As winter draws close around us here in the northern hemisphere, I find myself drawn ever more to the flame of candles. A couple of years ago, I spent the month of January in Oslo, Norway. Though the climate in Oslo is similar to my home in northern New York, the days are significantly shorter. I noticed when I first arrived that when night fell, houses across the landscape extravagantly twinkled with lights in every window. The ski Jump at Holmenkollen, spectacular in the daytime, was brightly lit at night, shining across the valley to my lodgings on the opposite hills. At a friend’s house for dinner, I noticed that she lit many candles throughout the house, and particularly at the dinner table. She welcomed me into her home with the light of candles, despite the darkness of the night.

I have thought about this from time to time since returning to my home. I recalled that when our son was deployed to Iraq in 2003-4, we kept a candle lamp lit in the window the whole time he was gone. We wanted him to know we were waiting to welcome him home … and home he did come. Could it have been our candle that drew him through that dark experience?

As Unitarian-Universalists we light a flame to begin our meeting times together. At the close of the service, we pledge to carry that flame into our lives. The flame of a candle welcomes us in, and then sends us forth with the warmth of community, fire of commitment.

But what about the candle? I recently read a poem called “The Careless Candle” by John E. Wood which closed with the following words:
A candle must give itself away. In the giving, the spending,
the spreading, the sending, it finds itself.

A candle is but a symbol. It gives us light and warmth for a time, but eventually it is extinguished. It then becomes our task to be the candle for others in our lives.

How have I been a candle today?? How have I given light and warmth to others? Who has been a candle to me?

Photo Credit: Angie McMonigal Photography

“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
Isaac Newton

About five years ago, I sat in church one cold and dreary Sunday morning while our pastor, Jennifer, talked about bridges. I came into church that morning a little lost, a little frustrated, and utterly exhausted. I didn’t really want to be there and I had been feeling so beaten down by life that I seriously doubted whether words of spiritual advice would make any difference whatsoever.

Nonetheless, I sat in that small church, distracted, and I listened to her talk about shoveling sidewalks and neighborhood parties and wide nets. She talked about the sacred act of building and strengthening bridges, about maintaining and honoring those bridges, and she then issued a challenge to us to become bridge-builders ourselves.

At the time, her words fell on a weary soul and an exhausted body. With a two year old at home and mountains of stress, I wasn’t looking to build bridges; I was just hoping to survive the day and maybe take a nap. Yet, somehow her words rang true and they stuck with me ever since.

On some intrinsic level, I think that we are all called – whether by God, some higher power, or the human condition – to be bridge-builders. We are naturally driven, I suspect, in some deep primal way, to want to connect, to build bridges – in our families, social circles, communities, and workplaces; with the natural world and the spiritual world; with others and even within ourselves.

But, what does it mean to be bridge-builders?

While we are called – compelled even – to be bridge-builders, it is not always an easy task. In fact, I think that it just might be one of the hardest things that we, as imperfect and ego-driven humans, are asked to do. Bridge-building is awkward and daunting and painful; it is clumsy and uncertain and utterly exhausting. Bridge-building means uncomfortable conversations and bruised egos and being the first one to say “I’m sorry” or “I love you” or “I was wrong.” And bridge-building requires a healthy dose of faith, copious amounts of forgiveness, and an infinite amount of grace.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that my ego and heart haven’t ached just a little bit when, after introducing some friends, they prefer each other’s company to my own. I would be lying if I didn’t say that doesn’t take frequent reminders to check-in with extended family and friends during those times when life’s obligations leave little room for anything beyond carpools and homework, conference calls and emails, paying bills and folding laundry. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I have to constantly fight the urge to wear my Facebook mask, to present a Pinterest-worthy picture of my life to the world, to pretend that I’m not constantly second-guessing myself. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that there have been times when the time and energy spent building bridges hasn’t left me feeling scared, inadequate, and completely drained.

There is a natural tendency, I suppose, to preserve, protect, defend, and maintain the status quo. We get busy and beaten down with the day-to-day stresses and the curveballs that life throws at us, and sometimes bridge-building just seems like too much work and a colossal waste of time.

But bridges aren’t built when we stand our ground and stay in our comfort zone; they aren’t built when we focus on relationship maintenance, rather than relationship sustenance. Bridges aren’t built in the masks or by pretending that we aren’t scared and confused. Bridges aren’t built when we snicker at the expense of another, when we think in terms  of “us-them” and “the other,” or when we focus all they ways we are different.

