Dark of Winter A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church December 6, 2009 We are quickly approaching the longest night of the year. Now that the full moon is waning, the night is getting darker and darker even as it gets longer and longer, and colder and colder. This year, the darkest night will be December 16 th and I find this fascinating the moon will begin to be visibly waxing on the day before the solstice; meaning that the nights will begin to get brighter (until January's new moon) just as they begin to get shorter. But they will be cold for several months. The nights here now are not as cold as the December nights to which I am accustomed, though. The fact that the shorter days are warmer here in Maryland has been disconcerting to me, a recent immigrant from New England. Short days are supposed to be c-c-c-cold! Most years in early December, I have preached (and will likely continue to preach) a sermon that is like the hush before a snowfall, a bit of quiet in this often hectic holiday season, with poetry and shared silence woven into the sermon. I invite you rest and be restored if that is what your spirit longs for, or if the season finds you in a centered place come to be deepened in it, or just be here for all the reasons you usually come on a Sunday for the community for the coffee! But, as I began to plan for that sermon for my first year as your minister, given your southerly clime, I ditched my usual snow-glorifying poetry. Which was hard to do I do love snow in New England. Until March, when it was a nuisance, even to me! Instead, this year, I chose the reading about zip codes and rip cords that Tish read a few moments ago, which makes no mention of snow and ends, "Our lifelines, in December as always, are our inner quiet, the love we exchange, and our efforts to make the world more whole." Well, yesterday, Maryland fooled me, and gave us our first snowfall! So, now I get to share with you one of my favorites snow-glorifying poems, by Mary Oliver: It's called FIRST SNOW by (from her 1983 collection American Primitive) The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning; such an oracular fever! flowing past windows, an energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle less than lovely! and only now, deep into night, it has finally ended.
The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold a million candles; nowhere the familiar things: stars, the moon, the darkness we expect and nightly turn from. Trees glitter like castles of ribbons, the broad fields smolder with light, a passing creekbed lies heaped with shining hills; and though the questions that have assailed us all day remain-not a single answer has been foundwalking out now into the silence and the light under the trees, and through the fields, feels like one. So, if this sermon is about anything, it s about calming down. It s about taking Sabbath time at this dark time of year, this time that is full of frenzy for many, wrought with such a variety of possible emotions, not only those related to good cheer and peace on earth, but also loneliness, sadness, anger, disappointment. This sermon is about calming down now, so that we will know how to carve out future moments for calming ourselves in the midst of what might be ahead. This sermon is also about maybe learning to calm, not just our selves, but the holiday frenzy itself. It s about the hush before a snowstorm. It s even more about the quiet at the end of a snowstorm, like Mary Oliver's immense silence." An immense silence that feels like an answer to the oracular questions a snowfall calls us back to: why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning? Indeed, yesterday the first snow of the season fell. I was hoping it would fall, as Mary Oliver ever the New Englander writes in another poem, into the world below like stars, or the feathers of some unimaginable bird that loves us that has turned itself into snow. (White Eyes in Why I Wake Early, 2004). But, it came down more like wet spitballs! And it turned to mush. Still, though, the woods were pretty with white on the ground cover and etching some of the tree limbs. And, as the storm ended, did you greet the snowy scene with awe and admiration, and dwell for some long moments in its "immense silence" considering its oracular questions, why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning? Did you wait for the answers? In the Christian calendar, this time leading up to Christmas, known as Advent, is meant to be a time of quiet, a time of waiting. Not a time of hurrying, cleaning, shopping,
