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WEDDINGS

In the cosmic dance of earth & sun, we come now to the winter solstice. As you may know, the earth rotates on a wobbly axis, and so the northern reaches of our planet are leaning further away now than at other times of year. In two days, we will come upon the shortest day of the year, and on Tuesday at 6:42 am our time, winter officially arrives.

Many ancient cultures built their greatest architectures -- tombs, temples, cairns and sacred observatories -- so that they aligned with the solstices and equinoxes. Many of us know that Stonehenge is a perfect marker of both solstices.

But not so many people are familiar with Newgrange, a beautiful megalithic site in Ireland. This huge circular stone structure is estimated to be 5,000 years old, older by centuries than Stonehenge, older than the Egyptian pyramids! It’s estimated to have taken 300 men 20 years to build. The entire structure was built to receive a shaft of sunlight deep into its central chamber at dawn on the winter solstice.

You have to walk 60 feet underground into the darkness. The dramatic event lasts for 17 minutes at dawn from the 19th to the 23rd of December. The light illuminates a stone basin below intricate carvings -- spirals, eye shapes, solar discs. From deep darkness to utter brilliance direct from the sun at the turning of the year– pretty dramatic.

It is a time of greater darkness. Not only because of the winter solstice. There is darkness in the wider world. There is war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, in Africa. Our country– perhaps more than usual– is the butt of jokes in the first world and the target of terrorist attacks in the 3rd world.

There is darkness at home. Our state and many others, denies the pursuit of happiness to gays & lesbians; A recent Harris Poll says that 68% of Americans believe the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer;"and 44% believe the people running the country don't care about them. Everywhere in the news and on TV is cynicism and greed. The days grow short.

There may be darkness in your heart. Someone in this room is unemployed. Several are under-employed. Some are thinking about divorce, the loss of a loved one. Some are pondering news they got recently from the doctor– the darkness seems to be moving in. For others, it may be grayer– love grown cold, worry about parents or children, a looming deadline.

I bet there have been times in your life when you were deep in the darkness. When you were alone and unsure of your way out, or even if you wanted to get out. I am sure there have been times in your life when you saw a glint, a glamour, a gloaming, a twilight far off. And you may have wondered if it was the headlights of an oncoming train, or a beacon drawing you closer to your destination.

Sometimes we can be deep in the darkness. There is no far off light. There are alarm bells and phones ringing and beepers beeping trying to warn us that we are in the darkness, and they don't help much. We already know we are in the dark, we feel alone, we don't know which way is out.

We may feel as if "this little light of mine's" fuel is spent. All we have is a rock & a hard place to strike against and hope for a spark. And in that spark, we shoot a glance– not very far, but maybe far enough– to take a few steps in the right direction. It’s frustrating to have to rely on sparks to illuminate the way, but it is better than total darkness.

We may even have to sing to keep going. We may have to perform a little ritual to keep moving. We may have to whistle a little tune, or hum something or simply repeat a phrase over and over again, one foot in front of the other. We may have to go the long way, we may have to go to church.

We can go to church because we know that there-- other travelers will arrive, shaking the storm and snow off their clothes, taking off the frowns and frustrations in order to be together, and hoping for some fresh light from one another, hoping to see with faith eyes.

In church, we can lift up our gaze with the benefit of a wider vision. In church we can sing along with stronger voices. In church we can listen to a deeper silence. In church we magnify our senses, we practice using our faith eyes.

Our own human eyes are designed to detect only visible light, which is a tiny slice of the electromagnetic spectrum - it’s the part made up of light with relatively short wavelengths. All other forms of light are completely invisible to us.

Take infrared light. We cannot see it, but in this case our blindness is really a blessing. Since any heat-emitting object glows with infrared light, we would be constantly distracted by those wavelengths if we could see them. There are some deep-sea shrimp living near hot vents in the ocean who can see infrared light, but that makes perfect sense for them. They need to see the heat. But we don’t. Another part of the electromagnetic spectrum– long, stretched-out radio waves would take huge eyes, like satellite dishes. That wouldn’t work very well for us either.

For the most part, the eyes we do have work well for us. In darkness, we don’t see so well– there is much less color, less detail. If we look hard, we can usually find light– even in shadows.

