When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result: artificial light that is glaring and graceless and, beyond its borders, a darkness that grows ever more terrifying as we try to hold it off. Split off from each other, neither darkness nor light is fit for human habitation. But the moment we say “yes” to both of them and join their paradoxical dance, the two conspire to make us healthy and whole.
~~Parker J. Palmer
Accepting the bad with the good is part of life, or so the idiom goes. Grief and loss happen throughout a lifetime, but then also come great gifts of joy and happiness. It’s an irony of the greatest degree that the holidays, these festivals of light that we celebrate, happen for us at the darkest time of the year. Or perhaps it’s a beautiful gift. At the most basic level, the stories we tell around the holidays can be healing at very deep levels.
“God rest you merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay.”
The carol suggests we take heart and implores us to rest in the awareness that Christ the Savior was born on Christmas day to take us out of our grief and darkness. The chorus brings us “tidings of comfort and joy”. A nice sentiment.
Easier sang than done.
Like the holiday stories of our childhood, our own lives are stories unfolding. It is interesting to observe the things that show up in our lives. Our lives are stories that have meaning and wisdom and we are meant to pay attention. They are clues to our true selves, as mystic Thomas Merton would say. For Merton, doing away with the false self was our life’s work.
We take on this false self by believing the stories we tell ourselves about what is good and bad and right and wrong based on false culturally derived assumptions and flat-out survival instincts. Father Thomas Keating, who died last month, said this of the true self: “Our basic core of goodness is our true self, its center of gravity is God.” He also said, and I love this, “The false self doesn’t drop dead on command.” Unfortunately.
We live our lives mostly on the surface. Surface-level living gets us in trouble with our souls and with one another. At a surface level, we take for granted that the Christmas story is accurate. The truth is we don’t really know if the baby Jesus was born on the date that we celebrate Christmas. We don’t know for sure if the stable was a thing. We don’t know if Mary was really a virgin. The story is a stretch for our modern imaginations.
What if that’s the whole point? What if we were to look more deeply with our amazing imaginations and our extremely capable and compassionate hearts? What if we looked at it, that Christmas story, as a gift; a story of hope for our dark, grief-filled lives. The same could be true of the story of Hannukah. What if we were supposed to let our imaginations take us more deeply into those stories that have undeniably stood the test of time? What if, by letting our imaginations run a little wild, we could shine some light onto our own unfolding stories?
This December I have a happy, joyful thing happening right alongside some very sad, stressful things, as many of us do. On the 10th of the month my children’s book, There’s an Elephant in My Bathtub comes out. It’s so happy, a sweet gift for children - sorry but all the kids in my life will be getting one. (Now I’ve gone and ruined the surprise.) There will also be a sweet children’s sing-along produced by the super talented David Rowen, featuring some of my favorite Broadway stars. Now that’s fun and happy and joyful and beautiful. This children’s book will become part of my story.
It’s the good and the bad, the dark and the light, the joy and the grief that is our life’s journey, our own personal story, that we are living out every moment of our lives. We experience them all and they don’t have a calendar. Only in the movies do the enemy troops stop and pray together on Christmas, going back to fighting the following day. Grief and loss and conflict are part of the human condition. So is joy, happiness, love...
Author Cynthia Bourgeault writes:
Deeper than our sense of separateness and isolation is another level of awareness in us, another whole way of knowing. Thomas Keating, in his teachings on centering prayer, calls this our “spiritual awareness” and contrasts it with the “ordinary awareness” of our usual, egoic thinking. The simplest way of describing this other kind of awareness is that while the self-reflexive ego thinks by means of noting differences and drawing distinctions, spiritual awareness “thinks” by an innate perception of kinship, of belonging to the whole.
The only thing blocking the emergence of this whole and wondrous other way of knowing is your over-reliance on your ordinary thinking. If you can just turn that off for a while, then the other will begin to take shape in you, become a reality you can actually experience. And as it does, you will know . . . your absolute belonging and place in the heart of God, and that you are a part of this heart forever and cannot possibly fall out of it, no matter what may happen.
In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope, we begin to experience and trust what it means to lay down self, to let go of ordinary awareness and surrender ourselves to the mercy of God. And as hope . . . flows out from the center, filling us with the fullness of God’s own purpose living itself into action, then we discover within ourselves the mysterious plenitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain.
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The children’s book came about when I woke up one morning with a line in my head. I made a beeline for my computer to type what was rolling around in my mind: “This morning I was rather shocked to find an elephant in my bathtub.” When six-year-old Isaac visited during the holidays with his family he left some of his toy animals around the house. As I was cleaning up from our holiday party I found a plastic camel on the sofa cushion, a lion on the floor, and a gorilla on the ottoman. That's how the book was conceived.
I try to pay attention to things that happen like this, seemingly out of the blue. Think about the things in your life that have shown up unexpectedly. They might be "God things" as my friend Barb and I like to call them. I have learned to pay attention when these unusual things happen because a sub-plot of my story is beginning to reveal itself. This life is fun and interesting and mysterious like that.
