A SOLISTICE POEM

A sermon by James Ishmael Ford

23 December 2001

The text

From "Solstice Poem"
In this house (in a dying orchard,/behind it a tributary/of the wilderness, in front a road),/my daughter dances/unsteadily with a knitted bear.//Her father, onetime soldier,/touches my arm./Worn language clots our throats,/making it difficult to say/what we mean, making it/difficult to see.//Instead we sing in the back room, raising/our pagan altar/of oranges and silver flowers./our fools’ picnic, our signal,/ our flame, our nest, our fragile golden/protest against murder.//Ourside, the cries of the birds/are rumours we hear clearly/but can’t yet understand. Fresh ice/glints on the branches.//In this dark/space of the year, the earth/turns again toward the sun, or/we would like to hope so.
Margaret Atwood

Yesterday Jan, auntie and I decided to go to watch the Lord of the Rings. It’s a wonderful movie, an extraordinary tale of adventure, and at the same time something deeper. It resonates with deep places in the human heart, retelling the stories our grandparents whispered to us, as we would fall asleep. It points to the great dreams. It speaks of how goodness can stand against evil, and how friendship and nobility of heart, can indeed be enough. It is a story of hope.

And that is something of what we are generally called to reflect about in this season. Isn’t it? No doubt this is a powerful time. For some among us this season is flat out fun. Particularly for the younger among us looking forward to those gifts at the center of the two great holidays now celebrated in our culture. No doubt about it, there is in that focus on family and hearth something deep and comforting.

But then there is that other emotion of this season. At the same time of joy and anticipation, I know how so many among us fall into doldrums. It can be easy to get lost in the long shadows cast by winter light. It can be all too easy to sink into sadness, sorrows or regret. Particularly, I think, in the wake of those two great holidays.

It is reflecting on this moment of sadness mixed up with joy, or joy mixed up with sadness, we each encounter this in our own way, that I would like to spend the next few minutes. There is a rather powerful opportunity facing us in this season. If we don’t just get caught up in one thing, joy or sadness, and instead attend to the full range of emotions that can fill us at this time, we may discover welling up within us something complex and mysterious and powerful. No doubt: there is something about midwinter that opens doors of possibility.

It is something like this spirit of sad reflection opening possibilities that I imagine inspired those parts of Margaret Atwood’s "Solstice Poem" such as "In this house (in a dying orchard,/behind it a tributary/of the wilderness, in front a road),/my daughter dances/unsteadily with a knitted bear."

Somehow there is sadness in the scene. I think particularly of that dying orchard. And, I think how behind it, behind us, some tributary of the wilderness trickles along. There is a melancholy back of that house, not unlike the sadness one might notice at this time of year. The sadness of a friend’s illness, or our own, or the terrible events of September 11th and its aftermath, or even that profound sadness at the heart of the human condition where there can be such terrible warring. And this time of the longest nights, this is a time we particularly can notice all this.

But, of course, there are other things in play within our lives. In front of the house of that poem there is a road winding toward unknown destinations. Like Hanukah or Christmas gifts. And, of course, leading the way her daughter, our daughter, our dreamed for savior, the child of our hopes, dances unsteadily with that knitted bear. I wonder about the road, and our dream daughters, and that knitted bear. Somewhere, somehow, in this I find that other experience, hope rising out of sadness.

Here, in both poem and season, sadness mixes with hope like water and wine in some ancient rite of communion. A longing for grace and hope out of human sadness certainly fills human hearts. This hope out of sadness is visceral; this hope out of sadness is deeply bodied. Indeed, this hope rising out of sadness is, I believe, among the deepest urgings of our bodies. And so we find it celebrated in ancient tribal hymns such as an old favorite of mine, the "Song of Solomon."

"Night after night on my bed/I have sought my true love;/I have sought him but not found him,/I have called him but he has not answered./I said, ‘I will rise and go the rounds of the city,/through the streets and the squares,/seeking my true love.’/I sought him but I did not find him,/I called him but he did not answer."

Reflecting on this particular song of longing out of sadness the modern gnostic writer Gareth Knight comments how "This overtly erotic poetry is, of course, capable of a spiritual interpretation, whether Jewish, Christian, or pagan." Of course it is. In our genuinely lived lives, just as the distinctions between joy and sadness are clouded, so eros and agape are never clearly divided. There are no obvious demarcations between the flesh and the spirit. Here is one of the great lessons.

And here at such moments of deepest feeling, our longing and fears find metaphors for expression. This has, I genuinely believe, to do with the very deepest structures of the human mind. Dark forests, children clinging to toy bears, roads leading who knows where, quests to save the world, and a deep erotic longing; all collapse into the mysterious one. And, truly, at such a point, our experience touches our authentic need, our fundamental longing. Whether we call it Jewish or Christian or pagan, hardly matters at all.

