Invitation into Hope and Struggle

Many years, especially as a new minister, at the approach of the Winter Solstice, as the days grew shorter still, the nights longer, and we waited, waited, waited, for the earth’s angle in relationship to the sun to shift, I would say, light-heartedly yet seriously, that Arlo Guthrie is right: "you can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in." I might quote Sarah Williams, "I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." I’d implore congregations to "sit still and calm in the darkness, rest your eyes, leave off your busyness, the light will come soon enough." I'd admonish, "care well for yourself in the darkness but fear not."

But some years those true but easy things didn’t come to my heart. Because, those years, as the light still faded, more and more each day, there seemed to be no signs that the dimming would halt when the Solstice arrived. Wars were looming or continuing. First graders had been recently slaughtered. A pandemic unlike any for a hundred years had upended our lives and taken our loved ones. Powerful national figures rejected facts, repeated falsehoods. Rhetoric of stolen elections filled our ears. Each of these threatened, those mid-Decembers, to cause even the most faithful among us to reject the promise of this season. To cause us to ask, at best, what possible difference can it make, in world affairs and our own lives, that the days will soon grow lighter and longer? What good is symbolism in such a time as this? To ask, at cynical worst, are we sure the days will grow lighter and longer? Nothing is happening as it should anymore, so why should the tilting of the earth on its axis continue to follow natural law?

This year, this Winter Solstice 2022, the mood in my heart and in society at large seems to fall in between easy optimism and fearful despair. Brittany Griner is home; Paul Whelan (and some 150 other Americans) are still wrongfully detained by state actors in more than a dozen countries. The Respect for Marriage Act was signed into law, but though it requires recognition of same-sex marriages across state lines, it does not guarantee the right to marry. Not only that, no amount of respect for marriage, no number of marriages, reduces any of the harm, life-threatening harm done to LGBTQI youth and adults–particularly trans-women of color–every single day. We’ve enjoyed many months of loosened pandemic restrictions but as colder temperatures and the holidays bring people indoors and into big gatherings the so-called tripledemic of influenza, RSV and COVID makes those very indoor gatherings fraught with danger for the most vulnerable among us. And on and on. Each hopeful news story seems to be tempered if not reversed by a significant caveat.

Even as this solstice, this Advent season we find ourselves jubilantly taking up holiday activities that felt and were unsafe in recent Decembers, the colorful lights we kindle to tide us over until warm and revealing natural light returns are sometimes lost in the glaring light of blinding flashes of hate. And the cozy, generative darkness we would nestle into, the darkness spoken of in our opening words, is too often pushed aside by a nearly completely dark shadow or film of oppression.

I don’t know what your conversations and social media feeds are like. Mine are filled with competing voices: those that say the margin of victory was too narrow, the bill doesn’t go far enough, we can’t be pacified or lulled into inaction, or distracted by celebrations of wins that are too small, too late, scarcely relevant in a dying world filled with hate, violence, greed; and those that say, the wins are real, no matter how small, and we mustn’t silence our joy because it is what renews us to take up the incomplete, arduous and vital work again tomorrow. In other words, some of my friends and colleagues seemed to be rooted in these days of waning light, and some of them seem to be living into the growing light we know is coming. Both are faithful understandings of what is needed for us and from us in our quest to heal the world, love our neighbors and expand the circle of our neighborhood until it encompasses all. I find myself wavering between the two: sometimes on the brink of despair; sometimes filled by the joy of what a friend recently called a ‘pinprick’ of hope.

Hanukkah begins tonight. Christmas is just a week away. Two very different holidays, commemorating two very different events, loosely bound in our contemporary Judeo-Christian zeitgeist by their falling around the Winter Solstice, by their designations as Festivals of Light, and by their stories of social order upended by might and power disguised as infant and underdog. They aren’t the same story; they don’t hold the same significance in their respective faith traditions. Still, they are both stories, celebrations for this season because they remind us that miracles happen—and they happen precisely when the ordinary way of things, natural law and social order, leave no room for hope. And they are stories, celebrations for this season, this 2022 Winter Solstice in particular, when we can’t seem to decide whether the horrors of life or the possibilities of life should hold more sway in our hearts and on actions, because they remind us that almost always, the conduit for miracles is humanity—humble and ordinary and extraordinary and bold and foolish all at once.

