This little piece was written on a midnight walk when we lived at the farm… it is dated, of course, December 24, 2007. Enjoy!
In our everyday lives, when we are doing something difficult and worthwhile there is a demand placed upon our character and ability so we can see the thing through. We are stretched. Our stamina and commitment are put to he test. It is expected that since the task is challenging it will require “all we’ve got” to pull it off. We will have to use every resource we have.
We do not want to reinvent the wheel every time, so we listen to experience. We take courage in the fact that someone else has been where we are, and their spirit and help is at our disposal backing us up.
Similarly, All Saints’ Day reminds us of a bit of good news: Someone has taken the high road before us, and they finished the race. They made it to the finish.
In a very real sense this day is the culmination, or result, of the promise that we received last year at the beginning of Advent. The Messiah will come and will bring salvation to his people. It follows then that the Saints whose lives we remember today have all reached the place where they are able to rest from the work of salvation that was required of them. They are absent from the body and present with the Lord.
The Christ child will come, as the carol is sung, “away in a manger”. And the same song makes a request of the child. It asks him to “fit us for heaven to live with thee there.” The work of salvation is Christs’ alone to be sure. But once we are given this gift, we are to work it out with God’s energy working in us.
We need role models for this, too, as was said above. And we don’t mimic the saints, but we do imitate their faith. And how enriching it can be to get acquainted with the individual saints! There are no two of them that are alike, but each is Christ-like in his or her own way.
And they are alive, too. They are not dead.
That is why the night before All Saints’ Day traditionally is the time devoted to a certain ritual which to some Christians may seem out of place. Allowing the dead things and creatures of darkness – all the defeated spirits and the vile and profane beings – to roam the hillsides and the towns on All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) is an allowance because it shows that their time is short. They can only wreak havoc for a season, even a few hours is all, before the day comes.
Saints live today just behind a thin veil from us. They are part of the great cloud of witnesses we read about in Hebrews 11-12.
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It’s finally time again for the cultural observance of some special “holy days” and their seasons. I am so happy to host this journey – a journey designed simply to help us go deeper into the meaning of the seasons and days. Don’t worry. You won’t find any negative stuff here. There is just too much good to say about holy days and no reason to complain about commercialization, etc. Because we may get things out of order, but at least we do get them. I simply want to celebrate the fact that our culture observes the holy days.
Many people look forward to the holidays. I sure do. I assume you do, too, because you are reading this. But why? Why is this time of year so special?
In chronological order:
1) All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween)
2) All Hallows’ Day (All Saints’ Day)
3) Thanksgiving Day
4) Advent
5) Christmas Eve
6) Christmas Day
7) New Year’s Eve
8) New Year’s Day
9) Valentine’s Day
10) Mardi Gras
Annual celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, and national holidays like Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veteran’s Day is special, too, of course. But the days and seasons we want to focus on here are unique. They are special for one reason. That reason is that during the holidays as a culture they cause us to, of course, look up. And we look up together.
After Halloween (which is today) the days will start getting shorter quicker. The cold will eventually creep in. It will seep into our homes and our bones and maybe even into our hearts a little. The darkness is a problem when it gets that thick for months at a time. Pipes freeze. Plants die. Windshields have to be defrosted. Discouragement and loneliness come. And they’re even closer than usual – too close for comfort.
But… one night soon something will happen. Imagine:
While the cold and dark still feel a little bit welcome and exciting to you (because… “cold and dark” also means “Christmas is coming“…) you walk out into the crisp air and slip your hands into your coat pockets. You’re just going out to get your phone out of the car, but something makes you – child-like – stop to see if you can see your breath vaporized. You shape your mouth like a good choir singer and exhale slowly with some force but no voice. You can see it! It’s just as you thought. The air is deathly still except for your little puff cloud. You stand there looking up as it clears, and as the cold fills your lungs you realize you see more than was expected. You see more than just darkness and empty cold. There is something beyond your breath… close enough to touch. The cloud is gone, and you witness a breath-taking, spectacular night sky.