No, bridges are not built this way.

Bridges are built when we cast a wide net, when we make the effort, when we are radically inclusive. Bridges are built when we ask questions and take the time to listen to the answers. Bridges are built when we lay ourselves bare and stumble through the muck; when we make an intentional and difficult decision to forgive; when we focus on our shared and common human condition. Bridges are built when we step into the heart and mind of someone else; they are built with a single phone call or email, with a tender touch, with an open mind and a generous heart.

Bridge-building is hard, hard work. But bridge-building is good work, beautiful work, essential work. Bridge-building is holy human work.

There are bridge-builders all around us, and we can be bridge-builders ourselves, whether we know it or not. With her prophetic words about neighborhood parties and shoveling sidewalks and taking the first step, Pastor Jen built more bridges for me than she could possibly know. And for that I am eternally grateful and continually inspired. We have both since moved away from that church community in Chicago, me to the suburbs and she to California and then Virginia. But I have no doubt that she has been continuing to build bridges along the way. Because once a bridge-builder, always a bridge-builder.

Who are the bridge-builders in your life?

As the Community Minister for the Greater New Orleans Unitarian Universalists, I spend a lot of my time immersed in the injustice of layers of oppression. New Orleanians still trying to get back into their homes over 8 years after they were flooded out, transgender women forced to be housed with and often abused by men in prison and in shelters, a football field of wetlands lost in this state every half hour … Each day there’s more. Family diagnosed with chronic diseases, babies born too soon, people die… and.

AND Christmas comes each year in this country, whether you celebrate it or not. While I often find myself in the position of protesting the dominion of the dominant culture, I don’t fight Christmas. I choose to enjoy Christmas. I think that Christmas can be sweetly subversive.

Hey World – people are ill and homeless and jobless and imprisoned and killed! For most of the year, most of the world ignores these hard truths, pretending that the poor are poor because of poor choices instead of acknowledging a system of oppression that radically tilts the playing field towards some –and away from others.

But come Christmas, pretending stops – at least for a moment.   Suddenly we collect coats and toys and feel good stories about providing shelter and hope to families down on their luck.

Suddenly we tell a story about a great leader born in questionable circumstances, sharing his birthday crib with the donkey’s dinner, soon exiled to the immigrant life in Eygpt with his family.

Rumors of premarital sex, poverty, immigration … you name it, the Christmas story goes there…

And tells us – joy to the world. Hope has come.

Let there be peace and kindness and respect among all creation.
It’s a 6th Principle: The Goal of World Community with Peace, Liberty, and Justice for All!

Yes, I know. That’s not exactly how the scriptures or even the carols go.

But I am grateful for the promise of this season…For once a year our deeply embedded cultural story tells the world:
 Children are precious.
 Where you are born should not predict the quality nor the value of your life.
 Women too have the holy within them.
 It matters that we bear witness to each other and to the vast brilliance of the universe.
 Sometimes knowledge needs to bow to intuition.
 Life is a gift, utterly unpredictable, infinitely possible.
 There is hope for change.

And where there is hope, friends, there is joy.  Beloveds, may there be joy for you and your loved ones today and every days.

There’s a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons –

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are –

Emily Dickinson

“Yule” (jul) means “wheel” in Norse. The Norse looked at this time of year, facing the darkest and longest night, “Mother Night,” as they called it, and told a story of the night the goddess Frigga left her spinning wheel and labored long and hard to give birth to the light of a new year.

Hiding in the Christian advent wreath is Frigga’s wheel. And the mistletoe? Well!

Odin, the All-Father, and his wife Frigga (or Frigg or “Fria” in Old Saxon) had twin sons, Baldur and Hodur (or Tyr,god of war).

Hodur was a dark and moody boy, a cold loner who spoke to no one. His brother Baldur was a beautiful, radiant boy, and all the gods loved him (excepting one, named Loki).

One day Baldur came to his mother and said, “Mother, for these past seven nights, each night I have had a dream, and that dream shows me that I will die, killed by an arrow made from the branch of a tree.”

As you might suspect, Frigga was very, very worried about her darling boy, and went around to all the trees of the wood, speaking to each one of them and imploring them, “Please, whatever you do, please do not kill my lovely boy Baldur.”

And each tree in its turn promised Frigga that no harm would come to him by one of their branches.

But in her worry and haste, Frigga failed to speak to one family of the woods—one tree—the mistletoe, which grows without having its roots in the earth.

