A Christmas Gift for 2022: a new thing

This Christmas season is strange. It is different. I had the opportunity to spend time with my family and friends in a pre-season celebration, and now I am preparing to go to work this afternoon. If the weather permits, I will see my sister and her family on Christmas Day. I am thousands of miles away from my own children this year. I am feeling homesick. I am also feeling thankful because this year I learned what it means to truly surrender to that which is greater than we are, and to find joy in the moment at hand. I was once a person with her eyes fixed on the future. The gift 2022 gave me is that I learned how to stay here, now, and enjoy.

Advent is a time to prepare for the birthday of Christ. In this time of preparation, we light candles, return to church services, buy gifts for our loved ones, and plan our holiday feasts. It is a time of light and darkness because if any of these pieces are not present, we can feel depressed, deprived, guilty, or abandoned. We can feel that we are not enough, our efforts are inadequate, or that the world is not paying us our dues. The Christmas season is actually a time to reconcile with these feelings and move past them.

The story of Christ’s birth is one of humility and poverty: a young teenage girl giving birth, a poor husband who keeps her though she is pregnant with someone else’s child, and a community too indifferent to provide adequate housing for a vulnerable family. Sound familiar? This story is ancient and could be happening in this moment. At the end of this story, we see the power of the Divine in the family receiving shelter and gifts- as humble as the assistances are, they are enough. Reaching out to the Divine may not get us rich, but it will provide what we need.

The gift of 2022 is an emerging understanding of this new thing I have discovered in the Divine- presence to the moment. In a mindset of surrender, acceptance, and gratitude, I see more clearly the gifts at hand. I have become re-sensitized to what actually matters. I have become joyful in service. Still, I miss my family. I miss my friends. I miss those who I have spent my life with in loving relationship, even as I make new friends and colleagues, and deepen connections with family out east. These feelings are not an either/or but a yes/and.

A Christmas exercise: look around and name your gifts. What are they?