The stars shine brilliant and clear against the cobalt deep. Beautiful! You say to yourself, “Wow. It’s so close!”
Yes, it is. It is close. And that is the gift of the holy days. They are the fullness in the empty. They are the story that guarantees not to leave us hanging on the edge of all our deadlines. We get from these observances a sense of cosmic motion and of swinging out toward eternity, perhaps for another trip on earth around the sun. Because of the holy days we do not run in place in the elliptical orbit like a panicky runner in a bad dream, stalling out in doom and gloom at the apogee.
No. We see Light and it dazzles us. It warms and draws us yet closer. We lean into our existence a little. Into the mystery. Increased darkness would be unbearable after even a few weeks if we did not anticipate stopping to look up to the heavens together each mid-winter. We look up together and see the clarity that enfolds our lives – our messy, small, beautiful lives. That is the clarity the holy days bring. It’s the clarity that a single, bright, silent, holy night gives us each year.
(Check back tomorrow for a post about All Saints’ Day, November 1st. In it we will not only see why we have All Saints’ Day and why it is worth celebrating but also explore the purpose and fitting nature of Halloween in a well-balanced culture.)
My True Country blogsite to be published on Nov. 1, 2022! Please check back!
The meaning of the arrival of this new year has sunk in for me finally today, January 4, 2023.
It was four days into the year this time, and it is therefore all-the-more a welcome experience to my psyche. It was only this late I suppose because I was working New Year’s Day and have worked each day till today. Since I woke up on New Year’s Day I have been busy, and on top of that, outside it has been wet and warm and foggy. Now today (literally) I woke from from my sleep and that ole Mississippi coast dense fog had lifted and the cooler, crisper air had returned.
So I went for a late afternoon stroll to the beach and let the clean, salt air clear my mind as it rushed into my lungs. I breathed out and gazed long over the water toward Cat Island as the big blue world whispered it’s deep, rich beauty to my mind and memory once again. Not every day is this clear, so when this comes it is a blessing.
Then I sat on the sand and rested, read a passage from the book I had with me, then I put the book down and looked around. I shared this pic and some loosely associated thoughts with my twin brother via iMessage. (We do that sometimes… often, in fact. ) Then I prayed. My mind wandered. And my covered feet hugged the thick, dry, shifting sands of this good earth as I walked toward the sunset.
Each January just such a ‘mental shift’ happens to me that lets me know that in spite of life’s difficulties I have much to anticipate in the year ahead. Particularly, I can anticipate common, ordinary moments of meaning and joy. I can expect to be in the presence of the Father through the Son’s faith. And I can do this while attend to minutiae dutifully and (I hope) patiently. As my birthday comes later this month, too, I always get a bit more reflective than usual. So my restful anticipation comes surrounded by gratitude and, not surprisingly, thoughts of aging. And in a very real sense, I look forward to it. I anticipate more and more life.
I was glad to be out in the gentle winds of a new day today, which is my day off. The fresh breeze brought about this all-necessary 2023 mind-shift. Another kind of shift, shift work at the hospital, was complete for a few days, and now having come to the beach in the sunlight, knowing I had looked long and gazed admiringly at the world from the standpoint of my own limited perspective, I turned back toward home and found myself saying, “Thanks for this moment, God. Let me take it with me to my home and share it with others wherever I go.”
Happy New Year!
I am very thankful to be back at work after a time of unemployment. It was the first time I had ever been without work for so long. Fall 2022 included more than six long weeks of limbo for me and my family as we experienced painful shortfalls in our home budget. Naturally, fears surfaced of the damage that possible extended, indefinite unemployment could bring to our family finances. But thankfully, I started a new job this month.
Yes, the month of December has been one of new beginnings… as we have seen the return of adequate income for our overall well-being. But the waiting we had to do before the arrival of my new job was purging and difficult, and it was in some ways analogous to Advent.
