The Flames of Advent: Joy
How long, O Lord?
How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? For ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.
In case this feels familiar to you, this is what depression sounds like. Yes, even David ben Yishai, celebrated giant slayer and would-be king, suffered from depression like so many of us. The "lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death" is a plea to God Almighty for some miniscule spark of happiness before ... well ... I think it's pretty obvious what David was ideating.
For the past two and a half years I too have battled a deep and severe depression that themed my previous Flames of Advent posts. This one, I hate to tell you, is no different.
See, I was not looking forward to writing about joy. I had none. And to tell you the truth, I don't really even have it yet. But I knew that when joy was ready to be written about, she would make herself known to me. More correctly, joy would teach me her lesson when I was ready to learn it, and then I would write about the lesson I learned.
Joy showed up last week when I got schooled by an eight-year-old boy.
I'm a streetmosphere actor at my state capital's zoo and it's my job (no literally it's in my actual contracted job description) to bring holiday cheer to zoo guests in a festive and jolly manner. But how do you do that when you'd rather crawl in a hole and cry? How do you embody "the joy of the Lord" which is supposedly everlasting when at your core you are the first three verses of David's lament? How do you lighten someone else's eyes when yours want to "sleep the sleep of death"? Well anyway, I'm an actor, so I do what I do best: I act.
One such night this past week, I was a cookie elf who was "interviewing" guests to drum up enough Christmas spirit that the giant pre-programmed lights and music display magic Christmas tree would light up. I asked this young boy, eight years old or so, what his favorite thing was about the Christmas season. He couldn't pick just one thing, so I said, "Lemme put it this way: if the whole Christmas season came and went, and one thing didn't happen, and it made you feel like it just wasn't Christmas, what would that be?" He thought for one brief moment more before confidently declaring, "The Christmas joy. Without the joy of Christmas, none of the rest of it means anything."
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, thou hast perfected praise.
When I tell you my heart broke open ...
This child of less than ten winters has already mastered a lesson that people have spent sixty and eighty years trying to relearn. I was at once comforted and put to shame.
Well, the pre-programmed lights and music display magic Christmas tree lit up with an inspiring rendition of "Carol of the Bells," and the vivid lights danced in time in beautiful shapes and bright flashes. During the sentimental bridge before the tension chord ushering in the grand finale, the lights spell out "HAPPY HOLIDAYS" in big bright white block letters. It was the right hook to follow up the lesson from the little boy young man.
I got to thinking about the original meaning of "happy holidays" which wasn't the "whatever you celebrate I don't want to offend you" global platitude. It was just a heck of a lot easier than trying to spit out, "Happy Thanksgiving, merry Christmas, and happy New Year!" to everyone you met. As the lights continued dancing and flashing like so many angels trying to make hearts light, I realized that the holiday season was meant to be a reprieve from the stresses and weights of a year's worth of life.
"HAPPY HOLIDAYS" scrolling around that tree was a whisper from God to my heart: "Rejoice and be exceeding glad."
"This season is your break from the weight of the world," He told me. "I've tried to give you a chance to be in a state of sustained happiness and peace for a few weeks. You've got the rest of the year to burden yourself needlessly. The holiday season is sacred, like the Sabbath. Rest your heart through all these holidays. Take your break. I got it from here."
For us here in the US of A, the holiday season consists of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's packed into about a month and a half, and most people view it as a marathon of stress, long to-do lists, and merriment shaded by fatigue. For some, it's not even a holiday season at all, but an intense triple fortnight of comparison, failure, lack, want, and spinning wheels. Neither of those things is conducive to the holiday spirit, Christmas merriment, or joy.
The fourth Flame of Advent is a fragile candle. Joy is the most easily snuffed of all them, and she is the hardest to light.
And yet she burns the brightest of them all.
How long, O Lord? Until you come inside.
Have you ever tried to light a candle in the wind? Elton John did once, apparently. It's not easy. Arguably impossible. Striking a match in a storm, lighting birthday candles under a ceiling fan, keeping a torch lit in the rain, whatever image you want to call up in your mind--they all preach a sermon of futility.
However ...
I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress.
Come thou into the ark.
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and ... my high tower.
God's telling you He KNOWS you can't be joyful in the circumstances of this life most of the time. He KNOWS you can't light a candle in the wind. He KNOWS you can't ignite the fourth flame of advent when you're tossed about on the stormy sea that is the majority of the human experience.
