Season of Darkness and Light

Rev. Amy A. Freedman
Channing Memorial Church
December 10, 2000

We are in the midst of the Christmas season! Everywhere there are signs of Yuletide celebration. Newport is decorated with evergreens, red ribbons, golden pineapples, and white twinkling lights. People are decorated too with red and green clothing, sequins and snowflakes. The other day, I even caught sight of a golden retriever wearing antlers! Around the Island, there is the excitement of special events- each one promising to be a treat for the eyes, ears or palate. We are surrounded once more with the delightful scent of evergreen, cinnamon, and nutmeg. We indulge in the familiar tastes of family recipes only baked during this season. We join our voices in song- carols that we know by heart. Even the stores play music to which we can hum along.

This is the joy of the Christmas season. The wide-eyed wonder of children. The radiance of our Candlelight Service with the warm glow softening the hard edges for a time, inviting us back to a sense of awe at the beauty that surrounds and sustains us.

December is the darkest month of the year. The days are short and the nights are long. Although I am well aware of the solar cycle, I must admit to feeling a bit put off when the sun starts to set at four. I can understand why the ancients were moved to hold ceremonies to insure the sun's return. The midwinter festivals often featured fires blazing against the darkness. The feasting and revelry of pagan custom was condemned by the Christians who felt that the focus of devotion should be on heavenly not earthly delights. When the church found it impossible to abolish pagan customs, they Christianized them, which explains the wide use of greens and candles at this time.

Long before the birth of Jesus, the Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a festival that lasted from December 17 through December 24. Waverly Fitzgerald describes the celebration as follows:

I remember hearing people say that the holiday season was a hard time of year. I never could understand why. I was swept up with the light wondrous aspects of the season. My upbringing was privileged. I am deeply grateful to have grown-up in a home of warmth, safety, and love.

However, two years ago, something changed. You could say that I lost my innocence. My brother, Michael, died in late October of 1998 of a heart attack at the age of forty-one. He had struggled with addiction problems and diabetes through out his life. Although I had feared for his life on other occasions, at this time, he had seemed to be doing well and so his death was a shock. I was living in Berkeley at the time and was serving as the Intern Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church there. Since I would be working over the holidays, it was decided that my parents and my brother would come out to celebrate Christmas with me. The last time that I spoke with Michael on the phone, he was counting the days until he would land in San Francisco. I spoke of the many things that I would show him.

Since my brother's death, I have been grappling with theological questions. I have come to understand what is meant by "the dark night of the soul". I have been working through my bereavement while at the same time being present to others as they face death. Foremost, I have been touched by the sanctity of the transition from life to death. How both the dying and the living are changed.

My values are determined in large part by my religious upbringing. I was raised a Unitarian Universalist during the 1970's. At that time, my home church was humanist. God language was almost never used. I remember exploring aspects of the world's religions in Sunday School. I learned about free will and the importance of reason. The church gave me a sense of power to determine my own path and to develop my own perspective. Those gifts leant me a sense of optimism about human potential and our ability to love boldly and to act for justice.

The same liberal religious faith did not serve me well when I faced death. I had been taught that when the body dies, nothing follows. We are to make the most of the life that we have. Heaven and hell are the realms that we create for ourselves on this earth. The deceased live on but only through their works and in the memory of those living. These hard "truths" no longer speak to me. Although I still feel that living an ethical life is of utmost importance, I have a sense that a person does not expire completely.

When Henry David Thoreau was on his deathbed, he was asked about his views of the afterlife. Thoreau responded, "One world at a time". During that time, he was throwing away the baggage of a period consumed by thoughts of a future judgment. My religious upbringing was of the other extreme closed off to anything but the present. The emphasis of liberal religious faith upon the here and now remains in the realm of the intellect and behavior. What of the heavy heart and longing spirit in the midst of human limitations?

