Defiance in the Dark ~ Gaudete Sunday for Celtic Advent Day 23

The third candle has been lit on our Advent Crown and the light is quietly increasing, although it may feel to many of us that the darkness has deepened since last I wrote.

The UK general election results have left many reeling and deep in grief, and I am amongst them. I have tried to write, and have several half finished pieces to share, but often I am rendered wordless by events or am trying to manage in my own ineffectual way the distress ebbing and flowing here in the hedgehermitage since the vote took place. My husband, who has Asperger's and has already had most of his support from our Government removed and who is currently in the midst of yet another assessment process, is overloaded and overwhelmed. I feel for those, and there are many, who are much less well off than we are.

And so, I breathe deeply as I write that this week's candle, the third of Advent, was dedicated to Gaudete Sunday and to joy.

Gaudete Sunday takes its name from the Latin word 'gaudete', 'Rejoice'.  Some of us may be familiar with the word from the song of the same name by Steeleye Span.

Ever so lovely.

Gaudete in Domino semper: 
iterum dico, gaudete. 
Modestia vestra nota sit 
omnibus hominibus: 
Dominus enim prope est. 
Nihil solliciti sitis: 
sed in omni oratione et 
obsecratione cum gratiarum 
actione petitiones vestræ 
innotescant apud Deum. 
Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: 
avertisti captivitatem Jacob.

Rejoice in the Lord always; 
again I say, rejoice.
Let your forbearance be known to all,
for the Lord is near at hand;
have no anxiety about anything,
but in all things,
by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving,
let your requests be known to God.
Lord, you have blessed your land;
you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.

Philippians 4:4–6; Psalm 85 (84):1

This reminds me of Mary's fierce and revolutionary song, the 'Magnificat', which was the first thing I thought to write about as the Election results came in; 'He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.' These songs are not an inventory of what IS but a call to what will BE. Here, is Paul's own song in the face of suffering, written to the Philippians as he awaited sentencing and certain execution at the hands of the Roman Empire; 'Rejoice in the Lord, always'. Not their Lord, of power over and might; OURS, the Peasant King of the World Turned Upside Down. Or, as our priest Eileen described it yesterday, "the upside down world of justice and joy." To find joy, to be joyful in the midst of despair, this too is the Resistance. And that is what Advent is all about.

Theologian Henri Nouwen described the difference between joy and happiness by explaining that happiness relies on external conditions but that joy is knowing that we are held in absolute love and that nothing can take that away. I'm not sure that many of us feel secure in being held in absolute love, despite it being true, but I do agree with Henri Nouwen that joy can be present in the saddest of times. This is what Small Beauties, which I have written about many times before, teach us; that circumstances may sit on us like a dark and increasingly stormy cloud but, every now and again, the sun will come out and we will glimpse wonders.

Last Saturday, still feeling tearful, heartbroken, and raw, I ventured out as I had promised to deliver some leaflets about lovely Christmas happenings. I didn't want to go but I made myself because I had promised. This is anothet reason why community and respobsibility matter; they force us out when we might otherwise curl in ourselves and perhaps never fully reemerge. And so I went out and I did experience moments of joy.

I found that the Goat Willow down the roadhas new leaf buds, I found a newly-revealed-by-winter bird's nest, the bare-branch trees were beautiful against the winter sky, Solid Dennis, our cat companion, found a new sitting place, I played pee-bo in church with a toddler who was fascinated by my bindi and flower hat, I found a quince bush, I received a surprise gift in the post, our new giant bag of bird seed arrived, and our garden was visited by the Mac Gwylan herring gulls who nest on our roof and a stunning magpie.

Some of this weekend's small beauties & moments of joy

And all these things delighted me, even the trees despite them being the only few survivors of a new housing development.  Or perhaps, because of. In this complicated and complex world we often discount what's beautiful, what brings us joy and hope. We so quickly move to, "yes, but....". We don't need escapism or false positivity but we do need moments of joy. They are respite and food for the long journey to justice. To me these little joys are fleeting but perfect moments of connection to the spark of Creation when everything else falls away. We need those.

And respite is just what Gaudete Sunday is all about. As I have written before, following an older tide, Advent once echoed the fasting and austerity of Lent and, like Lent, lasted for forty days, beginning at Martinmas on 11th November. This was known as 'St Martin's Lent', a name by which it was known from at least the 5th Century.

In the 9th Century, Advent was reduced to the more familiar four weeks (or four Sundays) but remained a time of repentance and fasting. Gaudete Sunday, like Laetare Sunday in Lent, falls halfway through this time and is an opportunity to celebrate the closeness of Christmas Day without the accompanying austere practices. There is only so much that people are willing to take! I also recall that there are several made up saints' days during Advent as further excuses for frivolity.

I have long maintained that spring, not winter, is the season for self-denial and gentle fasting and the efforts of our ancestors to find reason for a knees up during Advent is further proof of that.

And so, Gaudete Sunday has opened us into a week of joy in the midst of deep despair for many. This is perfect Advent work; not to suggest that life is easy, but to accept the challenge of finding sweetness in the sour, to affirm that the 'upside down world of justice and joy' is a reality whose time will come, despite the evidence of injustice and sadness all around us, and to be defiant against the dark.

Christingle at St Martin's 1,000 year church

References:

Gaudete Sunday https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudete_Sunday

Laetare Sunday https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetare_Sunday

Phillipians https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Philippians

On Joy

A small world of loveliness

I suffer from depression and have for many years. The worst thing for me is that it is joyless and sucks the life and colour out of every experience. I feel that I am underwater or looking out at everything through the refraction of bottled glass; that I cannot see or be seen, or at least not as I truly am. Just a hair's breadth away from the ordinary and the everyday, I exist in netherworld devoid of almost any sensation, other than the haunting feeling that it shouldn't really be like this, that this isn't real. And then there is joy. It may seem strange to suggest that there are moments of bliss amongst the pain and yet that is just how it is. I remember life and I remember joy. I remember and I keep remembering.

And so here are some of the things that bring me joy, even through 'bottled glass';

Everything that is green and growing, the phrase 'weed wife', which I aspire to be, anything that grows in the cracks between the pavement or under fences, and definitely anything that is described as a 'weed', the concept of foraging and wild food and the fact that I have so, so much to learn about both.

Lying in bed listening to the rain fall outside, getting caught in the rain and coming home for a hot bath, sunshine after rain, the smell of rain, and the pulsating energy of all that is green after rain has fallen. Today, I saw blue sky reflected in a rainy pavement and felt a little heart-skip of joyousness.

Everything about bees, especially the emergence of the first bees of the year; this year it was a tawny mining bee, then a hairy flower-footed bee, and that I have only learned of the existence of both in the last year. Once, when I had stopped to open a lock gate, an ashy mining bee landed on my hand and stayed for a bee-while; that memory brings me joy. Honeybees, bumblebees, bees' bottoms, the busyness of bees, bees covered in pollen and with full pollen baskets, bumblebees wearing white deadnettle flowers as bonnets.

The shimmer of blue on a crow's wing and the intelligence of its eye, the beauty of magpies, the thrill of a woodpecker on the bird feeder; the other day a mating pair came to visit ~ my first ever sight of two woodpeckers at the same time, chiffchaffs, sparrows, wrens, the bouncing-bullet flight of blue tits, the feistiness of robins, the beauty and power of swans, the thought of long migration, starlings; feathers, murmuration, attitude.

Dandelion clocks.

That there are owls bring me joy, as does the word 'crepuscular'. So many words; anarchy, grace, rebellion, wild, weave, lunacy (lunarsea), flibbertigibbet, sloven, whore, hag, and hedge. It gives me joy to know words, to taste them on my tongue, to play with meanings and sounds and syllables. Books that teach me words, and daisy chains of words, that I had never dreamed of are a joy, daisy chains.