He's not angry at you for not having joy during the Christmas season.
Read that again, oh ye ragged and exhausted ones.
He's not angry at you for not having joy during the Christmas season.
He's trying to tell us all that we can't light the fourth flame of advent unless we first come inside from the storm and shield ourselves from the violent wind. He's trying to tell us we can't be joyful unless we take a break from the heartbreak and the expectations and the bullshit and the fucked-up ways this world dictates we exist.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
The fourth flame of advent cannot burn by itself: it must be lit after the second flame, which is peace. Peace is the second, and joy is the fourth, so I guess you could say that joy is peace squared, and peace is the square root of joy.
Or, perhaps more accurately, peace is the root of joy.
"Sounds great and all but how the hell do I do that?"
I know, I feel like I've just given you a Rubik's cube and told you how great it is to solve it. Trust me, I get how unfair it is to be in such a place mentally and emotionally and get told, "Just take refuge in God." At that point I just sound like a churchie who's parroting whatever this morning's devotional was, and I'm truly sorry for that. I get it, because I've been there. Words don't help unless they come with step-by-step instructions.
All I know is that the pivotal point in this journey for me was the moment I really truly understood what "letting God handle it" meant.
Did you know--and this will come as a shock to some of you--that you are not responsible for everything that goes on everywhere at all times? Did you know that you do not have within you the capability to control how everything turns out? Did you know you are not limitless and expansive enough to have control and influence over every minute detail of any one life, even your own?
Did you know you're not responsible for the world's problems?
Did you know you're not at fault when the world isn't perfect?
Did you know, furthermore, that if you took a step back ... (sit down first and take a breath before I tell you this) ... the world would continue turning?
You are not the lynchpin in God's plan. Everything will not fall apart if you lie down and rest.
Now that you know you're not responsible for the end of the world, nor are you responsible for the Christmas season being joyful or unjoyful, you can take shelter in His infinite reach and skilled machinations, block out the wind of the intense season, and come to a peaceful place where you have a sporting chance of lighting the fourth flame of advent.
Her light may start small. I want you to know that. I just want you to be prepared for the possibility that joy's flame may be tiny at first, a faint rim of blue around a blackened knob of cotton wick. In these moments you might be afraid to breathe too hard, or laugh too loudly, or sing too exuberantly, or that tiny flicker of joy will just ... poof! ... become nothing more than a tendril of smoke and the melancholy memory of almost. Joy is so easily extinguished, as I said. That's why you gotta stay inside in the warm peace of Christmas, to give her a chance to grow.
I'm living the example right now.
As I said, I'm a streetmosphere actor, and the season from the PSL drop to L'Epiphany (the twelfth day of Christmas) is my busy season. It's my literal job to make the holidays magical for others, which means mine get put on the back burner. I have three Christmas trees of my own and for the past five or six years they've been boxed up and packed away in hopes of "next year." As a matter of fact, I've spent one of my precious few days off being sick with a cold because I've been outside in the elements too much. I was supposed to spend the whole day finishing up a project for a friend, doing laundry, decorating for Christmas which is three days away, Christmas shopping, grocery shopping, card signing, and "resting up" (lol) for my next scheduled elf shift. Oh and by the way, today was when my parents were planning to come to the zoo to see me in action, so the stress of being well enough to give a strong performance for them and all the others was tickling my throat and burning my ears. Today I was too sick to even do my job, let alone do anything to prepare for a Christmas celebration.
So much for Christmas joy ...
Unless of course I remember that I'm not in control of whether Christmas has meaning or not. I'm not in control of whether the holiday is bright and magical or not. I'm part of it, and I lend my effort when/where/how I can, but I'm not in control of it. Christmas at the zoo does not come to a screeching halt if I'm not there. Christmas does not come to a screeching halt if I haven't decorated the house from stem to stern. Christmas isn't even dependent on whether I'm well or sick in bed.
Christmas depends on how well we keep within us the Spirit that established Christmas, that founded it upon the ages, that wrote its Name in blood on the breast of humanity.
The first Christmas depended on a cave to shelter from the cold night and a carved-out rock to rest a fragile Baby in. The first Christmas was about shelter.
And it's okay if this Christmas is about shelter, too.