Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a “blue” service, is the seasonal service for “the rest of us” — those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to offer me my favorite Psalm (Psalm 77, “And I say, “It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed”), my favorite passage from the book of Romans (Romans 8, in particular 8:38 — “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord”), and the Mary Oliver poem sent to me by my spiritual director as I was struggling in the last days of Gracie’s life (In Blackwater Woods).  I truly had a moment to remember and mark the turning of the season in my own way.

You see, I decided not to celebrate the secular season this year.  The festivities seem out of touch with the world I am living in right now, for so many reasons.  So this year, I, who love dearly to decorate and smell greenery everywhere, to see the sparkling lights, I have chosen not to decorate.  There are no gifts.  There are no lights.  And this year, that just seems right.

But, there is one thing.  There is the matter of this stack of Christmas cards in my bottom drawer.  Christmas cards left over from a couple of years ago.  Christmas cards carefully designed and crafted around a picture of our Gracie.  Every morning I open that drawer.  And every morning I sigh and wonder what to do with those cards.  It seems pitifully morbid to send a Christmas card to friends that has, as its cover model, the picture of someone so newly departed from this earth.  And so, every day, I look at them and then close the drawer again.

Not the morning after the service of remembrance, however.  That morning, after an evening devoted to mindful embrace of those we had lost (and points to St. Mark’s for including Fidel Castro in necrology), I see these cards differently.  I am able to glimpse just a tiny glimmer of the true meaning behind that card — the real joy of my life with Gracie and the real and visceral experience of true joy that she brought to my existence.

And so this day, this Gaudate Sunday, the day we light the pink candle in the Advent wreath, I will say this — I am beginning to recognize the glimmer of joy in the the fading light of the season.  Joy, after all, is not happiness.  Joy, or samach, is the second fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22), and it has nothing to do with smiles, laughter, or eggnog.  It is the true essence of the Hebrew Bible text for today, Isaiah 35:1-10 — “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the LORD, the majesty of our God.”

Joy, as the Psalmist says, comes in the morning, though the weeping may last all through the night (Psalm 30:5).  Joy is about a kind of inner peace that comes only after pain.  Joy is the feeling that perhaps you can go on, one more day.  Joy is that tug towards life that comes with the morning light, no matter how dark the night.  “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy (Isaiah 35:5-6), ” writes the prophet Isaiah.  How many times have I sung those words at this season?  It took the great sorrow of Gracie’s loss to let me understand them, to embrace the possibility in them.

So, no, I am still not able to throw away this stack of cards.  And yes, I still believe that it would not be right to send them to anyone, even to those who have walked this path alongside me.  I will pack them away again for another day. And I find, that, with a glimmer of the joy of this day before me, I have for the first time in a while, a small voice of praise and alleluia to offer — for the life of one who loved me, and for the promise of this Advent season.  Amen, and amen.