What is it About December?

   It's been a very long time since I've posted to this blog.  Now, as 2018 draws to a close, I feel compelled to write again.  Tonight I learned that I have lost yet another friend, and again in December.
   This is a month that is known for darkness.  Today is the Winter Solstice, the darkest and shortest day of the year.  Many celebrations surround the concept of darkness and light during this twelfth and final month of our calendar year:  Hannukah, Advent, Christmas, Solstice, New Year's Eve.  Since the dawn of time, humankind has taken a moment during this wintry month to pause and reflect on life and death.
   For me, each year that passes carries a little more sadness during this month.  Both of my parents died in December, and several friends died, as well.  I was born on December 22nd, and have always loved being born at such an energy-infused time of year.  For beneath the frozen ground, seeds are sleeping...new life will come in the spring, and this long period of sleep is necessary for their growth. Each year that passes in this decade of my 60s brings more loss.  The deaths of friends and family must, by natural law, increase as I age, until one day I, too, will pass away and become memory.
Is it morbid to focus on death at a time when most of the Christian world is focusing on birth?  No, because both are intimately entwined.  The Wise Men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh - foreshadowing the death and burial of Jesus Christ.  These were the precious gifts they laid at the manger in Bethlehem.  And even as Jesus was born under the brilliance of a Star, Herod ordered the death of all Jewish baby boys under the age of two...just in case.  Birth.  Death.  Entwined.
   It's certainly much less dramatic for me.  My mother told me long ago that I was born on the coldest day of the year.  Perhaps that's why I've always loved the cold!  As a child, I slept in an unheated summer porch.  I remember putting my little hands on the chimney that passed from the kitchen below through my little room to the roof, feeling the warmth of it.  I was never cold.  In fact, since our grandmother lived with us, the house downstairs was kept uncomfortably warm.  To this day I gravitate to the cooler places in our house.
   Today I lost another friend.  Just yesterday she was commenting on my photograph of dawn in Ontario, and hours later, she died of a heart attack - no previous warning.  We must all be prepared.  Who knows who will go next?  In my family, the women live to be quite old.  My mother was 96.  Her aunt died at 104.  I may well live to be well over 100.
   My motto is, live each day as if it is your last, but plan as though you will live forever.
Now, as the longest night of the year is in progress, my wish for all of you, dear readers, is that you reflect upon your lives, and realize that you, too, could disappear into the night without warning.  Yes, we celebrate the return of the light beginning tomorrow (my birthday), but we know deep in our hearts that the great wheel of time will continue to roll, and bring around December after December.                What do we bring to the manger?  Does the Star shine down upon us, too?  What is it about December?

The Color Purple

   This week our community lost a dear friend.  By "our community," I mean not only greater Rochester, but also the large family of music educators who knew her.  To protect her family's privacy, I'll call her Tammy.  I knew Tammy from my final position as an arts director in a local outer-ring suburb.  I knew her not only from endless staff meetings, many informal classroom visits, formal observations, concerts, and the like, but also from social events - parties at my house, gatherings at her house.  For you see, music educators are a very large family.  One of the comments that appeared in my own annual performance reviews each year was the fact that I was "too close" to my faculty.  That one always made me smile.  My superintendent finally said to me, "You're one of them, aren't you?"  You bet I am.  I was, and I always will be.
   Even though I've been retired for 5 1/2 years now, I still have friends - former colleagues - in the school district who do a bang-up job of keeping me informed of all manner of news.  Sometimes I get news reports before the official word comes from their current central office administrators...This brings me to how I found out my friend and colleague was ill, a little over a year ago.   Through Facebook and messaging, I was able to follow Tammy through her slow, relentless downhill journey.  Thanks to social media, I was able to send Facebook messages, texts, and e-mails, along with one or two calls to let her know I was thinking of her, that she was in my prayers.  She was diagnosed with cancer right around the time that my brother was diagnosed...I offered to go visit her on several occasions, but she never felt well enough to take me up on my offer.
    When I realized she was no longer checking in to her Facebook account, I began posting photos on her wall occasionally.  Sunrises, sunsets, beautiful scenes that I had the privilege of seeing...it was my way of visiting.  And of course, she was always on my daily prayer list.
   This past week, Tammy passed away.  There was an amazing half-page article in the local paper, as well as a lengthy obituary.  The obit gave not only the times for the calling hours and funeral, but also a request that her friends and family wear purple to these events, as it was her favorite color.
   Purple.  The color of royalty.  I only have one or two things to wear of that color, purchased one summer to match my purple cast on whichever foot was operated on that year.  I wore one dark purple sweater with matching scarf to the calling hours at the funeral home, and a lavender top with a black jacket to the funeral itself.  And I was part of an absolute tide of purple in both places.
   The tributes to Tammy were beautiful.  There were photos of every aspect of her life, cut short at too young an age.  Her Celebration of Life was a glowing tribute to her faith, her love of family, and her adoring friends.  I must admit that I considered not attending the funeral.  After all, the family seemed surprised that I showed up at the calling hours.  I had originally decided I would remember Tammy by driving to a nearby state park to observe the "ice volcano" that has recently appeared on local news - a fountain that has a 27' ice pinnacle growing up around it.  Tammy had been a camper, a hiker, a lover of nature, interests that I share.  I would remember her by spending some time in a beautiful place.  Only, when I made the hour-long drive to see the ice volcano, the final stretch of road was closed!  I turned my car around, and realized that I still had time to go home, change into yet more purple, and make it to the service in time.
   I'm so glad I did.  The chapel was packed.  I was once again a part of a purple tide.  I saw a number of people I had worked with - music teachers, administrators, all members of that community.  I was content to sit in the back pew alone, singing along on the hymns, tearing up at the testimonials, and above all, basking in the glow of a true celebration of life.  Tammy was beloved among her peers, and that love was very evident that day.
   Today I wore purple one more time.  The funeral may be over, but I believe that Tammy is now leading a band in Heaven - I have no doubt that she's in charge of the elementary angel instrumentalists, cheering them on in their heavenly music making.  I know angels are supposed to be wearing white, but I believe Tammy and her little band are all wearing purple...the color of royalty.  After all, they are performing for a King.

