Y’all, I couldn’t decide which Lectionary Proper to focus on for this litany, so I drew from all 3! Hence the more-than-usual number of citations.
The final (not penultimate, just the last left to discuss here. Some of us have to repeat stages here and there, hello) stage of grief is Acceptance. In acceptance we, at least temporarily, move into a place of non-resistance to our reality, and from here we find that we can actually function, do some good, find some relief, move forward with building a life in the New Normal.
And what’s the New Normal that Christ points us to? Now that we have done all this preparation in Advent; now that we’ve let ourselves feel sorrow and grief, and taken a hard look at our world and our own responses to it? How will we live now?
What we longed for has arrived. With the arrival of Christ - this cohesive force, gathering up all the world's suffering and pronouncing it No Longer Necessary; showing us a different way to be in the world, new structures and systems available for imaginative people - we are looking at a New Normal.
So the question for us is: Will we live in the New Normal that Christ points out for us? Or will we revert back to living in our old ways, our old harmful structures, re-living our pain and trauma in a loop? Will the Word, as John calls the Christ, become flesh among us? And will we enter into the joy, gladness, and gratitude offered to us in the world that Christ envisions and embodies?
I hope we will. Merry Christmas, friends.
God, at times we become so identified with our pain
That we can’t even imagine a different experience.
We hold onto trauma and suffering like a life-raft,
Thinking it will take us somewhere we haven’t been before.