In fact, all of the shadows we encounter in day-to-day life contain some small amount of light. Shadow expert David Lynch, co-author of a book called Color and Light in Nature, points out that a shadow is filled with light reflected from the sky — otherwise it would be completely black.

If you want to see a completely black shadow, one that has no brightness at all, you have to go to the moon because the moon has no atmosphere to bounce light into the dark corners of the lunar surface.

Just so, there is always some light to be found, if you have the eyes of faith. Even in our shadow times– our times of disappointment, failure, & temptation– the Spirit of Life bounces some light into our darkness.

I was reminded of this last week. Last week, the night before the Christmas Pageant, my daughter gave me a gift she had made at the holiday party. It was a candle holder, holding two white candles. It was made out of a little tree trunk, cut in half long ways, so there would be a flat side down. On the rounded side up, there were two holes for the candles, and place for a little greenery around the candles and some stuff that looked like snow added the final touch.

After dinner, I lit the two candles and gazed at them for a minute. My daughter asked a simple, but dangerous question: does this remind you of something? That question can be the key that unlocks a lot of doors.

Before I thought about my answer, I found myself speaking: yes. It does remind me of something. It reminds me of a time, many winters long ago. My life was in darkness. I despaired of every being content, much less happy. I saw some candle light at Christmas time, and it was as if there was a little glimmer of light in my soul.

Maybe, just maybe, I thought, I would live through those dark days, and I would find someone or find some people, and become part of a family, my family. And I would love those people, and they would love me, and that was the glimmer of light that kept me going at a time when there didn't seem to be all that much to live for except anger. And anger is not a very friendly food.

At that time in my life, I would be traveling down a night-time street, and I could see the lights on in some of the houses on the street. Those houses with decorations, that had families in them. Places where people knew each other, places where people felt they belonged.

The glint of candles was a reminder that there could come a day when I would have my own family, my own house, my own shelter against the cold snow blowing outside. There could come a day when my search for family would come to a happy end. All that from a little candle light.

And so the gift of the wooden candle holder was much more than a nice gift from my daughter. It was confirmation. I had arrived at my destination. I had witnesses.

I need a reminder every once in a while. I need a “dangerous question” every once in a while. These questions can be keys that open closed doors we get used to brushing by. Something like– Does this remind you of something? Or something like– Is that really true?

Sometimes I need a whole new way of seeing. I’m looking for a new way of seeing, but I don’t realize I’m squinting, and that’s why the world looks strange. It’s not the world– it’s the way I’m looking at it. My gaze gets clouded with anger, despair, or cynicism.

The eyes of cynicism are a form of squinting. It gets to the point where we have a hard time believing that people can live genuine lives of compassion and selflessness.

It colors the way we choose to live our own lives. It affects our belief in a loving and caring community. And it leaves us bitter and feeling that the world has given us short shrift, that life has unfairly passed us by. We need faith eyes.

The eyes of rationalism aren’t much better. We think that there’s nothing real except what we see in that small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum– the visible world. Unless we can see it, touch it, taste it, hear it, smell it - it’s not there. It’s hard for us to believe that there’s a future which calls for our participation, there is a community we can choose to care about.

We need faith eyes. Maybe a transplant isn’t needed, Maybe we simply need a new prescription. We need a lens that will enable us to see what we’ve never seen before.

It may be the lens of our history. The words & deeds of prophetic women & men speak to us about how what was once thought impossible became reality– through the work of their hands, through the gifts & application of their time, talent, and treasure.

Our spiritual forebearers freed the slaves, got the vote for women, proposed a 40 hour work week, reformed the mental institutions, provided free public schools for children, and did a host of other things that were almost unthinkable in the time but which we can take for granted today. They used the lens of history to support their faith eyes. We can use the lens of history to see better, to see with faith eyes.

A new prescription for us may be the prescription lenses of the church: We need the encouragement and support of a community of faith. The lens of worship can feed us; the lens of service can give us strength. Love is the doctrine of ths church, and Love is the ointment that heals the eyes of faith.

In a time of darkness when we combine the light of our individual candles, we create a much brighter light. We can use the lens of the church to see better, to see with faith eyes.

When you add all this together, you get magic. Let me tell you about magic. Faith eyes can see in the dark. They can see in the future, they can see in the past. They can see through metal and concrete and they are much better than X-ray vision because they can see beyond our own life.

