Third Sunday in Advent

At the start of this post, I need to make a sad announcement. Our friend Laura Wood, host of the excellent blog The Thinking Housewife, has shared tragic news. Her 18-month old grandson, Trevor Joseph Wood, died yesterday morning of a sudden illness. Please remember Laura, and Trevor’s parents, and the entire family when you say your prayers. I cannot imagine the grief and loss they are enduring right now. I keep thinking of the little fellow’s Christmas presents that he will never open, of the family meals he will never attend, the books he will never read, the life milestones he will never reach. At times like this, we are told that our faith can sustain us. For me, a man of fragile and trembling faith, I hope that the Wood family is indeed sustained by their collective faith and their closeness to each other. Lord have mercy.

***

Today is the first day either of us have felt close to normal all week. Mrs. Orr began feeling a bit off a week ago, and by Monday evening, it was clear that she was sick. By Wednesday morning, I was also feeling the symptoms — upper respiratory congestion, stuffy head, sore eyeballs, sore throat, wheezing. Mrs. Orr was wracked with harsh, persistent coughing, fever, aches, sinus pressure, all that good stuff. When I awakened in the middle of the night betwixt Wednesday and Thursday, my throat felt as if I’d gargled with razor blades and I knew I wasn’t going to be working. I didn’t work Thursday or Friday, and now on Sunday, the symptoms have subsided enough for me to feel gratitude for the reprieve. Both of us are still wheezing and coughing, but the throat misery and the aches and fever are gone. I still have a weird head thing going on….somewhat dizzy and hypersensitive to light. Everything has a soft golden glow to it, and when I look around, it seems that someone is flickering or dimming the lights. This has improved a bit since yesterday, but is still there. Every time I get sick, I am reminded at the end of the ordeal how good it is to NOT be sick. The diminution of miseries leading to the cessation of miseries is a time of significance in a man’s life.

***

I was looking out the kitchen window into the back yard, and up into the woods behind us, remembering that it’s been a week since I walked among those tall trees and drapes of grapevines, among the scrub cedars and dormant honeysuckle, picking my way through the rocks and the animal burrows. I miss not only the walks themselves, but also the thoughts that come to me as I proceed along the paths and open new ones. Thinking while walking in the woods often reminds me of one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets.

Answers

I keep my answers small and keep them near;
Big questions bruised my mind but still I let
Small answers be a bulwark to my fear.

The huge abstractions I keep from the light;
Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.

But the big answers clamoured to be moved
Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

Even when all small answers build up to
Protection of my spirit, I still hear
Big answers striving for their overthrow

And all the great conclusions coming near.

by Elizabeth Jennings

***

Watching the events of the world’s news, even in the limited quantities my wife and I allow, is an exercise in horror. The world is under the spell and leadership of something evil beyond anything we can fathom. Gentle people are being cowed, beaten down, silenced, killed. Folks are being seduced, corrupted, betrayed. And all along, these people are being laughed at, a low chuckle of malignant delight, the nasty sound of a dirty imitation of joy, emanating from the mouths and nostrils of those who despise and envy the good, the true, the beautiful, the naive, the hopeful, the trusting. Envy. Envy leads to hatred, and hatred to murder, and something is constantly being murdered in this day of grimy souls.

I saw a movie back in the Eighties called The Name of the Rose, and one theme the movie (and presumably the book) touched on was that of subversive laughter…the idea that laughter might lead people to mock and blaspheme, to reject God’s truth and authority.  I don’t agree with this concept, but in these days, I am tempted to believe that promiscuous laughter should perhaps be controlled and limited. Most laughter these days seems to be either inappropriate or forced, overly raucous and mostly cruel. I can’t recall the last time I heard an adult let loose with a sincere, spontaneous laugh. Looking back through my memories, it seems to me that adults used to be much more sparing in their laughter, especially men. I never heard anyone express this thought aloud, but it seems that adults from my childhood saw laughter as something that should be quiet and rare. Raucous, uproarious laughter was something I only heard in movies, usually in a saloon in a western. Men generally laughed silently, a shaking of the shoulders with a smile on the face and a shake of the head, and women were barely louder. Was it a point of pride, a sign of manliness, to control laughter to the bare minimum reaction? Men of few words are often regarded with respect simply because of their taciturnity. Perhaps it is time for men to self-consciously be more stingy with their laughter. Even their smiles. It’s a wonderful thing to smile and laugh sincerely and deeply when among one’s family and close friends. To force a gale of bellowing laughter just to be noticed or to fit in with the times is no more wonderful than the things that are coming up from the earth and moving through the air these days.

***

We have been grateful for the mild temperatures this week while we were on our bed of pain. It was near 60F every day, and this prevented our misery from being enhanced by bitter cold. The cold is one the way, though. By this weekend, the highs are supposed to be in the 30s. I will not complain, so long as I can breathe without snuffling and inhale without hearing the rales in my chest and stand up without a wave of dizziness crashing into me. The landscape outside is subdued, painted in swaths of russet and gray and orange with tiny accents of green. The clouds sit low over the ground — it has been very foggy every morning this week — and sound is muffled, like after a snow. The birds have been active on the feeders that I have not filled as regularly as I normally would. Perhaps by the end of the week, I will take a walk. But for today, I will sit inside and enjoy the glow of the Christmas decorations and the sound of my wife cooking in the kitchen and the warm pressure of the dogs against my legs and ribs, and I will try to read a bit and I might even sip some eggnog on this third Sunday in Advent.

Rest well, dear ones.

~ S.K. Orr