With the birth of Christianity, the Church not knowing the exact date of birth of its founder, skilfully placed Christmas Day, which heralds the birth of one who would be known as the Light of the World, three days after the Winter Solstice.
The weeks before Christmas are called Advent, from the Latin word advenire, which means to look forward to. What many Christians forget however is the nine month journey of that child in his mother’s womb, a journey that each one of us has made. And with our birth each of us is responsible for carrying a single light for humanity. Lighting a candle at any time is a reminder of the flame within each one of us that we need continually to guard.
I came across a Jewish story the other day. A man
was down on his luck, everything had gone wrong for him, and he was now down to
his last ounce of tea, his last slice of bread and a pat of butter. So he
thought, ‘I might as well make myself a last cup of tea and have a slice of
toast.’ As he buttered the toast it fell onto the floor. But it fell with the
buttered side up. ‘That must be an omen!’ he cried. ‘It must mean things are
going to change for the better!’
He raced through the village and knocked on the door
of the Rabbi’s house and told him the story. ‘It’s a sign, don’t you agree?’ he
exclaimed. The Rabbi told him he must deliberate on the matter and that in the
meantime the man should go home and come back the next morning.
Very early the next day the man was back. ‘I have
deliberated all night with the other Rabbis,’ said the Rabbi, ‘and we have come
to the conclusion that you buttered the toast on the wrong side.’
In his journal, Markings,
Dag Hammarskjöld, former Secretary-General of the United Nations wrote, ‘Now. When
I have overcome my fears –of others, of myself, of the underlying darkness at
the frontier of the unheard-of. Here ends the known. But from a source beyond
it, something fills my being with its possibilities – at the frontier.’
At this time of the year many, especially the
elderly, find the long darkness of winter difficult. As one woman wrote to me,
‘This is always a bad time of the year for me. I seem to go down as the
darkness descends and only pick up a bit when it starts to get light again.’
It is
no wonder, therefore, that our ancestors in the West grew fearful at this time
of the year, and lit beseeching fires that the Sun might not die but recover. And
each year, with the coming of the Winter Solstice, they regarded with wonder
the rebirth of the Sun, as light began to return, redeeming the darkness. The
old Celtic spirituality was deeply rooted in Nature, and it is from Nature that
we learn the ultimate lesson: that at the moment of deepest darkness light
returns – at midnight noon is born.
The material world about is visible to us. What we can see with our own eyes, touch with our own hands, we can verify. But the invisible world, the reality beyond the present reality, which we cannot physically touch or see – how to verify that? There is no way, scientifically or intellectually, that we can come by such knowledge, for it is knowledge of another order. No one can be argued into a knowledge of God. Truth remains a revelation. No one can be talked into falling in love. Love remains an experience. And in the silence of meditation there will come a knowledge that has nothing to do with questionnaires or encyclopedias, a knowledge that cannot be proved scientifically or even pinned down into words – and yet it is a knowledge of unshaken and unshakable surety.
‘Our real journey,’ wrote Thomas Merton, ‘is
interior. It is a matter of growth, deepening and of an ever-greater surrender
to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more
necessary to respond to that action. I
pray that we may all do so.’
So many people today hunger for the things of the
spirit which all too often they do not find within our churches or synagogues.
And yet the treasure that is beyond all price is waiting there for us, as
Teilhard de Chardin discovered:
And
so, for the first time in my life perhaps – although I am supposed to meditate
every day!- I took the lamp and leaving the zone of every day preoccupations and
relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to
the deep abyss whence I felt that my power of action emanates… but I became
aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new
person was disclosed within me… And when I had tostop my exploration because the path faded from
beneath my steps, I found a bottomless pit at my feet, and out of it came –
arising I know not where – the current which I dare to call my life.
Last year Zuleika Books published Older, a day by day journal of my 91st year. The reason for mentioning it is that often people say to me, ‘I am old!’ and I reply, ‘No: you are older.’ The word ‘old’ with its final ‘d’ is like a heavy door slamming, whereas the word ‘older’ more accurately reminds us that life is a journey of continual learning. As T.S. Eliot wrote (and had he been writing in prose he would also have added ‘women’) ‘Old men should be explorers still.’
The practice of meditation should not make us
complacent but, rather, deepen our awareness of others and enable us to listen
in depth to what is often a sub-text: they are talking about one thing but we
sense there is something else they are wanting to say and if we listen, we
shall eventually hear it.
This is why in the summer I sometimes invite our
meditation group, which meets once a month, to sit in a circle outside in the
garden, and, rather than try to shut out all the sounds, to be aware of them.
We hear an aeroplane, an ambulance going by, children playing, birds singing, and
we slowly become aware of the sap rising in plants and trees. We don’t try and shut
all this out, but rest in a deep inner silence.
For some 50 years I lived in an attic flat in Belsize Park Gardens, high above the tree tops. It had a balcony and often in the summer I would sleep out. At night I would lie gazing up at the brilliance of stars, the moving pageant of clouds and the changing shapes of the moon. Sometimes very early in the morning I would be woken to hear and see a flight of birds crossing the sky like some calligraphy. .
In the West our relationship with Nature barely exists ,which is why the National Trust has launched a major scheme to encourage people to explore the countryside. How few children today get to climb trees, kick up autumn leaves , or watch hares boxing. And while lockdown has encouraged more people to take long walks, how many actually stop to sit on a bench for say fifteen minutes, keeping very still, being aware of the life around them.
Trees alone have so much to teach us as our forefathers and mothers knew in these maxims :
What is well rooted survives.
As the twig bends so the tree will grow.
Severed branches grow again. (to all who have been wounded, emotionally or physical, such words bring reassurance.)
Every tree is known by its fruit.
A rotten tree bears rotten fruitful.
Trees are full of secrets.
It is as St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, ‘ What I know of the divine sciences and holy writ I learnt in the woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. You will learn more in the woods than in books. Trees, stones will teach you more than you can acquire from the mouth of a teacher.’
In Frances Hodgson Burnet’s The Secret Garden little Mary, the orphan, asks her guardian if she may have a piece of earth. ‘A piece of earth?’ kh repeats. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘to plant things in, to make things grow.’ He replies ‘Child, when you see a piece of earth, take it and make it come alive!’
Which is exactly what Mary, aided by Dickon and Colin, does when they discover the secret garden. They weed it, they plant it -and then what do they do? They sit cross-legged and meditate!
And this reminds me of some words of Rumi ‘When we nurture the seeds of meditation in our inner garden we begin to come alive at a deeper level than that of mere happiness. Happiness is elusive, it comes and goes. What grows and becomes evergreen in our innermost garden is contentment.’
