REsources for Living
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Let all mortal flesh keep silence…begins an ancient hymn that is still a popular Christmas carol. Let all mortal flesh keep silence is not the way we generally go about celebrating holidays. More often, holidays are a time of frantic preparation and raucous gatherings and music and stuffing our mortal flesh with festive foods. There are a lot of holidays of the season—Christmas and Chanukah and the solstice just for starters. And they all have different traditions of story and song and feasting. But silence? Not so much.
Many of us are used to thinking of the holiday season as beginning with Thanksgiving, and ramping up from there through New Year’s Eve with celebrations with friends and family, all making a joyful noise. I’m thinking about this in June, throwing my imagination forward, and I have no way of knowing, but my guess is that, at least for those of us in the U.S., holidays are going to be very different this year. It’s looking like just about the most dangerous thing you can do, in terms of spreading COVID-19, is to have a big gathering at your house where you talk and laugh and sing and eat together.
It’s not very likely that holiday celebrations are going to take place this winter in the ways we are used to. Some of us have already done Passover Seders by Zoom—turns out it is really not at all like gathering together in person to share story and food and wine. We are not going to have office parties if people are not going in to their offices. We will not have big gatherings of extended family if people are not traveling—or not gathering.
Which sounds like an enormous let-down. We’ve been through a lot. We need our celebrations and our connections and our stories that remind us of the baby who is a living manifestation of the love of God, of the light that refuses to go out, of the way the light will always shift and stretch through the seasons. Celebrating is a big chunk of religious practice, and kind of a big piece of how we are human together.
If we can’t get together to celebrate—to feast and to sing and dance and hug and tell stories and open presents and light candles and all—then what does that leave us? A big hole full of silence. Or maybe a mountain of silence.
After all, quiet is a part of our beautiful humanity as well. The held silence of a group together in silent prayer. The silence as we pause to reflect in a challenging conversation. The silence of standing out under the stars. The silence that falls over a household as everyone finally drifts into sleep.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence… Not for always. Maybe not even for very long. We need the joyful noise of celebration and connection. We need the powerful noise of people speaking up for change, for justice. We need music and conversation, the hubbub of children or pets, the sounds of birds singing or branches moving in the wind.
But we also need sacred silence. Time to remember that our flesh is mortal, and therefore precious. Time to center down, to develop roots and not just leaves and flowers. Time to be with our thoughts, to nurture our own creativity. Time to consider what might come next, out of this place of emptiness.
Time to be—where we are and when we are, open to the present moment.
Perhaps your holiday celebrations might include sitting quietly with the lit beauty of a Christmas tree, or crafting gifts with love. Maybe you will take quiet time by the light of the Chanukah candles, rejuvenating the light inside yourself so that it burns strong even when circumstances threaten to snuff it out. You might go for a quiet walk in your neighborhood to enjoy the festive lights. Maybe you will walk out into the late sunrise after the longest night of the year—or the late sunset on the longest day of the year—and try to feel in the silence how we are all spinning together on this great ball, tilted in relation to the sun.
I am betting, that, no matter what, we will find ways to gather (if only virtually), to make music, to share stories, to celebrate. I wouldn’t be surprised if, like so many other years, it feels a bit frantic, a bit flustered, even a bit loud.
Whatever the season brings, I am hoping that it offers you some bits of sacred silence, of peaceful darkness, of quiet rest, of energizing reflection. Whether or not you celebrate the silence, I hope that you find moments to celebrate in silence, finding renewal for the days to come.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
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- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