The word advent is a Latin word that means “coming”, and Advent (for Christians) is traditionally a time of preparation and reflection during which we anticipate the coming of Christmas. I am not talking here about the kind of preparation you might think – the hustle and bustle of buying, wrapping, and baking and planning.
No. Advent preparation means primarily a time to slow down and experience longing and waiting. It is a time to observe the existentially empty conditions, the desperate spiritual situation of our lives – our current ills, griefs and hardships – while also hoping and longing for better days ahead… for the arrival of our salvation. During Advent we empty out the old addictions and the props for which we have clambered in faithless anxiety, and we give full attention to that which has thoroughly, deeply met human needs and desires for ages: namely God. Particularly, we attend to God and His promised coming in Jesus Christ.
So Christians experience Advent as a time of waiting and repentance. At least two seasonal songs remind us each year:
Rejoice, rejoice!/Emanuel shall come to thee, O Israel
traditional; O come o come, Emanuel
and…
“Joy to the world, the Lord is come/let earth receive her king/let every heart prepare him room/and heaven and nature sing…”
Isaac Watts (ca. 1719), Joy to the World
In order for our hearts to adequately prepare for Christmas… the coming of Christ, or Emanuel (God with us)… we must have a very focused and specific attitude toward time and a certain humility about our lives. We must be prepared to see that our lives need saving. Like Mary in the Bible, Advent makes us aware, as part of God’s expansive creation, of the movements and depths of the great Story to which we belong.
That story is one of a creation, the fall, and the promise of a New Creation in Christ. So the way to clearly see the not-so-hidden meaning of Christmas is to sit quietly before the Lord in prayer during this season we call Advent and reflect deeply and inwardly by faith, much like an expectant mother.
A time of waiting and prayer: what better way to experience a new year, a new job, or a new life, than by spending the season beforehand reflecting and making room for God in our hearts? It’s a matter of trusting the One who has made us the promise of salvation.
So… do you hear what I hear? I hear a song, a song, ringing through the sky… with a voice as big as the sea.
It is God’s promise that we hear once again this Advent… the glorious song of the coming New Creation!
I spent Thanksgiving last week in Water Valley with my parents and my brothers and their families. All of us were present except for my twin brother and his family.
I am very thankful for each of these my family members.
And part of the wonder of family is that our individual life stories interconnect and merge into one big story. It amazes me how all our lives collectively share in a single story that goes back to the Sartors in our early Clinton years in the 1970’s. That’s when we elder borthers were born and my father started his business as a consultant to cotton farmers. And even before that our shared collective story comes to us through the lives and lineages of both my parents. This takes us to the late 1940’s in Water Valley – and far beyond!
Decades and wars have passed as this story has unfolded. Marriages, births, and deaths have occurred. Real world events have happened involving my blood – me and my kin.
In the late-1700’s Thomas Scarbrough (on my mom’s side) set sail from Scotland to South Carolina, and in the early 1800’s his son William moved to Mississippi to establish a home. That home was on newly acquired U.S. land following the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, an agreement which landed the Choctaw Nation of Mississippi on reservation lands in Oklahoma.
So our family’s bloodline and story is nested in a national one, too, that goes back to 1620 and Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, where Dutch Pilgrims sought religious freedom together in the New World amidst great peril and struggle. And so this year we celebrated another American Thanksgiving: family, nation, story intertwined
But like all histories ours, as one of my brothers likes to call it, isa “mixed bag.” During it’s otherwise glorious beginnings, America displaced some people and allowed its citizens to continue enslaving other people. It was recently brought to our attention that 1619 saw the arrival of the first African slaves in America at Jamestown, Virginia. This is true, but the truth is not for muck raking. It is for reflecting.