Faith eyes are magic, and they are the kind of magic it takes some determination to pull off but they are available to everyone.

Faith eyes could see the end of slavery when it seemed impossible.

Faith eyes could see interracial marriage when it was against the law.

Faith eyes can see equality for gays & lesbians even in the dark of prejudice and discrimination.

Faith eyes see more than the future, faith eyes can pierce the very heart of Mystery.

As Albert Einstein said: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Crown, 1954), 11.

Your spiritual homework this week is to go marveling– to look for marvels in the natural world just outside your doors. There’s a lot there if you know how to look. Getting on your hands and knees is a pretty good way to start. As Annie Dillard puts it:

It we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe. If creation had been left up to me, I'm sure I wouldn't have had the imagination or courage to do more than shape a single, reasonably sized atom, smooth as a snowball, and let it go at that. [Nothing] could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1974), 144.

There is wonder in the air all around us. But even though I am surrounded by this great cloud, I am often blind to its beauty and power. This is one of the reasons to go marveling as a spiritual practice.

It is true that a genuine sense of wonder is born when we cultivate an openness to all that cannot be understood, [even that] which can scarcely be believed.

“Bernal Diaz, who accompanied Cortés on the conquest of Mexico and subsequently recorded the adventure in his The Conquest of New Spain, at one point recalls the Spaniards' first spellbound vision of the Aztec capital: ‘Gazing on such wonderful sights, we did not know what to say, or whether what appeared before us was real.’” (Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder [New York: Pantheon, 1995], 80-81).

I know that feeling. And I hope you know it too. I had occasion to fly on a commercial airplane while my mother was dying. On the trip back from her memorial service in California, it was gray and a little rainy in Chicago. There was a thick overcast, dark & gray.

As the airplane went up, up, up, we penetrated the clouds and we were enclosed in milky nothingness. You could barely see the wingtip out the window. It was hard to tell up from down, right from left, or what direction we might possibly be heading.

But I had a basic trust in the pilots. I was using my faith eyes. I know a lot more about their training now than I ever did before. And after a few moments, a little tension, we came up through the top of the clouds. And it was blindingly brilliant. I could barely keep my eyes open.

The perspective of a few thousand feet made all the difference. We could see for 50 miles no problem. We flew along above this carpet of clouds that looked like a rumpled blanket of snow.

When we came in to land at Lambert, we descended through the clouds again, a few bumps here and there and then back in to the gray and wet "real world" of St. Louis.

But which world was real? The one above? Or the one below? In the grey, wet darkness close to the ground, I could barely imagine something brighter. When we are deep in the darkness, we can barely imagine something so much brighter it will temporarily hurt our eyes.

At this time of year, the days grow short, the hour grows near, and the darkness may seem to deepen– whether that darkness is in war on the other side of the world, or the darkness is at home, or in your heart.

When we see with faith eyes, we cast a wider vision, we seek marvels and wonders, we look for ways to bring about the world and the life we always wanted.

May you fill your spiritual batteries with wonder this week.

May you find some wonder in this day.

Have a Wonder-filled week.

Have a Wonder-full life.

Amen.

Let us sing again: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, #240. But this time, let’s sing all the verses, let’s tell the whole story. For the story does not end in darkness but in light.

Spiritual Homework

Week of December 19, 2004 from Rev. Dr. Ó Connell Going Marveling for your Wonder Cabinet In the 16th and 17th centuries, among the most prized pieces of furniture well-off families maintained were "wonder cabinets." These were simply knickknack shelves, but dedicated to displaying collections of natural wonders. Our ancestors used to go what they called "marveling" in the world. They would go "marveling" and come back with unique butterflies. They would go "marveling" and come back with four-leaf clovers. They would go "marveling" and come back with shimmering seashells. They would put the triumphs of their "marvelings" in their wonder cabinets. Wonder cabinets were like momentary museums to the miraculous, giving their owners the chance for a daily dose of wonderment and marveling. Some folks have little home altars– just a corner of a desk or kitchen window sill, where they can put tokens to remind them of wonders they have experienced. What's in your wonder cabinet? When is the last time you went "marveling"? Your homework this week is to go marveling. You don’t need to bring anything physical back, but a small token will help you remember the story of your marvel or wonder. Taking children along helps because they will almost always want to pick something up and they will help you see things you might otherwise miss.

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