[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

Unseasonable

The merchants are not happy. The weather we're having is exceptionally 
balmy; it's overcast and so mild one barely needs a jacket. This makes me 
happy (heating bills), but it upsets the store owners, who count on the 
weather to help people get "into the Christmas spirit" -- that is, happy- 
happy- happy- spend- spend- spend.

Instead, what we've got is a sort of quiet, inward-turning feel to the 
landscape. Today the air is still and dampish, very faintly misty, and the 
trees spread out black lace against the silver of the water as dusk sets 
in. I like this; it feels very Adventish: anticipatory, expectant, poised 
on the edge of something major. Yes, it's not cosy and happy, but since 
when was Christmas supposed to be either?

Happiness isn't joy. Looking at the water, I remember sitting in the 
balcony of Sydenham Street United Church on Friday evening, at the 
Cantabile choirs' annual Christmas concert. Now, this was the sound of joy: 
behind us, at least forty uniformed teenaged girls, holding burning candles 
lined up along the walls; below us, twenty-odd boys, also in uniform, stood 
on the chancel steps, near the musicians and the conductor, whose music 
they were singing. We sat entranced as the music spiraled up like incense, 
the long, sinuous lines turning over and under each other -- edgy and 
chromatic at times, sometimes downright discordant, sweeping into piercing 
sweetness as the conductor-composer witched the music out of his singers 
with passion and authority. I don't know how long it went on -- eight 
minutes at least, maybe ten. It was fiercely difficult and astoundingly 
beautiful music, and the kids sang it perfectly, without sheet music.  When 
the music melted away, we exploded into applause and gave them a standing 
ovation. It was *that* good.

That music was joy. Joy isn't simple and it doesn't exclude disharmony, 
even pain; it includes and transforms it.  That piece wouldn't have put 
shoppers in the Christmas mood, trust me; in fact, many would have fled it. 
It was too strange and sometimes almost painful. One version of Christmas 
really does yearn for chestnuts roasting on an open fire and virginal snow 
and jolly family get-togethers. It's rather like our desire for simple 
unconditional positive regard instead of love, because love is not always 
comfortable.  We'd rather have good than God, because good is small and 
manageable and God is neither.

Joy, not happiness, is what we're given at Christmas because if we're doing 
this right, we never forget the rest of the story: Richard Wilber got it 
right: the child we wait for now will indeed be lifted up to die, a piecing 
discordance entirely contradictory to "the season's spirit".  But we can 
manage it because we know that this, too, is part of joy.

For now, we wait,in quiet expectation, of what we know each year will come, 
and which each years still stays mystery: how God crossed the chasm between 
us and arrived not as a warrior or a prince, but as the helpless child of 
the poor. Not in the least seasonal, but forever astonishing.