And so it was that Loki—the terrible trickster among the gods, and the only one of the gods who resented Baldur’s radiance and cheerfulness—fashioned an arrow of the mistletoe and, going to visit dark Hodur, Loki said, “Here. Try shooting my marvelous bow! Here’s an enchanted arrow. Try shooting it over the roof of the house.”

And so dark Hodur shot the arrow made of mistletoe. And who should it hit, standing on the other side of the roof beam, but Baldur his brother, who bled to death, writhing in the lush green grass.

As you expect, Frigga was inconsolable. She wept and wept and as she wept the nights  reflected her mood, growing longer and longer. And soon darkness seized the world.

Her weeping was so terrible that Odin the All-Father at last could stand it no more, and so he saddled up his horse and rode all the way to the domain of the dead. There, he found Baldur and brought him back to the land of the living.

And so it is that in midsummer, in all the lands of the North, on those nights when the light never really goes away, there is great feasting, celebrating the sunny god Baldur, though people know that already, even on the longest of days, Hodur is notching his murderous arrow.

And in the darkest nights of winter we celebrate Baldur’s return to Frigga’s womb, because on the darkest night, called Mother Night, Baldur will be reborn, thus slowly bringing the light and warmth back again.

This is the celebration at Winter Solstice. And we remember Frigga, the great goddess of the hearth and of fertility, each week in English, with “Fri-day,” “Fria’s Day.”

I suspect nearly everyone feels a bit of desperation sometimes, looking out the window at what is supposed to be the afternoon—and it’s dark out there. It’s night. It oppresses, as Emily Dickinson says, “like the heft of cathedral tunes.”

Yes. Winter feels like a really long church service. Baldur is dead—slain by the mistletoe. That wily trickster Loki has won again and darkness and sadness rule the land.

Wouldn’t it be nice this time of year if we had something to look forward to?

Well, by golly, the ancestors thought of that. In lots of different traditions.

All those candles mean . . .  something.

Perhaps Odin is saddling up his horse again.

And Mother Night will soon go into labor once again.

Or perhaps it’s a peasant girl from Palestine.

Or Demeter wailing for her lovely daughter Persephone.

Or some other mom perhaps happy to be beating the IRS deadline.

Whatever. Whoever. It’s good—even for the most protesting of Protestants—to celebrate the circles and cycles of time because they mark a symbolic space in the chaos of reality, and add meaning to the passing of our lives.

And meaning . . . in the winter dark, meaning is a good thing.

Planned Parenthood of Louisiana hosted a screening of deepsouth last night in honor of World AIDS Day. Filmmaker Lisa Biagiotti joined the panel after the screening and shared that it was the startling statistics of HIV/AIDS in the south, combined with the SILENCE about this reality – in stark contrast to the national story that HIV/AIDS is “under control” – that drew her to create deepsouth. As Elizabeth Pandolfi writes in her review of the film:

Unlike the rest of the nation, the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the South has not been controlled and conquered. Instead, it’s rampant and largely invisible. Deaths from HIV/AIDS are 50 percent higher than in the rest of the country. The South also has the highest rate of incarceration, the highest number of uninsured people, the highest rate of STD infection, the highest rate of poverty — and the list goes on. Those Southerners who are HIV positive are still mired in many of the same problems that patients faced during the early years of the disease, from discrimination to lack of access to care.

Born and raised in the southland, I often respond to news like this with a Gina Forsyth song:

Oh, I love it and I hate it
Every now and then berate it
Oh, the sweet and sunny south where I was born

And yet I know the South is simply the identified patient in the United States – where every place is suffering from an illness greater than HIV/AIDS, an illness endemic to the structure of this nation from its creation. The dis-ease of racism.

Panelist Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women With A Vision,went directly to the soul of the matter when asked what can be done to address HIV/AIDS in the South. Address racism. Address poverty. Address homelessness. Address food access and healthcare access and daycare options. Address the internalized racial inferiority and internalized racial superiority that destroys lives.

Beloveds, in this interdependent web of all existence, nothing exists outside of relationship.

Let us shine the light of our faith on these connections. Let us address the root illnesses of our nation – structural racism, sexism, heterosexism – every –ism that privileges anyone and demeans another for the superiority of a few. If we spend our lives addressing only the symptoms, the next generation will suffer even more from this dis-ease.

Let the SILENCE be broken by a multitude of voices rising up with truths, with stories that remind us we are all in this together – and together, we can heal. Only together can we heal.