Buechner, Lewis: Telling Secrets on New Year's Eve

Buechner, Lewis: Telling Secrets on New Year’s Eve

“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.”

Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets, p. 2.HarperOne 1991. Buechner Quote of the Day, Frederick Buechner Center, Frederickbuechner.com

In Telling Secrets Buechner reminds us that we so often are like the dwarves in the stable in The Last Battle by CS Lewis. We do not see the good and do not realize that we are surrounded by beauty but live trapped lives because of our dark secrets. We are as sick as our secrets and only can get well by airing these secrets if only in our own hearts. Like the dwarves we live our lives huddled together in what we think is a cramped, pitch-black dark stable where there is little room to breathe.

In reality, we are in the midst of an endless green meadow where the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Aslan himself (God) stands there offering freedom, but the dwarves cannot see him and only see each other.

We are our secrets. Our trusting each other enough to share these secrets has much to do with the secret of what it is like to be connected to the God within us as well as honoring our humanness.

This last day of the calendar year is a good time to take inventory of what secrets we may be carrying into the new year that will keep us in the dark and block our relationship with God within us, God in our neighbor, and God transcendent.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Gesu Bambino

Gesu Bambino

“Upon a winter night,

Was born the Child, the Christmas Rose,

The King of Love and Light.

The angels sang, the shepherds sang,

The grateful earth rejoiced.” Frederick Martens, music by Pietro Yon (1917)

Advent. Christmas at Kanuga

As you know, my younger brother died several years ago on the day after Christmas or Boxing Day or the Feast Day of St. Stephen. I still miss him.

The last Sunday in Advent, Advent IV, the day before Christmas Eve as I was preparing in the early morning to go to the eight o’clock service, I heard on our National Public Radio Station (NPR) a piano arrangement of Gesu Bambino. This is Italian Christmas Carol with O Come All Ye Faithful for the chorus with the music written by Pietro Yon and the lyrics by Frederick Martens.

Suddenly I felt my brother’s presence. My brother sang this as a solo at a Christmas program when he was ten or eleven years old in the basement of the Baptist church in our hometown, West Point, Virginia. He was taught Gesu by the minister’s son, Bobby Pleasants, who also was an organist and my piano teacher. I wonder where he is now. I give thanks for Bobby for the gift he gave me today by teaching my brother to sing this ethereal Christmas anthem so many years ago. I see and hear my young brother singing like a cherub in the candle light, lifting his head and his eyes as he strains for the high notes, singing with all his might.

This was a Christmas gift from my brother. He was physically very strong. I have many mobility issues. This Christmas Eve we had two very large services at St. Mark’s. I have been concerned whether I could physically serve as one of the deacons at these demanding services late at night where almost a thousand people will attend. That morning before Christmas Eve I was empowered. I felt my brother and his strength beside me. I had no doubt that this was something I could do, and I still feel his strength and love throughout these twelve days of Christmas.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Brueggemann: Gift of the Christmas Season on its Fifth Day

Brueggemann: Gift of the Christmas Season on its Fifth Day

“Christmas is especially for those of us whose lives are scarred and hurt in debilitating ways. Of course, that means all of us. Christmas is about a word from God addressed to the world in its exhaustion. ..Behold I am doing a new thing. Christmas is a day to stop and notice the newness that God is giving that lets our life start over in a fresh place.” Walter Brueggemann, Devotion for Advent, Celebrating Abundance. pp. 68-69

Photo by 22

So much of our life has been connected to schools and colleges. The twelve days of the church’s Christmas Season and especially the time between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day is traditionally a slow down time for higher education where people are on vacation or are less busy. It is amazing how my body and my mind have been conditioned over the years to live at a different pace during this Christmas Season. It is a Christmas gift. The days are shorter. I can sleep until seven am and go to my window and still watch the world yawn and wake up around me.

This morning is rainy and wet with a dense fog. There are fewer leaves. Even with the thick mist, I can see at a greater distance with a wider world view. I watch the deer gallop away together by my window back to the woods as they hear the sound of cars. The busy territorial squirrels chase each other up and down trees. The cardinals and woodpeckers come to the feeder by my window and share space with smaller birds whose markings I cannot read.

I have time to listen to the rhythm of the rain. It is as hypnotic as ocean waves, but the ocean is like a Souza march keeping perfect time while the rain changes and is slower and then faster and then softer and then louder like the improvisation of jazz.

I switch gears and turning inside, I open my memory book to Christmases in the past, re-enter those scenes and bring them alive. Traveling to the beach. Shopping with children and grandchildren. Going to movies. Ice skating. Family dinners. Watching slides. Leftovers. Reading new books or old ones I have in a to-read-list stack by my desk and bed. Writing. Visits to and from family we have missed seeing during the year. Spending time with old and new friends I have neglected because of my busyness. Resting.

The church year gives us a few more days at the end of our calendar year for this short Christmas season and extends it to Epiphany, the celebration of the arrival of the Wise Men on January 6. My prayer today is that I will open this gift and treasure the precious present of these 12 days of the Christmas Season.

Joanna joannaseibert.com