My grief has led to an openness to the workings of the spirit. The question that will not let me go and that holds me still is, "What happens to the individual human soul after death?" I have read with interest many sermons and chapters on the subject of death.

In a leather-bound volume of sermons from King's Chapel published in 1891, I discovered "Immortality. An Easter Sermon." The sermon was written by Andrew Preston Peabody a Unitarian preacher and the Professor of Christian Morals of Harvard University. He writes eloquently about how "the continuance of life through the death-change" is no more incredible than the processes that surround us each moment. He uses examples from nature to illustrate his point. A towering tree grows up from a tiny seed. A flock of geese take to the skies in seasonal migration. Life and death are inextricably connected. He writes, "Everywhere death is the minister of life, and life sustains and renews itself by death."

What I find most compelling in Peabody's writing are his illustrations from the natural world. We are surrounded by the wonders of the life cycle. The fall of an autumn leaf turning to the rich mulch of soil. Death and life are connected in organic ways so easy to understand and accept in other sentient beings. Although I struggle to believe his conviction that each soul enters into harmony with the Divine, when in the context of nature, that reality seems obvious.

In November of 1998, I flew from California to Boston to attend my brother's funeral. It was an important time for me to be with my family. The pain was excruciating. In coming to grips with Michael's death, I have often felt that a part of myself has been amputated. My identity is forever changed and the loss is profound.

That December, a Memorial Service was held for Michael at my home church. The tone of that occasion was a celebration of life. I was unable to travel across the country for that event. At the end of the ceremony, my parents released mylar balloons as a way of letting go. A single balloon remained caught in the chancel ceiling. My mother waited for it to drift back down and brought it with her when she visited Berkeley over Christmas.

On Christmas Eve day, we brought this purple balloon to a card store called Paper Plus. The clerk, an undergraduate with a ring in his nose, immediately connected with my mother. She explained about the balloon and he worked hard to fill it even though the opening was torn. With patches of duct tape, we carried a rather limp balloon to the Berkeley Marina. At the very least, we thought the balloon might float on the water out to sea. With my mother and father at my side, we read a poem by Mary Oliver:

To live in this world
you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends upon it;
And when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Tears streamed down my face as I released the ribbon. Then silently, the balloon lifted into the air. Despite its limp appearance, the purple balloon took flight! It went up and up in the direction of San Francisco until it was a purple speck between the arches of the Bay Bridge.

I offer this to you as my Christmas story. Darkness and Light are inextricably woven. I do not know what happens after death but I have a sense that the individual human soul does not expire. I reject the teachings of my youth that said that existence ends with the final heartbeat. My brother lives on. I cannot say exactly how but I am open to the workings of the spirit. Perhaps the shift that occurs from life to death is so miraculous or so ordinary as to remain indescribable. My longing for clarity about death still exists, probably always will. However, of this I am absolutely certain--- Love is a universal and eternal force. As we enter into a time of celebration with familiar sights, sounds, and tastes, it is no wonder that we should be visited by ghosts of Christmases past.

I will close with a passage by Unitarian Universalist minister, Ed Frost:

The carols we sing
Are echoes of the years of our lives,
Christmas visitors bringing with them
Memories of other scenes,
Of other times
Of other people
Of us, ourselves, in other guises.
We have sung the same songs
In the childhood which abides in us still,
We have sung them in young love
In the naive dream
Of an eternity of Christmases with the lover.
We have sung these songs to drown out hurt
And to amplify joy.
If, in this season,
We find that we are of many shifting moods
It can only be because we have lived
A life of many moods
Each recreated in the play of Christmas.
It is not a betrayal of the Christmas spirit,
To stare quietly at the snowflakes.
We cannot always sing,
And the spirit needs freedom to wander,
To re-visit old regrets
And to remember joy,
Returning, then, to remind us
From whence we came
All covered with snow and life,
Singing old songs in new places.
We sing together in the harmony
Of our humanness,
Remembering, at Christmas
Every tear, every hand,
Every singing of the song.