OH, CHRISTMAS TREE

I used to love Christmas. 

Of course, I loved it as a child, but I kept my sense of wonder well into my twenties, and it came back with a vengeance after my daughters were born.  I took such pleasure in their pleasure and excitement during their early years.  I confess, however, that my interest in the holiday was much diminished after they grew up and away. What would be the point of decorating a tree without little ones to enjoy it? I didn’t have it in me to do much more each year than buy a small potted tree or decorate a large house plant.  

 

Indeed, the most “Christmassy” I have felt for the past few years has been while visiting granddaughters on my husband’s side, and enjoying their excitement.  But, now, those girls are 10 and 14 -- nearly past the age of wonder, and my Christmas doldrums might have snuck back in, had it not been for the arrival during the past two years of four grandchildren on my side.

 

I am happy to report that the delight of my toddler granddaughters, aged one-and-a-half (twins) and two, has revived my own latent excitement over the season. 

 

Although the girls aren’t old enough yet to be anticipating presents, 

they talk excitedly (in their fashion) about Santa Claus and reindeer. And they are entirely engrossed in shifting ornaments on and off their trees.  (My grandson, aged two months, will join in the merriment next year, I am sure.)

 

So, of course, we had to have a tree this year.  A few days ago, my husband and and I and the two-year-old brought home a four-foot-tall fir—just the right height for two senior citizens to fit in our car and carry into our living room.  Yesterday, I put lights on the tree.  (I will wait for the granddaughters to help me add some ornaments.)  

 

Which brings me to today, when, after being awakened by stormy weather at 5 a.m. I lay in bed, listening to rain and branches land on the roof, and telling myself I would fall back asleep any minute. Sometime after six, I gave up on this notion and got out of bed.  Downstairs into the darkened living room I went and turned on the tree lights.  

 

Sitting there in the dark, I was immediately transported to a Christmas long ago.  Was I eight or 18?  I don’t know.  Maybe it was the amalgamated memory of several Christmases.  In any event, there I was in the early evening gazing at my family’s tree, mesmerized by the colored lights and tinsel.  (Yes, those were the days of tinsel, and the perennial argument over whether to place it stand-by-strand or throw it on in bunches.)

                                                          (With my bother Jim - can you see the tinsel?)

In memory, I am sitting in front of that tree, with its large and clunky lights, for hours.  Perhaps it was ten minutes that are stretched by recollection.  I do know that I felt peace staring at those lights, and sitting in my living room this morning, I wondered what had become of the girl and young woman who had taken such delight in a tree.  

 

Could I bring her back?  

 

Surrounded by toddlers, I think maybe I can.

 

And you?  What will it take for you to bring back childish delight in the season?  I know some of you have never lost the gift of wonder.  

 

May it be so for all of us.

 

May we see the world through the eyes of a child, and may we know peace, love, and wonder this year.

LIVING WITH MYSTERY - WALKING IN WONDER

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about mystery.  In particular, I have been thinking about what the Irish mystic and poet John O’Donohue called “the mystery of being here.”

And, because I have three baby granddaughters, born within six months of each other, I have also been thinking about the fact that when we are very young, we simply accept the circumstances into which we are born – the shape and size and feel of our parents and others who care for us; the four walls of our home; the toys on our floor.  There are tasks to attend to – we must learn to sit up, to crawl, to walk, to talk.  These tasks are all-consuming.  The present is all there is.  

At this stage, as far as I know, we aren’t capable of thinking about the mystery of being here; we are, instead, experiencing the wonder of being here.  Each new thing or person we encounter is an amazement.  We are dazzled.

And then at some point the questions begin.  First come the answerable questions (even if one must resort to Google), such as:

Why is the sky blue?

What is snow?

Then come answerable questions that require a bit of finesse.   Here are a couple asked by a daughter of mine before age four:

How did I get out of the baby tummy?

How did I get into the baby tummy?

(I did answer these honestly.)

Then come the questions asked just before bedtime, when you really want to go to sleep.  Here is a further sample from a daughter, aged maybe 12:  What was the Vietnam war about, anyway?

And, eventually, along come the cosmic questions:

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

Why do we suffer?

Why do we die

What happens when we die?

At first the cosmic questions take up a lot of space, at least, for me, they did.  But here’s the thing -- the older I get, the more comfortable I am with mystery, the more willing I am to accept the questions as being unanswerable.  

I am deeply perplexed by claims to certain answers to any of these questions.  I do not understand such certainty.  Where does it come from?  The poet Mary Oliver speaks for me on this subject:

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

 to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

 mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

In allegiance with gravity

 while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will 

 never be broken

How people come, from delight or the 

 scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

 

Let me keep my distance, always, from those 

 who think they have the answers.

 

Let me keep company always with those who say 

 "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, 

 and bow their heads.

 

It’s true, I do have some intuitions about the cosmic questions; you might even say I have faith in my intuitions.  Still, I do not lay claim to any certainties.  And I have no interest in trying to convince anyone that my intuitions are correct.  (Let me add that I am as uncomfortable with atheistic certainty—what I call unholier than thou – as I am with religious certainty.)  

 

A number of years ago, I read the book Leaving Church:  A Memoir of Faith by the Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor.  She recounted that several of her parishioners had come to her, struggling with questions of belief, and she began to realize that she was more interested in beholding than believing.

 

Beholding.  I like that word.  It allows for mystery.  It allows for wonder.  

 

Here's the thing about certainty; it cuts off curiosity at its knees.  Certainty is a hardening of our ideas, a shutting down of the possibility that there is another way of looking at things.  Acceptance of mystery allows for curiosity, for expansiveness, for taking in new ideas, for the possibility of harkening back to the wonder of our earliest years. 

 

I return to the wisdom of John O’ Donohue:

 

Awaken to the mystery of being here 

and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence. 

Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon. 

Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its           path...

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. 

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention...

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

  

As we begin this new year, may we each awaken to, and accept, the mystery of being here.  And may we, with O'Donohue and my granddaughters, behold all that is around us “as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”

                                   Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash