Quiet Upon Quiet, and Shining

I begin with a confession.

I've snitched our church's Advent Candle display to bring home to my own porch.  I did ask around -  a little - and no one else had need of it, and since we're not having services in the building right now, it seemed a shame to leave such a generous display of greens, bearing the significance of the anticipation and fulfillment of the season, all alone just sitting there.  I think of it as sort of adopting a rescue.  It can come and be glorious on my porch for a while longer into the winter.  Or so I hoped.

And then it snowed!

There's no lighting of the candles at the moment.  That glory is buried, waiting. 

I can't tell if it looks a little foolish, or if there's a new kind of beauteous to it.  I think both.  And it's sort of telling the story of how things are right now.

I love when it snows like this for Christmas.  All green, even grey leading up to Christmas Eve.  And then - a little Christmas miracle - it snows all glorious and pure and a little bit wild.  And quiet.  Snow can be all of that at the same time.  And it's like our lives right now.  

Today begins the lockdown we'd all been hoping we could avoid.  And with it an again-sort of weird quiet begins, where we all stay home, hunkered and hoping.  It's like the weather got the memo and wants to help us.  Stay put.  Be quiet.  

I'm receiving that quiet today.  A Sabbath of winter to follow the strange way Christmas was still 'busy' this year.  Not the visiting or the driving or even the shopping, but in all the new ways we had to think of how to be family and love each other and stay connected anyways.  Busy with re-tooling, re-imagining, being stubborn in our love.  Glad for all of it.  Glad for a pause of it just now.

Like being under a fresh blanket of snow, all hushed like this.

"Cease striving," we are told, "and know that I am God."  Psalm 46:10  In some translations it says, "Be still."

It's been said that there are "dark days of winter" ahead.  No doubt.  So yay and praise for the light of all the Advent Candles, and all they represent in the hope and peace and joy and light we have in Jesus Whose birth makes possible everything else.  Yay and praise for the receiving of the snow and the brushing of it back and lighting our candles anyways.  Defiantly.  

Even in this.  Even being strong and beautiful in the midst of this hushed-down space of waiting and longing that will usher in a new year in just days from now.

Even in the waiting, there can be glory and light and beauty.

And it could be argued, how much more so, the darker it gets.

All that we've just declared                                                                                                                                            in every carol chorused,                                                                                                                                              every reading rendered,                                                                                                                                          every gift given,                                                                                                                                                     every hope held,                                                                                                                                                        is still true.