Kinds of Honey

The baby had surgery last Thursday, so I took two weeks off (as recommended) for his recovery. Currently he is asleep and the cold rain is falling outside – and, oh, how I wish it were snow! We haven’t had snow here since early 2021, I think. Today I set a mental note: stay put for five more years, then find a small town with snow. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. But it helps my homesick Northern heart a little.

We like to read the book The Bear Snores On – where the bear is snoozing in his deep dark lair and all the little woodland friends show up, stoke a fire, and “pop white corn and brew black tea”. So cozy in the middle of winter. There is a lot of complaining about this month, but I feel happy (except there should be snow). I feel like I’m in a resting, planning, anticipating moment and I like it.

In a way, January feels like advent for the natural world. We look at seed catalogues. We imagine new beds, fences, and landscaping strategies for next year’s garden. We wait for the first buds, the February crocuses, the March lenten roses. We are waiting, and it is okay. (Waiting can be brutal, but I think I am finally learning how to do it with peace.)

2016 was my last entry and I’m amazed I sleuthed my way back into the back end of this thing.

Let’s NOT (for now) go down the path of everything that has happened between then and now, as most of us are inclined to do. Let’s just not, because there were many hard times, and right now is a pretty nice time. I miss writing; the old itch is itching. So here we are.

(Does anyone read blogs anymore?)

When the bad news comes it seems to swirl around you, so thickly at first that you can almost feel the wind of it, the cold, and the rest of the world feels very outside as you sit in that circle of the white silent storm and try to comprehend.

Sometimes you peer through to the outside world at what was once normal. Sometimes you imagine yourself there. But very often all you can manage is to huddle in place, sometimes by yourself, sometimes with the others who have found themselves there with you. You find each others’ hands. You try to warm them.

All the loving people outside the circle want to reach toward you. This is so kind and wonderful of them but also, on your hard days, too much to ask. Just let me feel hateful and angry and alone! Don’t try gentle away the bitterness that is protecting me and do NOT tell me God is Good or (even worse) to Trust in His Sovereign Will (even if we don’t understand it – of course we don’t understand it, bc what is happening right now SUCKS and HURTS and why would You let that be okay to happen to children You supposedly love?).

How can anyone know where you are right this moment? Your own emotions are so everywhere that you can go from laughing to weeping to fury in moments. The emotions don’t do any good of course. They don’t change a thing.

You want to be your old self, to try to be funny, to swing your ponytail when you walk, to watch happiness come into people’s faces when they see you, rather than the recognition of One In Need of A Hug (still you take the hug and almost always gladly).

The new and terrible news means that everything is going to change, perhaps slowly, perhaps suddenly, perhaps kind of both. You know this from the sad things of before. You dread it and yet part of you wants to drag it towards you, because everything must be torn apart and made over, and it’s going to hurt; hurry on up so that it gets over with and life figures out some sort of normal again. Acceptance vs. resistance are fighting a pretty fine battle in your mind/spirit/heart/soul/whatever you want to call it.

Still. When you can draw back from that battle – or can push off the dullness of resignation that you’ve pulled like a blanket over your whole body so that you can sleep – and you look at oh this aching creation, you know that puppies will still wriggle and woo you into feeling an old joy. So will babies, even if they still are not your own. So will the smell of horses and hay, the slant of afternoon sun while you lie in the grass. Coffee, so blessed on cool mornings in a favorite mug. You will still thrill in the deep rumbling rain and the water running off the leaves of the trees. These things have done it before – tricked you, reminded you, charmed you into wanting to keep living with gladness despite everything, after all.

And that table of laughing friends – the ones you know have grace enough to walk with you, even when you might offend them on occasion with your kaleidoscope of reactions to this Horrid, Terrible News – there is comfort in knowing that their table will still hold a place for you.

“Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land’s inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.” ~ Wendell Berry

The third candle of advent is the candle of joy. A difficult one in light of this week’s events. One of the best things about joy, though, is that it dwells deep, and might be found even beneath all our other emotions, waiting until we are ready to again reach for it and claim it and stand for it. Joy. Christmas reminds us of this powerful gift, and how often it is a response to, and a product of, great love.

Romans 8: 37-39
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Last year I shared advent thoughts with you, and it was such a blessing for me to do it – to take the time to reflect on these things and communicate them here – that I’m going to try again, though I am starting one day behind. (As is somewhat typical for me; apologies, friends.)

Yesterday I had the great delight of making beeswax candles with a new local friend and an old childhood friend in a warm kitchen with plenty of chocolate and caramel corn. I still have a few more candles and a wreath to put together, which will be on the task list for this week (along with planning a writers’ workshop, cutting down a Christmas tree, and hosting a holiday party – it’s going to be a fun week!). But in all the busyness of parties and decorations, of hopes for snow, of looming transitions, the center must remain the center, and for me, that is Christ.

Here are advent thoughts for the first Sunday:

Expectation, hope, and prophecy: the first candle.

Isaiah 9:

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—