Now, I want to draw our attention to a specific moment. There is something in that turn from anxiety about our children and their fate and toward the intimacies of our adult desires. They are, of course, connected. But, there is also here a movement in the heart, and one to which we need attend, if we hope to advance toward wisdom.

Here Atwood herself turns the story, when she goes on from that scene of house and child and tells us "Her father (that child’s father), onetime soldier,/touches my arm./Worn language clots our throats,/making it difficult to say/what we mean, making it/difficult to see."

Ain’t it true? The electric touch of another is powerful. Can we be sure it is merely eros? When does it become agape, the divine love? And how do we tell? And how do we tell? These are such important questions. In such a season as this, in the coldest of winter, at the midwinter, all has turned. But turned to what? The waves of weather and emotion at this time are powerful storms gathered for aeons and now loosed within our hearts. What longing! What desire! But, what is it longing for? And, how do we engage it? And, where, oh where will it take us?

And here we come to oranges and silver flowers. These are those right answers. Oranges. Silver flowers. Here we encounter magic as a knowing of connections. A fool’s picnic. Here is a dreamtime, where our lives seem like a fog. The longings of the past and hope for the future collapse in a magical mysterious moment; where we know. Here hurt and possibility both loom large in our consciousness. This is a precious moment. Much may be revealed if we do not turn away.

Here I think of my old spiritual director John Tarrant, who once observed "To give attention to our current situation, including everything dubious and unresolved, is an act of integrity. In the later stages of the inner work, there is a temptation to ignore doubt, since so much seems clear. But fogginess is always with us, and to have integrity is to notice this. The story of Jacob wrestling with a being out of Heaven refers to such a moment of uncertainty." I find I return to that story over and over again. His life was in danger and everything depended on his presence of mind in the coming time. Not unlike our situation, I feel.

Do you remember the story? "In the night an angel came and Jacob struggled with him. As the dawn came on, the man held on fast, and though he was injured in the hip, he would not let the angel leave until he had received a blessing. Integrity depends on our connection to the spiritual, but that relationship is not a simple or passive one. To earn spirit’s blessing we have to be willing to struggle through on our own."

And so we find ourselves at this turning time. Perhaps we are not near the later stages of our inner work, but we are well into it. The seasons and our bodies take us to this moment of pregnant opportunity. But, we must attend. We must listen for the rhythms and the right moment.

Victor Frankl, death camp survivor and sage for our faithless times tells us about this moment and how we might engage it. He speaks to the heart of it all, and the nature of the ancient blessing. "What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life." Frankl tells us about real turning moments, about genuine confrontation with the fundamental matter.

"We had to learn that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us… Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

Frankl tells us "These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from (person to person), and from moment to moment… No (one person) and no destiny can be compared with any other (person) or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which (someone) finds himself (or herself) may require (that person) to shape (his or her) own fate by action… Sometimes (we) may be required simply to accept fate, to bear (our) cross (as it were). Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand."

Here at such a time we encounter those fundamental truths of the one and the many. Please, bear with me on this. It is the lesson hidden in the rhythms; it is what we find in the right moment. And it is simply this. The one is a field, the many is the fruit of that field. The one is the silence, and the many are our words and songs and dances, and every blessed action we take. We need to understand these connections, we need to see the root and the branches. It is critical.

Whatever the real nature of the divine, it comes to us in many pieces and in many places. We find it as sadness rises out of joy. We discover it as joy rises out of sadness. The divine in our experience is intimate to each of us, and unique. And at the same time as common as mud. If we will take guidance from the moment, we can learn all we need.

So remember the dying orchard and the tributary bleeding out into the wilderness. Remember that road going in two directions. Remember that daughter holding that toy bear. Remember those stories like Lord of the Rings, where the smallest reveal the greatest. Remember our lovers and their wounds. Here the one is found when we attend to the specific. And here we can find our way.

Out of that multiplicity of truths, our joys and our sorrows, we need to lay a pagan altar, an altar of magic, an altar that knows the connections. At this deep cold midwinter season, we need to lay an altar of oranges and silver flowers. We need to lay out a table feast of the varieties of life. Because, here we find wisdom is found in seeing it all as it dances out of the silence, out of the cold, out of the gloom and dark.

It is out of such a moment I believe that Atwood concludes her Solstice poem: "Outside, the cries of the birds/are rumours we hear clearly/but can’t yet understand. Fresh ice/glints on the branches/In this dark/space of the year, the earth/turns again toward the sun, or/we would like to hope so."

Hidden possibilities become open. Out of our joy, our sadness, our longing we can find something birthing. It is a knowledge so ancient that it has no name. It is our living wisdom, found here, now, when we let the universe unveil itself and the mystery dance out into being, a god, a goddess, ten-thousand thousand beings.

Here is a Solstice poem. You and I and all our dreams are the string of words making the song, making the dance. It is holy. It is good. It is our Solstice wisdom revealed for us, and for the sake of all the world.

We need only notice.

Amen.