Children bring me joy; their honesty, their innocence, their tears, and their anger, their love of glitter and mud.

Mosses and lichens, and fungi, Paul Stamets, my favourite mycologist, and the thought that I might one day realise my dream to become a librarian mycologist lock keeper. The wonder of tardigrades! Geology is one of my joys; beloved chalk landscapes and clear chalk streams, granite, the soft~as~butter kindness of sandstone, the ancient strangeness of gneiss, the stones of Callanish, fens and moors and marshes, estuaries.

A glimpse of a heron, the flash of a kingfisher, floating the day away, woodburners, cups of tea, autumn leaves, winter days of sun and frost, watching a tree, or a wood, or a landscape, move through the cycle of its seasons.

Being brave brings me joy; braveness in the small things that feel big to me. Being loved and loving, the touch of Simon's hand in mine, his hugs, his dancing, his drumming, his smile, his silly songs, his absolute bravery in the face of himself, Stefi Queen of Cats, feeling looked after, waking in a sun-filled room with buttermilk curtains.

Nettles, cowslips, comfrey, lesser celandines, snowdrops, stitchwort, and poetry, the wild tangle of hedgerows, and words, and folktales. Orchards and wildings, crab apples and fallen fruit, the hunter spirit of dragonflies, the wildfire of foxes, the generosity of badgers.

Sunlight through the huge umbrella leaves of butterbur on a hot and hazy summer day. 

Good company; of friends, sisters, of root and fur and wing. Music; folk, classical, heavy metal. How The Levellers have somehow accompanied me through more than half my life. Tea shops, community, chai latte, glass jelly moulds, old-fashioned enamel mugs, a whistling kettle, the lovely things that people send me, my vast and ill-considered jug collection. Goddess.

Where I live brings me joy; South London; green and earthy, pie and mash, Greenwich Park, greater celandines appearing from under a fence, spring flowers in a riot on the Green, two ancient pear trees; one in a secret woodland, Mycenae House, Cross Bones Graveyard, The Borough, The Liberty, Southwark Cathedral, beautiful wasteground covered in dog daisies.

Baths, knitted patchwork blankets, dark chocolate with ginger, honey and ginger ice cream, green ginger wine, walking barefoot, birdsong, the sea.

Communication brings me joy; Twitter and Facebook and writing, weaving my own bright web, feeling heard. Wales and the Welsh language, finding feathers, communing with crows, bus drivers who are kind, people who care, the wild tapestry of London and how it gives those of us who live here the opportunity to do just that.

Bugwoman's Wednesday Weed, my tiny front garden filled with bluebells, deadnettle, lavender, green alkanet, and bees, that I know where harebells grow only a few minutes from my front door, that I have found Fly Agaric in the woods, that there is a community orchard nearby where I sometimes lie under a hawthorn tree and let the blossom tickle my bare toes. That sometimes these things have saved my life when nothing else could.

There are many things that bring me joy and they do save my life, sometimes literally in moments of the most numbing tiredness or fierce despair; I might just catch a reflection of blue in a rainsoaked pavement and take another step. It has recently been proven that microbes found in dirt are natural anti-depressants, and that definitely brings me joy, but nature gives us even more than that. Two years ago I went through a period when I could barely get out of bed until, one day, an ordinary little urban tree near my home called me out, just asking me to walk far enough to touch its bark. It was a gentle and polite request. I decided to do as I was asked. The little tree is only five minutes from my front door, the bark was smooth and silver-grey, an ant was exploring its small landscape, it saved me. There is nothing that the earth cannot heal.

Life is full of joy. I remember.

Inspiration:

Many have written about the healing power of nature. Here are just two...

Ecologist, Ryan Clark, has written recently about depression and how nature helps him in his blog; https://ryanclarkecology.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/the-natural-connection/

and Richard Mabey has written movingly of his own journey with depression in his book, 'Nature Cure' http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview2