A Blessing For the New Year

As you’ve surely realized by now, we did not send out Christmas cards this year. I could give a litany of the sad things this year brought us: grief, death, loss. I could detail the rejections I’ve received, both professional and personal. I could tell you how it all feels like too much, how I’m weirdly overwhelmed and underwhelmed simultaneously. But this would bore you, since your story is just like mine.

The truth is, my heart wasn’t in it this year. The goofy pageantry of the cards I normally love lacked any semblance of joy for me, sadly, since it is usually one of my favorite things to do. I could have just done it. My theme was simple enough. I could have ridden the wave of guilt or other people’s expectations, hiding under the familiar cloud labeled ‘should’- that if I am not careful to blow away each morning, hovers, shadowing all my day’s work.

Instead, I made what was, for me, an important choice. I chose gentleness toward myself. I listened to the song my soul was singing even if it was a sad and lilting dirge. I chose to move to that rhythm this Advent season over the happy jingle of sleigh bells ringing.

As soon as I made that decision the devil came to sit on my shoulder. Not the actual devil, mind you, as I’m sure he has more important tasks to attend to- but merely the devilish part of myself. This part of me does not mind the should-cloud’s shadow, since it taints all work with a certain urgency. This part of me drives myself on, past exhaustion, past where my soul tells me it needs to stop. Its favorite pastime is waking me up at 2:40 am each morning with stunning clarity at the horrible person I’ve become, and to remind me of all of the people I have either disappointed or have the capacity to disappoint tomorrow.

I’ve butted heads with that part of myself all year since I made it my resolution last January 1^st to stop resisting God’s work in my life, even if I do not understand what that work is. I’m in a transition point in life, marked by certain pains and disappointments unique to me, but also dull in its impartiality; growth and change pain us all.

My resolution, even in those first few months when I did not know it, was the promise to be still. Transition points in our lives demand stillness. They demand taking regular time with nothing on the agenda except to stare off into space. I have spent hours and whole days staring. I think I have about half of the credits needed for a PhD in staring by now.

To make time for something our culture nearly unanimously condemns as a waste of time required radical generosity toward myself, something that does not come naturally. It required radical attentiveness to the yearnings of my soul, and as much as I was able, to give it what it asked of me. Often my soul wanted fresh air. It wanted to travel to lonely places. It wanted to sit with suffering people, broken people, desperate people, like me. It wanted to linger and listen. Mostly, my soul simply wanted time to descend, slowly, like tea leaves to the bottom of a cup, and my only job was to chill out and stop stirring the water every 3 seconds.

It has taken me 11 months to realize what I’m experiencing is grace. Down here at the bottom of my teacup I’ve taken a long, deep breath. Stillness feels a lot like freedom. I don’t have to be everything and do everything. The world is not as impacted as I imagined if I slow down a little. Not all problems have a solution, and not all endings can be wrapped up in a bow. And the more generous I have been with myself the greater my capacity to give grace generously away.

Its dawning on me that the inverse is also true- the less grace I take in, the less I can, and have, given away. Sure, I can fake it for a while. I can grit my teeth and bear it, but eventually, something spills out on the sides. It always does.

I guess it is true what I have read countless times: we cannot give what we have not received.

I’ve been hosting more in my church this season and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite roles in worship. The host does not have much airtime, does not preach the message, does not get the cool Janet Jackson head microphone. The host welcomes the people, prepares the people for worship, and blesses the people before they leave. And I really love to bless people. I bless my children every night before they go to sleep and every morning when they leave my care. I love to be the conduit for the hand of God to reach out to them, to touch them; cover and keep them.

I wrote a blessing for you, and while it’s not a picture of me and my family in lederhosen, it will have to do. I’ve written it in three stanzas, one for each of the three big themes I have learned about God this year. One, God’s voice is clear and strong and true and beautiful if we take the time to listen to it. He is faithful to guide and lead in love. Learning to trust His voice has been a deep place of affirmation of His presence among us. Two, God does not stop us from breaking nor does He scurry around sweeping up our pieces. He is a God who is not afraid to enter into broken spaces with and within us, and do His good work in the cracks of our pain and grief. Three, God is full of surprises, yet is never Himself taken by surprise. He always has a twinkle in His eye and something up His sleeve, and not in a trickster kind of way- which is an important and poignant distinction. He is always full of hope for us, working tirelessly behind the scenes of our lives, plotting for our good.

So, I’ll ask you what I ask my fellow congregants, that if they’re comfortable, to pry open their little fingers and receive with open palms, this blessing from God, to me, to you.

 

A Blessing For the New Year

 

May you…be gentle with yourself.

May you listen for the softer Voice of reason

That if you let it

Overpowers the voice of the oppressor.

This Voice goes before you

Knows your real name

And tells you the Truth

That nothing is lost when you slow, or even stop

Listen and wait

Come closer, in love.

 

May you remember with God

That we are all dust

Something God does not hold against us.

Nor is He concerned about our crumbling and blowing away

He knows what sustains us

And that broken is not the same as wasted.

Broken pieces leave space

in between

And who knows what wonders will fill it?

 

May you let go

Of resentments

Expectations and

Demands.

May you follow the example of water, living and otherwise,

Always seeking lower, deeper ground

Not to stay stagnant, but to move

Even if it means emptying yourself.

May you have the courage to stay still as long as it takes and

May your wide-open spaces

Be filled with good things.