Three Cheers for Joy in a Dark December

So already, it's been a dark time in post-election America, but hardly the darkest of dark times. At the end of this week, Christmas and Chanukah coincide, both recalling momentous, miraculous events that illuminated darkness because they involved faith and resolve in the face of danger and death. Both holidays remind me that deepest darkness is not necessarily synonymous with the extinction of light, though it may seem to be. Almost always, there's light somewhere, light watching and waiting to shine, to be apprehended.

Though it's sometimes a struggle, I do trust in light--both the Eternal light within and beyond us, and the light that we kindle with our own hands as individuals and communities. The words from one of the Shabbat meditations in the Reform Jewish prayerbook regularly console and inspire me as a very secular Jew: "Pray as if everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on you"* (376). 

In the last weeks, many of my friends have been trying to figure out how they personally might kindle light in America's political darkness. 

One in particular seemed feverishly determined to "act as if everything depended on you" right after the election. The result: she felt almost as overwhelmed by all of the activism options available to her as she did by the prospect of Trump's presidency turning back the civil rights and social justice gains of the last few decades. So she sensibly stepped back and is giving herself permission to explore a number of options before choosing two or three of them. She figures it will take her about a month to determine (a) which organizations and efforts might benefit from her skills and knowledge, and (b) which she might benefit from in terms of developing the skills, insights, and self-understandings that are especially critical in this historical moment to the preservation and extension of American civil rights gains.

Cover Picture, ACLU Massachusetts Facebook Page

She's also determined to spend no less time than usual with her grandchildren, who will inherit the America that the President-Elect's and our own actions will shape. In the last few weeks of attending informational meetings and volunteering in small capacities, she's begun to breathe deeply again, realizing that she can't do it all, but that she must do some of it. She sees taking care of her own body and spirit as essential to the work she is committed to taking on.

CD storage in the dining room corner

Simultaneously, I had been drawing the same conclusion about the importance of taking care of oneself, given the media's daily predictably distressing Trump-related revelation. A couple of weeks ago when walking weather was in short supply, I stopped reading and listening to the news, and turned instead to classical music and poetry. I needed a dose of beauty, an experience of peace. As I deliberately turned away from the world, I gave thanks for the fact that I'm not homeless: I craved the warm interior of my own home as the place where I might relax and regroup, and it did not let me down.

The KMFC supports the KImbrough Scholars Program

At about the same time, the members of the Kimbrough Memorial Fund Committee, a Cambridge-connected organization dedicated to racial justice and educational opportunity in and beyond Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, exchanged a flurry of emails filled with holiday good wishes. One member who's been a tireless racial justice activist for decades emphatically wished the rest of us a "JOYOUS HOLIDAY SEASON, . . . AND A HEARTY PORTION OF GOOD CHEER IN THE NEW YEAR." Her prescription was quickly seconded by another member of the committee who always seems to have time and energy for what's important. 

That two people I know who've never thought the work of racial justice was anywhere close to being done are recommending a despair-free holiday break and plenty of happiness in the new year both puts me at ease and fires me up. It's enough to be human, and "human" can be very strong and effective, as long as it understands, among some other things, its human needs. We can enjoy the holidays and then get moving. We can fortify ourselves for the struggles ahead by allowing ourselves to engage deeply and enthusiastically with what and whom we cherish in our lives.

As I thought about who was urging me to enjoy myself, I found myself wondering if those who were most distraught by the election results had mistakenly believed that the work of racial and social justice was very close to being sufficiently and irreversibly done. Having just read Ta Nehisi Coates "My President Was Black" in the January/February 2017 issue of The Atlantic, I am keenly aware of all who couldn't believe Trump was elected, despite the fact that they had expected Clinton to win by very slim margins in a number of key states. It's hard to know when our optimism serves us well and when it compromises us. That said, this isn't the moment to punish ourselves for what we didn't and don't understand, though we must address these gaps in 2017. Regardless of how we predicted the election results, we all need holiday joy and cheer.

As for me, I keep reading poetry. The latest poet who's captivated me is Michael Dennis Browne, whose work I came upon because he provided the lyrics for Abbie Betinis' "Carol of the Stranger." Browne often collaborates with musicians, and the title poem in his most recent book, The Voices, is dedicated to the Dale Warland Singers, who performed their last concert in 2004. I present its last three stanzas here:

"I would never go into the dark
     without the voices,
I have come to rely on how they mend us
     among the ruins
of what we have hoped for.
     If there were only one branch in the world,
the voices would find it.

"Doubt was never the root of us,
    doubt winds itself, again and again,
around our doing,
     but it was never the source,
joy is the source,
     foliage of joy in which
the singers are hidden, but heard;
     always the gate, always the garden,
always the light, the shadows,
     always the leaves.

"From where I stand now, 
     I cannot see every singer,
but looking out across the years,
     listening in ways learned
only from them,
     I can hear all the song" (13-14).

I believe that I too "have come to rely on how . . . [the voices] mend us/ among the ruins/ of what we have hoped for." I too trust in the garden and the light.

Old Ship Church*** in Hingham

Tomorrow night, Old Ship Church in Hingham will host its annual solstice poetry reading. For a number of years now, Crossroads, the six-person singing group of which I'm a member, has performed several pieces, a few of them poems set to music, that help the assembled to turn from the darkest night and shortest day of the old year toward the return of the light and the new year. I am already looking forward to listening to the poems and the voices that render them in that meditative space. And I already know that when I walk out of the church after the program, I will feel warmed and in the right frame of mind to welcome winter, which will precede spring.

It's late Monday afternoon two days before the solstice, and the world, wrapped in snowless darkness, hasn't yet stopped its pre-holiday bustling. But there's something about the anticipation associated with the moment that feels, at least to me personally, more transcendent than urgent. I'm grateful for the way the natural seasonal patterns hold sway, even though as I type these words, my computer is telling me that the Electoral College has just elected Trump to the presidency.

Without a doubt, 2017 will challenge us in countless ways. So before it begins, we owe it to ourselves and one another to celebrate and to enjoy our lives. Then, praying and acting, we can begin to make our way into and through the darkness, can begin to move toward the light. We may even become the light, at least some of the time. Wishing you the light and joy of the holiday season, which I hope will extend for you beyond the holidays into the new year!

* Kahn, Robert I., and A. Stanley Dreyfuss, comps. Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook. S.l.: Central Conference Of, 1975. Print. 

**  Browne, Michael Dennis. The Voices. Pitttsburgh: Carnegie Mellon UP, 2015. Print.

*** Old Ship Church is the oldest continuously operating church in North America. It's a Unitarian Church, though its poetry event keeps its focus on winter solstice and winter itself rather than the season's religious holidays.