Last year about this time I started planning for the upcoming mission camps at Laurel Ridge. I remember choosing “Change is Good” as the theme after listening to a CD Rusty put together for me as a Christmas present. I’ve written enough curriculum, retreat and camp programs in my life to know you should always be careful about theme choices because you inevitably receive many opportunities to live them out. Year 2007 certainly served as confirmation to my little theory. A lot changed and most of it was good. Steve and I just returned from a week in Oriental living aboard our sailboat Bella Blue, a 25′ Catalina built the same year my son Adam was born. They’re both getting older. Let’s just say it’s pretty easy to keep life simple when living small. She’s cozy and has everything we need….unless you like to spend a lot of time standing up. We can sleep, eat, read, play cards, have morning coffee while watching birds and clouds and jumping fish, and generally forget the world beyond Highway 55. It is our practice to spend a few days reflecting on the past year and recovering from the past week before talking about our hopes and dreams for the upcoming year. Usually Steve and I head for the boat a few days after Christmas and stay through New Year’s day. But as I said, this year was different. This was the first Christmas Eve that the boys and I hadn’t been under the same roof since they were born. Traditions like squeezing on one pew in the balcony for Christmas Eve Lovefeast, Chinese take-out and reading “The Night Before Christmas” aloud moved aside to make room for each of us to have new experiences and welcome new family members. For my part, I found myself in a new home, in new life circumstances, and without the people and activities that normally bring beauty, laughter, awe and meaning to my Christmas. I felt a sort of childlike fear and childlike trust in letting go of the familiar and opening myself to the unknown. I made a conscious choice not to hang my Moravian advent star as a symbolic gesture to make room for new light in my life. I love my advent star and missed it terribly, but here’s what happened on the nights (and days) before Christmas. On Friday Mom and I bought sugarcake warm from the brick ovens in Old Salem before heading for the farmhouse. As I prepared dinner Saturday evening we were surprised and delighted to hear the Prairie Home Companion broadcast from Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) featuring the Central Moravian choir. Sweet! Sunday morning we joined the loving and musically gifted congregation of Raleigh Moravian church for their service of lessons and carols. On Christmas Eve day we lingered over pizza in Pittsboro with Andy and Stacy. As dusk fell I lit the tin can luminaries placed around our deck. I’d been making these luminaries for several weeks from our soup and vegetable cans. With hammer and nail I made holes in various patterns or with words like Peace and Joy. There were 30 cans in all. While making each one I had named a friend or loved one and offered prayers of gratitude for their light in my life. The deck was beautiful with their light! It seemed strange but we packed our car with everything needed for a week on the boat and headed east. There were lots of stars to guide our way and unlike Santa, we had only one stop to make. With a feeling similar to those I experienced when my children walked through the door on the first day of Kindergarten, I entered a new sanctuary for Christmas Eve Lovefeast. Since there were just two of us we didn’t have to worry about squeezing onto the same pew and the church doesn’t even have a balcony so that presented no problem. In many ways Christmas was different, but sitting in that sanctuary, hearing the child’s voice of Morning Star, sharing a simple meal of sweet bun and coffee, welcoming the dimming lights that signify the arriving candles, and the familiar lump in my throat when lifting my beeswax candle to belt out the final hymn, I remembered what I remember every Christmas Eve. Love and Hope are stronger than anything that separates us; be that distance or illness or loss of memory or anger or hurt or life circumstance or just plain change. Great hope and deep love were the feelings that swirled through me as I stepped into the chilly, starlit night and listened to the quiet. Christmas had come.
So the place I started this little story was in January of 2007 with the theme “Change is Good.” I’m not sure if we are totally in charge of choosing our life’s theme or if it somehow chooses us along the way. But if I have to guess at 2008 I’d bet “That Was Different” would be a likely name for this chapter.
