Ann Pierce Arnett

This piece was originally written by Ann Pierce Arnett on December 21, 2010.

Isaiah 42:16 NRSV
I will lead the blind by a road they do not know,
by paths they have not known I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.

Reflection:
Tonight is the winter solstice. The longest night of the year. There is also a lunar eclipse – the first one since 1642 that coincides with the winter solstice. It is a rare thing – but feels so appropriate to me. I am awake before dawn and cannot sleep.

It has felt so dark so often these days. Feelings of loss, grief, doubt worry the weeks. Thoughts of struggle and broken dreams cloud and fog over the year. And now tonight, the longest dark and even the little light eclipsed.

A friend whose aging husband is in poor health mentioned that he passed out in the emergency room two nights ago and that his sympathetic nervous system saved his life. I don’t think I had ever heard anyone use that terminology before, and when I asked her, she explained that it is the portion of our autonomic nervous system concerned with the part of our bodies that we have no awareness of being in control of. It keeps our heart beating and our lungs breathing whether we are conscious or not. Sitting and meditating in the early and deeply dark hours I’m thinking how my life—all life—is sustained in the dark or the light; supported, held up throughout the days, weeks and years without my will.

I know that; I even feel that. God, family, friends, heaven, nature, circumstances, intellect, emotions—all and each have sustained me. When I had no will for it, the sympathetic has taken over and breathed the next breath for me. This breath has enlivened muscles, and my heart and brain have seen and heard signs of hope and love to sustain me. Friends have called when I felt alone; bulbs have popped up green and fresh when before there was nothing but rough earth; and music… yes, for sure, the sounds of all kinds of music have been my sympathetic spiritual support system.

But oh God, I am weary of the dark.

We call it Advent, our season of waiting. Long, longing, remembering, gathering us together again to wait, to await. There is a difference it seems to me between waiting and awaiting.

When I Google the words, I am surprised to find an entry for “The word waiting in Hebrew.” The entry says: “In the Bible the word most often translated “wait” in the sense of waiting on the Lord is the Hebrew qavah, which means (1) “to bind together like a twisted rope” (2) “look patiently,” and (3) “hope, expect, look eagerly.” Then when I look up “await” I find: (1) to wait for someone or something (2) to be ready. I have experienced both: waiting, and I reluctantly admit, awaiting. And now, this morning, I am twisted and bound up with both.

I remember our congregation singing, “when heaven and nature sing,” a simple round – constant, rhythmic, beautiful breaths, sympathetic, all three parts and melodies moving up and down the treble and bass clefs; repeated and circling, a twisted rope; bound up in the returning harmony, single notes carrying the blended differences:

Light and Darkness; light and darkness….
Light and Darkness; light and darkness….
LightandDarknesslightanddarknessLightand….

So.
It is dawn now. Thank God.
More light than dark.
And the year is turning.
Tonight will be shorter.

My breathing – the breath I will take in this new day is not just automatic.
I am called into a remembered and deeper will to take a fuller breath, and now I can.

I’m grateful for both—the shallow and the deep. Light and Darkness. Heaven and Nature. Silence and Song. Peace amidst it all.

Prayer:
Everlasting God of Light, Come! Come to all that has grown dim in us.
Awaken our hearts with your wonderous and lifegiving melodies.
Reveal again to us your gift of being our light in the darkness. O Come!