And so, I stand before you this Sunday closest to the Solstice , and say to you, humble, ordinary and extraordinary ones, hold onto hope boldly and foolishly as we enter these last short days, hold onto hope, boldly and foolishly, even though the light always grows more slowly than we wish it would.

I turn to poets and preachers when I need help finding the pin prick of hope worth daring even as the light still wans:

Edna St. Vincent Millay: "Let us turn for comfort to this simple fact:/We have been in trouble before . . . and we came through."

Kendyl Gibbons: "Do not underestimate the power of the manger, and the hope it holds. The Christmas song of the angels is not as innocent as it sounds. It has turned the world upside down before now. It still can."

Madeleine L’Engle, as poet: "We cannot wait till the world is sane/to raise our songs with joyful voice."

And Madeleine L’Engle as novelist, too, from the book that was awarded the 1963 Newberry Medal:

“We want them to see their home planet," Mrs. Whatsit said.

The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. "Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?"

Again Mrs. Which's voice reverberated through the cave.“There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones.”

…[the planet] seemed to be covered with a smoky haze. Through the haze Meg thought she could make out the familiar outlines of continents…

“Is it because of our atmosphere that we can’t see properly?” she asked anxiously.

“Nno, Mmegg, yyou knnoww thatt itt iss nnott tthee attmosspheeere,” Mrs. Which said. “Yyou mmusstt bee brrave.”

…

“Did it just come?” Meg asked in agony, unable to take her eyes from the sickness of the shadow which darkened the beauty of the earth…

“No…It hasn’t just come. It has been there for a great many years. That is why your planet is such a troubled one.”

“Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkkness!”

“…what is going to happen?"

"Wee wwill cconnttinnue tto ffightt!"…

“And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe, it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy. You think about that, and maybe it won't seem strange to you that some of our very best fighters have come right from your own planet, and it's a little planet, dears, out on the edge of a little galaxy. You can be proud that it's done so well."

"Who have our fighters been? Calvin asked.

"Oh, you must know them, dear," Mrs. Whatsit said.

Mrs. Who's spectacles shone out at them triumphantly. "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

“Jesus!” Charles Wallace said. “Why, of course, Jesus!” “Of course!” Mrs Whatsit said. “Go on, Charles, love. There were others. All your great artists. They’ve been lights for us to see by.”

“Leonardo da Vinci?” Calvin suggested tentatively. “And Michelangelo?”

“And Shakespeare,” Charles Wallace called out, “and Bach! And Pasteur and Madame Curie and Einstein!”

Now Calvin’s voice rang with confidence. “And Schweitzer and Gandhi and Buddha and Beethoven and Rembrandt and St. Francis!”

“Now you, Meg,” Mrs. Whatsit ordered.

“Oh, Euclid, I suppose…And Copernicus.”

Madeleine L’Engle’s invitation into hope and struggle isn’t perfect. It’s predominantly Western. Predominantly white. Predominantly male. It’s also half a century old. Perhaps today she’d include among the fighters, among the bearers of light for us to see by: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, Patrisse Cullors, Stephen Biko, Desmond Tutu, Marian Wright Edelman, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Cesar Chavez, Mae Jemison, Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock. Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Lizzo. Or perhaps she wouldn’t. It’s hard to know these things, so many years after the fact. But we would include them. And that’s what matters.

And that we include ourselves. That matters even more.

If, in these times, we can’t believe that the shift toward the light is inevitable, then we can give thanks for the invitation into hope and struggle that the stories of the season extend to us. The invitation to become ourselves conduits for miracles, might and power disguised as infant and underdog, elder and youth and child, engineer, biologist and retiree, musician, therapist, teacher and neighbor, laborer, artist and student. And we can give thanks that so many of those invitations into both hope and struggle come to us as wide-ranging projects of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah’s Social Action Ministries: the Green Team, the Social Justice Committee, the Anti-Racism Committee and JUST (Justice Unites Savannah Together).

I can’t always say with conviction, "rest well in the darkness." Sometimes it is an uneasy darkness. I can’t always say "fear not." Sometimes there is much to fear. But I can say, even this year, "a light shines in the darkness, and each time we dare to accept the season’s invitation into hope and struggle, it shines brighter still."

Amen.