The world is dark and heavy, and it has been raining or misting here in this corner of Virginia pretty much since Thanksgiving.  The humid air holds the light.  It reflects the orange glow of the streetlights, and if I imagine hard enough, it looks like the haze of a soft Christmas snow.

How does light reflect in the dark, damp night?  Why does it only shine forth in certain areas?

What was that night like when they slaughtered the child in the park?  What was that night like when the authorities ran their power-laden swords through the babies?

What did solidarity look like for Mary and Joseph, with their relatives mourning the loss of their children?   What is solidarity with pain when you’re the one who lives?

*****

When I open a square of Earl Grey tea, I smell the inside.  It’s one of my favorite smells in the world, next to pine trees and old books.  If I had the money, I’d buy the real tins of loose-leaf tea, and become enamored with words like lapsang, darjeeling, and golden tips, that evoke smells and memories just from the saying.

I rarely drink tea from the store.  It’s just not as good as real tea.  The process of boiling water, selecting the loose pieces, choosing what kind of container to put them in – the stainless steel ‘bag’, or the strainer that rests on the rim of the cup, infusing as the water pours over it – it’s an event to have a proper cup of tea.

The exoticness of it all is what enthralls me, I think, even more than the taste.  Is that human nature?  To be thrilled with the foreign, the different, the adventurous?  Is it mere exotic fascination that compels white people to join the protests, or is it something more?

I know that all of the tea in the world means nothing when it comes to race and oppression and solidarity.

Except that I know I’m an intense person, and I always wonder what impression people get of me.  I’m sort of socially awkward in person, a little more hot-headed on the computer, but all I really want is an hour of silence, with some good tea, a candle, and a book.  I don’t know what solidarity looks like.

*****

Did you know that there was an ancient winter celebration called Saturnalia, and one called Yule, and that people actually went a-wassailing, which was a way for peasants to collect money without begging?

I learned that yesterday sitting in my daughter’s homeschool co-op class, listening to end of the semester presentations.

We pay for our kids to take co-op classes, mostly so we aren’t alone and isolated.  But nonetheless, we pay to have our kids learn once a week from other people, and I learn about how our modern Christmas traditions are so similar to ancient ‘pagan’ ways, and I wonder what Incarnation really has to do with our holiday.  I wonder what it means to be in solidarity when our scraping of the pennies goes towards our kids.

What does Jesus coming to be with us in the midst of the gritty pain of life have to do with the mundane, even wasteful minutiae of our lives?  What can I learn from him as I watch the intersections of race and class play out in my actual front yard?  How does incarnation inform solidarity?

*****

I backed out of my driveway a couple of weeks ago, and it was raining.  A heavy, Virginia sort of rain.  And as I sat, shoulders damp, waiting for the heat to kick in, I saw him – one of many I see – a black man walking.

What is solidarity when I have a van, and so many only have legs and bikes?

Oh sure, the Son of Man had no place to lay his head, but he also had benefactors, and food to eat, and miracles for April 15th.  What does incarnation mean for those of us too poor to tithe, too poor to vote, too poor to drive a car?

The Christmas lights shine in the dark, so they say, as Christ shines in the dark.  But if I drive around at night, I see the dark.  To be sure, there is light that reflects the rain, but only in the areas where they want revitalization to occur.  The dark areas are left to fend for themselves.

I have read and done none of the things for Advent I was planning on.  Because when it comes to Christmas and meaning, all I keep seeing is that black man on the sidewalk in the pouring rain, while I sit dry in my van.

For the first Sunday in Advent, Brueggemann and Co. write about Psalm 80 in A Lectionary Commentary Vol. 2: Year B:

“At the heart of the psalm, then, lies a cry for salvation….Even the plea ‘let your face shine’ is a cry for salvation, in that it recalls the presence of God at the exodus and in the wilderness, where the glory of God ‘lit up the night’ and protected the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptians.”

And I look at the stack of books on my shelf, I look at people I respect talking about allies and solidarity, and I see the baby Jesus, and all I can wonder is what is salvation?  What is incarnation and solidarity for those of us saved by the paleness of our skin?

 

 

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