baking, trimming, shopping, cooking, wrapping, mailing, last-minute shopping, eating, giving, unwrapping, un-trimming, returning, sale-shopping, and cleaning again, all in such a rush that we and our loved ones may find not much holiday cheer at all, really. Truly for Christians, Advent is meant to be a time of waiting, waiting for the baby Jesus to be born, waiting for Jesus Christ to dwell in human hearts. The weeks to come are pregnant with the possibility of joy, just as much as they hold the potential for great pressure, if only we would relax our expectations and step outside the commercial aspects of the holiday season. When is it in your day, in your daily routine, that you could claim some Sabbath time in the coming weeks, some time for calming down, even if just for a few moments of deep breathing every time, for example, you turn off the car's ignition, before you get out? The word Advent comes from the Latin for to come. As the Jungian analyst Mariann Burke writes (in Advent and Psychic Birth, quoted in First Days Record- November 2000), The word connotes a longing or hunger for something more in life, something intimated but still unfelt. For Christians, this longing focuses on the divine child, a child who was embodied in the Jesus of history, and who, from a psychological perspective relates us to unborn aspects of ourselves. Advent, then, is the season of the unborn Each of us nurtures some promise that wants to be born. Psychic birth refers to any potential aspect of ourselves that longs for realization; it refers to our becoming who we are meant to be. What are you waiting to become? What promise are you nurturing within? Waiting is not easy, often. What is your usual waiting mode? Are you an anxious waiter? Do you feel waiting is a waste of time? Is it to be avoided? Or do you relish it? Do you resent a long wait? Or, do you usually try to make the best of it? Do you try to get some work done while you wait, or keep yourself occupied with busy-work or handi-work, or your cell phone? Do you people-watch? Or people-engage? Or, do you allow yourself to settle into a calm state, and relax into a deeper place within? Finding in the moments of waiting an opportunity to meditate? We may think waiting implies passivity, but I think that waiting is an activity, albeit one that our action-oriented culture discourages, perhaps especially at this time of year. Waiting is an activity if we do it with the attentiveness suggested in the idea that advent is a time of giving birth, becoming, nurturing a promise within or to ourselves. What are you waiting to become? What promise are you nurturing within? Let us end the sermon by taking a good long time to sit with that advent question, in the snowfall-like hush that can envelop us in this meetinghouse, this holy place of history, mystery, and hope. The Quakers call it a "gathered meeting" if that snowfall-like hush envelops them in their silent meetings for worship. If we give the gift of silence to each other by each remaining as quiet as possible, we may experience it too. After the first moments of silence, I d like to read you another poem, followed by what may be an even deeper silence, and then we ll conclude with the closing hymn.
I invite you to get settled with your legs not crossed, hands on your lap, eyes closed if you wish. Take several deep, cleansing breaths and then follow your breathing, in and out, and when you feel yourself to be settled and focused, ask yourself What am I waiting for, who or what am I waiting to become? What promise am I nurturing deep within myself? If your mind wanders elsewhere, be patient with it just return again to your breath, in and out, perhaps saying silently, one word for the breath in and one word for the breath out, what am I waiting to become? Let us now enter into a time of shared silence, to be punctuated by another gentle poem no snow in this one and followed then by a longer silence. Beyond the Question: Part One by May Sarton The phoebe sits on her nest Hour after hour, Day after day, Waiting for life to burst out From under her warmth. Can I weave a nest for silence, Weave it of listening, Listening, Layer upon layer? But one must first become small, Nothing but a presence, Attentive as a nesting bird, Proffering no slightest wish Toward anything that might happen Or be given, Only the warm, faithful waiting, Contained in one s smallness. Beyond the question, the silence. Before the answer, the silence. Now, I invite you again into the shared silence to make yourself as attentive as a nesting bird, proffering no slightest wish toward anything that might happen or be given, only the warm, faithful waiting, contained in [your] smallness. Let us now sit as nesting birds, waiting. What are you waiting to become? What promise are you nurturing within? Why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning? (More silence). Amen. Let s take our time in reaching for our hymnals, slowly finding #55 and rising if you so wish to sing the hymn, Dark of Winter.
Closing words: May the dark winter nights in the months to come be soft and still, with a quiet calm surrounding us and a peace flowing through us. And, in the dark, may we each come to know the warmth and power of our own inner light.