Winter Oak Leaves

Like little dishrags, damp and limp they hang,

these winter leaves forlorn outside my window;

color faded from their so-brief lives,

they droop and wait for winter wind

to carry them away and bury

them beneath the white of snow.

The sun today plays hide and seek,

but now and then it glimmers bright

upon those leaves, and sudden

turns their drab to momentary

shower of almost gold; a glimmering

that hints of wonder

lying just beyond the shadow

of this valley we call death.

*

And then the sun is gone,  

but the game goes on, mostly hide

for sun and mostly seek

for the leaves, and for us, dangling

through this winter of our discontent,

praying against the earthquakes,

the wildfires, the hatred, storms, and fears,

the absence of concern from leaders who deny

earth’s warming and refuse to care for truth,

for masses hanging by a border fence

that blots out all their sun.

*

We shake our heads and shudder our despair;

we seek, but only now and then we find;

only now and then the shining

of that glimmer from beyond,

that sudden ray of justice, truth,

that momentary hope

to strengthen our resolve,

remind us we are not alone

in this valley of the dark

where all that’s wrong so grimly

seems to overshadow all that’s right.

 

Stepping into Halo-ed Light

“The Nativity”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1654)

          Please come and sit with me awhile in Rembrandt’s magnificent etching.  I’ve been sitting here for a bit almost every morning during the days of Advent and Christmas.  My place has been over in the right hand corner, right behind the overturned wheelbarrow from which Joseph is rising to greet the shepherds who have come to see the baby of the angels’ song. 

          I’ve enjoyed watching these shepherds and all they bring to this stable scene.  The clear delight of that young shepherd child.  The solemn adoration of the shepherd right beside him.  The shepherd who doffs his hat, humbled and awed by this birth.  And that tall, older shepherd, hands reverently folded together, crowding in as much as he dares, needing to be as close as possible to the One for whom he has waited his entire life.  The two behind the others, patiently waiting their turn for a glimpse of this wondrous sight.  I wonder what each is thinking. What each is hoping.  What each one fears.

          And then that circle of light surrounding Mary, Joseph, and the baby.    The tiny lamp that burns just above Mary’s head is definitely too small to be the source of the brilliance that radiates throughout almost the entire scene, creating an immense halo of light.  This light clearly radiates from that tiny body wrapped in swaddling cloths.  This is the light that has been shining from the dawn of time.  This is the light that no darkness can ever overcome.

          I sit and bathe myself in this halo of light.  And I note that it’s not just Mary and Joseph and the Christ child who are “halo-ed” by the light in this etching.  The shepherds, cold and dirty and smelly, are also halo-ed by this light.  Even the oxen and the hay are caught up in this wondrous light.  All of life, it seems, is hallowed by the brilliance of this circle of light. 

          How we all long for Rembrandt’s circle of light in the darkness of our own lives and in the darkness of our world today.  Anglican Priest Tish Harrison Warren writes of a “cosmic ache: our deep, wordless desire for things to be made right and the incompleteness we find in the meantime.”*  We are all well aware that there is far too much violence and misery in our world today.  Hatred and cruelty darken our political landscapes.  Storms and fires are destroying our planet.  Illness, death, financial worries, and troubled relationships shroud our lives.  We long for Rembrandt’s immense halo of light, and we ask again and again and again, “Is there any hope for us?  Any glimmer of light for today and for tomorrow?  Or is Rembrandt’s light a mere mirage that lives only in his etching but not in the real world?”

          Rembrandt knew something of darkness in his own life.  In spite of his fame and early riches, by the time of this etching, he had buried his wife Saskia and three of their children who had died as infants.  Fifteen years later he himself would die a pauper and be buried in an unmarked grave in Amsterdam’s Westerkerk.

         But in the midst of his darkness, Rembrandt experienced and lifted up, for himself and for all who live in darkness, the radiant hope of God’s light.  The hope of God’s light that long ago permeated the darkness of a shabby stable where a young, frightened, pregnant woman, far from home, huddled in the cold darkness and gave birth to the One who was in the beginning with God, the One through whom all things came into being, the One in whom was life, life that was the light of all people.

          As we begin the days of a new year, Rembrandt’s powerful light can perhaps help us to renew our hope in the promises of God’s light wrapped in the body of that tiny Christ child.  “Train yourself in godliness,” we are admonished in the first epistle to Timothy.  Good words, perhaps, for the start of a new year.  But “training ourselves” sounds like so much work, sounds like treadmills of prayer and marathons of duty and penance.  But maybe training can be something as simple as sitting here in Rembrandt’s stable, again and again and again.  Letting the light of the Christ child bathe us, even as it bathed the holy family along with the shepherds, the oxen, and the hay.

          So again, I invite you to sit with me awhile in this etching.  Step closer to this child.  Peer with the shepherds as they worship the baby “born to give us second birth.”  Step into this halo-ed light.  And as we sit together, may our hearts be opened by faith to see, here-and-there, now-and-then, glimmers of Rembrandt’s halo-ed light still shining even in all the darkness within us and around us. 

***

*Tish Harrison Warren, The New York Times “Week in Review,” 11/30/2019