Nebraska Synod ELCA

by David Pinkston, Director of Seeking The Spirit Within

Hello loved ones! We are celebrating the time of year when we give thanks for the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. It is also the time of year when the days grow dark. The days grow dark in more ways than the rhythms of the sun and moon. Some of us experience depression or seasonal affective disorder. Most of us enter into family holiday traditions that remind us of the complicated natures of our relations with kinsfolk. There may be family and friends missing at our reunions. We may enter proximity with those with whom we have challenging relationships. There may be unresolved triggers and traumas that might also arise during these times. And yet, these are also opportunities to seek what Spirit is up to within us and around us. After all, God does some of God’s greatest work in the dark.

There may be a temptation during the season in which we read banners, sing joyful songs, and speak to one another with “Happy holidays!” and feel that we ought to be endlessly cheery and delightful (and it is not a bad thing to be cheery and delightful! These are good habits if they are altruistic and come from a meaningful source within!). But in this season of darkness, there also lies the great invitation of Spirit: to inhabit the dark with God and say prayerfully, “may it be as you say.”

God has been God-ing from time immemorial in Creation and through Creation. Which is to say, all of creation is the incarnation of God – including you (Jn. 1:3-4 & Col. 1:16)! We sing of the Incarnation in Jesus during this season, yes, but may we also experience the Infinite Presence through the finite truth in our own lives – individually and collectively. God has invited God’s self to incarnate in us in ways that may be surprising to each of us, especially given the context of our current life situations. The “yes” that Mary exemplifies is the “yes” in each of our own souls, minds, and hearts, our messiness, our complexities, our confusions, and indeed our own embodied mystery.

To keep from being abstract, Infinite Love becoming incarnate in Jesus is not a one-and-done experience but the very essence of what it means to follow him. Follow him where? One way to answer this is that we are invited into his experience of God. We are not only incarnations of creation itself but of God’s love becoming our all in all, the primary way in which we identify ourselves. This may sound heady but it is meant to be our “yes” to life even during the darkest of seasons. This may be a “yes” to healthy boundaries in challenging environments. This may be a moment-to-moment “yes” to divine love even when we do not feel we have immediate access to it. This “yes” may be an invitation to a deeper relationship with our own self. Or perhaps it’s a “yes” to practice non-self-preservation around safe people (when all our shields may be unconsciously still up!).

This “may it be as you say,” did not solve all of Mary’s troubles. She was still occupied the lowest strata of her social environment. She still had to do the hard work of tending to herself and allowing others to tend to her (Lk. 1:39-40). But the living and true hope that was incarnating in her heart and in her very body is a living model for each of us in our own finitude – God works in the dark.

Life is truly mysterious, challenging, and requires each of us to do our inner work. But the inner work is not something we do on our own…Spirit within each of us loves us, partners with us, and desires our healing and wholeness. The life of Spirit within each of us is incarnating God’s presence in a unique way. We can trust the process, we can trust that God is bringing light into and out of the darkness.

Suggested Practice: throughout the day and the Advent season, place your hand on your heart (or tap the heart-space if you prefer) and say with prayerful sincerity: “what would you say to me in this moment?” Hold to this sacred word and may it anchor you…even in the dark.

Seeking the Spirit with you,
David and the StSW Team