Hello from Boxing Day and happy holidays and merry merry my friends. Don't you love these days between Christmas and the New Year, when nothing is expected of you? We went for a long, long walk in the woods, with the whippet in his Newmarket jacket, red and yellow and alert, and saw other people similarly bundled up, with their dogs, their children, trundling along, with the crows above, skies white/grey, pines blue/green, one foot in front of another, realizing we're all doing that walking each other home thing Ram Dass talks about. Home for mince pies and tea and lighting the fire, and remembering this piece I wrote two weeks ago.
Last Tuesday night we went to our first Christmas carol service of the season. My oldest friend sings in the Battersea Choral Society and they do an annual Christmas concert to raise money for a local charity. I'd like to say we were gleeful on the way there, but it's funny what we bring to these events; reluctance, residual bits of work (because this seems to be the busy season) - anxiety for things that aren't done, worry about missing important calls - a bit of a sense that Christmas is only for children, a tiny bit of bah humbug, honestly. But we dutifully piled into the church, startled and happily surprised by the lights in London -- a wall of shimmery sparkles covering Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square, all kinds of jolly wreaths and twinkling baubles -- wearing our coats and gloves and hats even though it's not that cold. I wear my mother's double breasted brown tweed coat and one of her scarves, a jaunty red, covered in white horses (so hopeful), and I put on Christmas earings with red pomegranate jewels. We stumble into our row, where dear friends have saved seats, and we're a bit late, of course, and climb over people's bags and legs to get to our chairs. People are holding plastic glasses half filled with mulled wine and showing their teeth to each other. No doubt there were mince pies too, long devoured. Hello we say to our friends and the family of our friends and to the friends of the friends in the row in front, and we lean across each other and catch as much as one can, smilingly, hello, hello, are you ready for Christmas, is all well, making future plans of which 75% won't be kept, but are meant kindly and truthfully in the moment. The orchestra warms up. And the music starts. The nice conductor welcomes us. "He looks a bit like Sam Mendes, doesn't he?" I say to Charlie. "Well, I s'pose.." says Charlie. And the choir is there at the front of the church, men in black tie, women in black dresses, and sparkly things in their hair, different looks and hairdos, rows of black against the stone of the walls. I see my friend Vivien there in the middle, utterly poised and focused on the conductor, warm light on her face, her shoulder-length hair shimmering, her glasses perched on her nose, and I think about how I've known her since we were twelve when we sang in the school choir together in our blue cassocks (and Ian Dury at home). I'm so proud of her. I know how hard she has worked. I feel my heart swell when I see her there, with her book of music, immersed. The hymns come and some involve audience participation, the old favorites "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear," "Hark The Herald Angels Sing." We mumble in our chair, shuffle to our feet, sing heartily, with relief, remembering what it is to be singing carols again. We imagine we're children again, or think of our children, and nativity plays from Christmases past. A funny reading; a woman reads a recipe for a fruit cake which includes frequent testing of the whiskey; brilliantly, she acts drunker and drunker, hiccuping up on the pulpit, the audience in fits of laughter. I hold Charlie's hand. I sing too loudly. I'm now glad we're there and glad that we're all there together.
And then "O Holy Night" arranged by John Rutter. It might be nice, perhaps, if you don't know it, that you listen to it for maximum effect. It's here if you'd like to.
It's a sacred song about the night Jesus was born, written in 1847 by a Jewish composer Adolphe Adam, adapted from a french poem named Minuit, Chretiens written by an atheist wine merchant, Placid Cappeau. There is a rumour that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, there was a temporary cease fire when a French soldier stood up and began singing it in the trenches, which inspired a similar response from the other side.
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining/It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth/Long lay the world in sin and error pining/Till He appeared/And the soul felt its worth/The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices/For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
There is a swell in the music, a crescendo, and the altos come in during the next line:
Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices
Now, I don't know about you, but I burst into floods of tears at this point. Tears of relief, of joy, of feeling understood. It's the most powerful hymn.
(I said to my friend afterwards, "I totally fell apart during O holy night," and she said, thank goodness, "Oh I always do. I sob!")
So why do we sob? Why does this simple carol have just a profound effect on us? I would like to suggest that whether you are a believer or an atheist you can relate to the idea of falling to your knees, of literally being knocked to your knees as you give up trying to hold it all together. When you loosen your grip on the ironclad framework you've created to pin everything on, and fall to your knees, metaphorically or not, there is massive relief. You discover you are not alone. Somehow there is enormous strength in the idea of no longer holding on and yet feeling totally supported, as if you're not alone, that you're never alone, and that the universe, or God, or the angels in this case, have your back.
Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices
Imagine everything leaving you, all the stress and the anxiety and the clinging to the small ego, just to experience the awe of the angels singing.
This emptying is what Cynthia Bourgeault calls "kenosis." I've always imagined this to be the state one achieves through meditation. That quiet stillness which allows you to hear what is intended for you. But it's easy to achieve by walking. Walk out into the trees, into the middle of a field, or just sit in your garden quietly, and it will come over you, the stillness. We are so busy! We fill each living moment with things. How wonderful to stop, to fall to your knees, to allow space for the angels. It's a childlike point of light that lives in each one of us.
The song continues
Truly He taught us to love one another/His law is love and His gospel is peace/Chains shall He Break for the slave is our brother/And in His name/All oppression shall cease
There is so much anxiety and fear in the world and none of us are immune from it, even if we actively avoid reading the news. (I merely glimpse at the New York Times front page, but the crazy has a way of pulling you in.) I'm aware that the planets are all over the place, that the world is chaotic, that peace and joy have been usurped by the cynical, the power-hungry, the greedy, and everything feels wobbly. Therefore, I urge you to take time every day for a little bit of quiet where you can feel still and just listen for a bit.
I am drawn back again and again to Mary Karr who writes about how she came to prayer:
Okay, I couldn’t stop drinking. I’d tried everything but prayer. And somebody suggested to me that I kneel every morning and ask God for help not picking up a cocktail, then kneel at night to say thanks. “But I don’t believe in God,” I said. Again Bill Knott came to mind:
People who get down
on their knees to me
are the answers to my prayers.
—Credo
The very idea of prostrating myself brought up the old Marxist saw about religion being the opiate for the masses and congregations dumb as cows. God as Nazi? I wouldn’t have it. My spiritual advisor at the time was an ex-heroin addict who radiated vigor. Janice had enough street cred for me to say to her, “Fuck that god. Any god who’d want people kneeling and sniveling—”
Janice cut me off. “You don’t do it for God, you asshole,” she said. She told me to try it like an experiment: pray for thirty days, and see if I stayed sober and my life got better.
And you can watch her talk about this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUrz6tWfBxY
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On Christmas Day, Charlie was ringing the bells and I wandered over after meditating with Nigel at 8.30am (a long walk, all of about 100 yards) to catch the nine o'clock service. The vicar was late. He often is. I'm not much of a fan but I decided to give him a chance because last year's Christmas sermon wasn't bad at all, and my view of him had begun to shift. But at 9.15am people were beginning to fidget. The man next to me, Derek, and I discussed dementia and old people's homes. Gwen, who was in the pew in front of us turned around and said "Oh I hope the vicar hasn't overslept." I was contemplating that the thought "you had one job" doesn't feel like a very Christian thing to ponder, especially next to Derek and behind Gwen at 9.15am on Christmas morning in a church built in 1100. He lumbered in a few minutes later and sped us through the service. There was no pianist or organist and he was clearly in a rush for the next service a few miles away, so half way through the first warbling verse of Hark The Herald Angels Sing, he shouted "Last Verse!" & of course we were all so surprised that we all dutifully obeyed. No chance of a Blessing of the Animals, then? And then in the call and response prayers, he started speaking the next paragraph just as we were speaking the "and with thy spirit" bit, which was a wee bit rude, don't you thing. By the time we got to the sermon, my arms were firmly cross across my chest and I had a "this better be good" expression across my face.
He did the thing that seasoned speakers do where he started to look from one pew to another, one face to the next, in order to try to connect, and refused to give him anything. I was having a Christmas Morning Mexican Stand Off with the vicar.
But then he said this bit about the light. About coming to a stable and experiencing the coming of the light in the form of the divine birth. And he talks about the light and how the light allows us to see things clearly and as they are. And how we need to see life as it is. And somehow I dropped my cynicism and I forgave Father Paul for being up too late last night because I remembered that the only way to find equanimity is to choose to see the world as it is and not as you wish it to be. Not because I am good person but because I remembered for a glimpse of a moment the person I'd like to be.
The only place to come from is love.
The only way to be is kind.
The only way to live is now.
And to see things as they are, without judgement.
Again and again.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
I think that we choose to walk in the light. I think we look at the finite number of days we have on this planet and we make a choice. Actually, I'm not sure we have a choice.
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