When Feasts Collide

   For years our family has celebrated Epiphany with one last present, one little gift for each person in our family to remember the Magi reaching the manger.  Sometimes we even had a celebration of Twelfth Night, like a dinner party (sometimes in costume).  Epiphany still holds magic and mystery for me.  Now, as an adult entering my “golden years,” I feel the historic tension of that period in Christian history.  It wasn’t really on a silent night that Christ was born.  Holy, yes.  But silent, no.  Herod had caught wind of the birth of the Jewish King, and ordered the death of all newborn male Jewish babies.  I think of Rachel weeping for her children, who are no more.  Of the Magi, accidently alerting Herod of the birth of the newborn King of the Jews.  Of Joseph and Mary, returning home stealthily “by another way” – through Egypt – which is quite a detour.  To escape what?  Violence.  Death.  Injustice.

  This year, Epiphany collides with the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, an interesting contrast of events.  For me, Epiphany evokes the idea of gifts, royalty, and flight from the threat of evil.  For me, baptism evokes the idea of the gift of Grace, the crowning of the young King, and freedom from sin.  These two holy days both involve gift-giving.  The Epiphany occurred in an atmosphere of flight from violence, and Baptism occurred in the symbolism of the saving grace of water, and the powerful force of life overcoming death.

   As I write this, I am looking out over Tampa Bay.  The roar of fighter jets fills the air before dawn.   MacDill Air Force Base is across the bay.  Yesterday, we went for a walk in a beautiful little nature park in urban St. Petersburg.  In a linear nature preserve that runs alongside busy I 275 South, we walked on boardwalks through swamps and by a canal in which alligators basked in the sun.  There were no fences, no barriers, no gates to keep us separate from these ancient creatures.  Walkers stayed on a raised boardwalk, sort of safe from the possibility of a charging reptile.  But these reptiles were very cold, and were happy to laze in the sun, absorbing the warmth.  The park lies next to a residential neighborhood, but residents of both habitats appear to be able to live side-by-side in peace, without fear of attack.

   Today, Rob and I will attend the simple and beautiful Episcopal Cathedral in St. Petersburg.  Then we’ll drive South to spend the afternoon and evening with grandson Brady.  Again, there is symbolism in this activity.  Brady cared for 240 college students who couldn’t escape Hurricane Irma last Fall, in a job he had just begun only a month earlier.  Baptism by fire…And yet the storm decreased from a Cat Five to a Cat Two by the time it reached Fort Meyers.  The decimation of Puerto Rico and other islands was not visited upon Florida Gulf Coast University.  I remember thanking God – experiencing gratitude for a lesser storm.  Those words came back to me today, in the pre-dawn darkness punctuated by the roar of the ascending fighter jets.  I am grateful that we are not at war on our own soil, although much of the world is suffering.  I am grateful that the beautiful, terrifying creatures of the Floridian swamplands – even in the midst of a city – still exist.  And I am grateful that today we can see our grandson at the university where he became a man, helping others through the storm. 

   My prayer today is that we might not destroy ourselves as the human race.  It has been said that if all the animals were to die on the Earth, mankind will perish.  If mankind were to die off completely from the Earth, all of creation would flourish.  Through Baptism we are marked as Christ’s own forever.  I pray for an Epiphany for this world, for the grace of God to save us from destroying ourselves, and our precious Earth.  I pray for the gift of a lesser storm.