decided to read a book I had packed, Saint John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul. Now, I find mystical poetry, like John of the Cross, incredibly difficult to decipher, so I used Iain Matthew’s The Impact of God: Soundings from St. John of the Cross to guide me. I’ve been chipping away at that book for almost a year. It’s the kind of thing where you read a page, stop and savor, and then read a little more…in other words…slow going. At ¾ of the way through, I’m not sure I fully get the gist of this “dark night of the soul” business, but I know what I’m getting out of John of the Cross’s perspective. His thesis? There is absolutely nothing in your life, or my life, that stands apart from the Sacred. As such, even suffering, even melancholy, even a disturbing inability to locate feelings I wish I could feel—all of it is contained in a plan for your good and my good, and for intimacy with the Ground and Horizon of your very self. Near as I can tell, John’s recipe for operationalizing this insight is simply showing up and relaxing into sacred silence on a habitual, daily basis. Slowly, slowly, transformations proceed from these roots planted and growing in the daily dark, just below consciousness. I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I am a big fan of encouraging transformational habits.

Dialogue and Discussion Questions:

Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.

• This article referenced three experiences that caused a kind of melancholy. Can you recall any experiences you’ve been through that caused similar feelings? If you are reflecting on these questions with a discussion group or friend, tell the story of those experiences. If you are alone in your reflection, step back into those experiences and perhaps journal them. What have you learned from those moments? What do you tend to do with melancholic feelings?   

• Is there anything in your life right now that feels a little “dark night-ish” for you?
  

• Have you ever been on a retreat? What would a retreat need to look like to make you interested in it? Another way to phrase this question is, “If you could construct the perfect retreat for your spiritual tastes, and for this particular time in your life, what would it look like?” Describe what a day would look like on this retreat from the moment you wake up until you go to bed.   
  

• When I was twenty-five, I asked a wise and holy, old rabbi if he had any advice for me about the spiritual life? In the best Yiddish accent you ever heard, he said, “Find a good book, not just the Bible, but a good book.” Then he listed several classics from Christian and Jewish provenances. I think it was his advice (along with Dr. Pat Openlander, many years later) that made me finally get around to reading John of the Cross. My question for you, “Do you have a good book that you return to again and again to grow your inner self?” It does not have to be a formal religious title. It could be a book of profound poetry, or some other prose that you consider sacred.

On Feb 15th, from 4-6 p.m., Sunday Morning Cafe will welcome back beloved singer/songwriter, Lynn O’Brien. Here is her stunning take on an old Christmas classic. Hope you can join us in the cozy Schroer Commons at Eden Theological Seminary, 479 East Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves. Learn more & get your ticket here.

Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.