One of the many reasons the Christmas story is so magical is the spectacular imagery in the story of the birth of Christ. There is the famous star that appears in the sky, directing the three wise men to the exact place of Jesus’ birth. That ancient GPS was important to those three guys. They needed that star otherwise they would be lost. We know how men hate to ask for directions. And how about the angel that appeared to Mary telling her she was going to have God’s baby? Whoa, that would be a shocker for any young girl to hear, angel or not. Fortunately, the angel preceded his announcement with the admonishment to “fear not” before he unloaded the good news on her. Take a deep breath girl your life is about to change radically and, by the way, so will the rest of the world. Quite a story unfolded on that starry silent night in that stable in Bethlehem.
"O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light"
Those two images, the star that led the wise men and the angel’s visitation on this teenage mom-to-be, can be woven into my own story. Here’s an example. Paying attention to the signs and wonders of the day like those wise men, who didn’t have a Waze app on their iPhone, is something I try to practice. When an idea for a story pops in, I take it seriously. Sometimes it turns into a book, sometimes it’s just a passing fancy. When I am seeking guidance I look to these sacred stories.
For about a year I played with the story and the images of the elephant and the other larger-than-life animals as a way to handle grief. It turned out to be great therapy. You might give it a try as another tool for journeying through grief. Creativity is healing. It takes us out of our minds. The mind can spin things over and over until the truth is so obscured it is barely recognizable. The Dr. Phil dramas that we create up there in the mind are not the real deal. When we explore our subconscious mind for the creative gems that are hidden there we are able to uncover deep heart-centered wisdom.
The truth of our lives is our story. What is your true story? Take out all of the spin and take a good hard realistic look at your true story. Did you have a less than happy childhood? What stories have you been telling yourself it? What do you know about your people and their own stories? How separated do you feel from loved ones and others in your community? Where is there common ground? Tell the truth. Just the facts ma’am/man. Just the facts.
What we know about the Christmas story is that a child was born and he grew up to be a teacher and a preacher of love, a rabble-rouser from the get-go, a healer, and a leader. We don’t really know what he looked like although he was probably not much over five feet as that was the average height at the time. We’re not sure he was actually born in Bethlehem. Details are murky at best, but the similar stories in the gospels point to something with historical veracity. The fact that we are still celebrating that birth two thousand and some years later is telling. I could only dream of that for my little book.
I am enjoying this Pray as You Go website which provides an opportunity to experience the nativity story in a deeper way. It is beautifully done. It is especially nice for families. Check it out here.
"How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in"
After submitting my story and getting lots of rejections, I was contacted by the publisher back in January. They were interested in my story. What? We began work on the book shortly thereafter.
The holidays are tough for a lot of people. I know that after Meghan, my first child, died (Back to Happy, my first book, was about healing from that loss) I didn’t have much passion for creating a festive holiday for my family. But I had to drum up some enthusiasm for my three-year-old daughter Caroline. I also had a newborn son, just two months old, that first Christmas. What a story! Somehow we survive these things that seem so devastating and life-changing. Many of us thrive through adversity and develop more compassion, resilience, and a sense of justice. Others become bitter, hopeless, deeply depressed. A lot of us fall somewhere in the middle. Our stories go on. Like the animals in my story, the big things become smaller with the passage of time. When we share our stories truthfully we find common ground.
We took the Amtrak train from Baltimore to New York City recently and as my husband and I emerged from Penn Station onto 34th street in Manhattan he commented, “I think I just saw more people on this block than I have seen in the last month.” So many people. And they each have stories. There’s common ground for you.
How will you honor your story this holiday season? Will you look to the Nativity or the Hanukkah stories for inspiration and an awareness of a deeper truth of your own. I recommend it. Take some time to ponder the meaning of your life in light of the mythologies we have come to know and cherish. How do you relate to the characters in the stories? How will you move forward in relation to the characters in your life in light of these stories? How has your relationship to your Creator changed in light of these stories and your own?
The Christmas story will always be a source of comfort and joy for me, especially in darker times. Each year my relationship with the mystery that is God deepens as my story unfolds. The staying power of these stories is evidence that life goes on despite hardship and personal struggle. My faith is deepened every Christmas morning when I remember that the Light of the World, that innocent child who grew to show us how things could be, was a gift, is a gift of love to all of us always, and especially when things appear darkest.
I will breathe through this season with all of you who are experiencing similar dark nights right alongside the happiness of holiday festivities. Yoga, a healthy diet, and good sleep will help, as will some of the other lessons I shared in my book Back to Happy.
Also, look for my ten-day course called Sacred Grieving available on the Insight Timer app. I will be using it as well this season to gracefully navigate the trials to come. I would love your comments on the course.
If you love animals like I do, buy my sweet children’s book here and share it with the children in your life. And don’t forget to check out and share the sing-along video on YouTube. You might not thank me after the children have played it for the hundredth time, but your kiddos will love it!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Blessed Happy Healthy Holidays to you and yours.
Namaste, Shalom, Peace.
Connie
Connie Bowman is an actress, author, host of the podcast Happy Healthy You! and yoga teacher who teaches at various places around Howard County, MD. For more about her visit www.conniebowman.com.