We recognize and grieve the truth of certain events in our history. The atrocities of slavery caused what Wendell Berry has called the “hidden wound”. Racism – which is always a result of fear, hatred, and pride – will always remain where there is a fallen human race. Despite America’s progress after the Civil War with the resulting abolition of slavery and the amazing success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s… racism has since reared its ugly head at times, but we must not reduce, rewrite, or repress our history and our current corporate life by supposing it is a “casserole of racism”. (A casserole is intentionally put together and baked as one good thing. I believe America’s main course once had one bad aspect in it which had begun in it and was a poison in the dish, but it was not an ingredient in the overall recipe. So it was removed. With compassion and grit we can forgive and heal. And we are. Or we were until recently. We are an American casserole… and our ingredients are good and wholesome. We must include compassion and grit in our recipe. Grit shows we are aware of costs and high stakes, and compassion shows we are willing to risk letting go of our national past mistakes and move forward.)
We must expand and deepen our understanding of history. And we must enlarge our compassion for all. We must deal with racism appropriately, and, of course, there is only one way to do that:
We must live the ultimate human story, telling ourselves and our children that Story.
So the big question is quite obvious to most even if they are not acceptable to some Americans: To whom does America offer thanks?
To answer it honestly we must reflect back even further… all the way back to a story the Sartors and Americans share also with the whole human race. It’s a story that goes far, far back in time to cosmic beginnings and eventually tells our cultural beginnings. The story book is the Bible.
The entire human race shares in an amazing history told of the creation, fall, and complete redemption of all things. All current-day people groups are accounted for in Genesis (e.g. Genesis 12:3) and throughout the Bible all the way to the unveiling of the total narrative in Revelation (Revelation 22:1-2). The theme of inclusiveness runs throughout, but universality is the bigger point.
Despite contrary perceptions of Christianity that exist in the West today… Christians believe that all ethnic groups (Jews and non-Jews) are fully included and fully blessed in the Story. They aren’t just “allowed in” at the end. It was the plan all along.
‘Gentiles’ (nations) is how the Bible refers to people of any ethnicity or nationality other than the Jewish one. And the Bible refers to the Gentiles as being included in the story of Christ, a story that had to be set forth in a thoroughly Jewish context. This message of all ethnicities being included runs throughout the Old and New Testaments, and in Paul’s letters particularly. Paul hammers away at it in his letter to the Romans from the very opening (Romans 1:6) to its final closing thought (Romans 16:26).
Glory forever to him who is able to establish you in… the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ… so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith… Amen.
Romans 16:25-27
Sartors love the thought of telling and hearing stories through music, and so in Water Valley at the Thanksgiving table the subject of songwriting came up in our conversation. Someone – I believe it was Thomas – asked in his own sheer bafflement at the songwriting process:
“How do you speak effectively to a very large number of people about something that is intimately personal?”
This question is a good one. When we write songs we want to write to the people of the world – and into the cultural moment that is now! We want to connect with that world through what is personal to us. And so we try. Although nationalism or even global recognition are not the only objective in song writing, whole nations have, at times, been bonded together around a song. You may remember Michael Jackson’s and Lionel Richie’s We Are The World (1985) which united Americans under God (it says as much in the song) to support people on the continent of Africa suffering from poverty.
Songs are special. They are special because humanity can try to make them personal and particular while also embracing the diversity and commonality of all.
Our thoughts on Gentile inclusion and Thanksgiving today have been a reminder that all of our stories are part of The Story, that we are all invited to God’s table by faith – not because of our nationalities or any other identity. The invitation to give thanks is extended to Americans and to every human and even every creature on earth (see Mark 16:15).
The Bible story has to be about a particular people and their Messiah in order to be universally true, and so we proudly celebrate Thanksgiving as Americans. Our heritage is not only American, though, and our past is not reducible to racism. Also, our identity is not whatever we choose it to be. We are human. And that means our heritage is a primarily a universal history and religion that can be shared by all. Let us seek together what it means to believe in Christ. Let us give thanks to God in the highest!