Both Sides By Rev. Nina D. Grey December, 2002

A reflection on holidays in these times...

Though it will be past as you read this, Thanksgiving is just approaching, late in November, as I sit here on a Wednesday morning, looking out at my lake, your lake, in the dim morning light. Thanksgiving will bring an unusual morning, preaching a sermon at Rockefeller Chapel. I remember old Thanksgiving mornings, football games at Weaver High, me in my green band uniform sitting in the bleachers, marching in half-time formations, trying to press my baritone horn valves, read the music and march in time all at the same time. Not easy but what a joy it was. And the afternoons, walking home with feet stepping on dried yellow leaves, arriving to the smells of Thanksgiving and time with family, mother, brother, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Thanksgiving was always at our house.

This year, decades later, parents and grandparents, aunt and uncle, long gone, we are the elders. We will be at my brother's again, but with a difference. His daughter's getting married, and the wedding is that weekend. Many things thrill me this Wednesday morning, just thinking about the awesome task of preaching on Thanksgiving at Rockefeller Chapel and the wonder of my niece, watched as she grew, grown now enough to join her life with another. It feels good to me knowing I will be with some of my close family for these are times that try the spirit and test our hope. I am lucky. We are a family that expresses its care for one another. More than ever it is good to regather with people who care and remember blessings that come even in the midst of difficult times. I know, too, that there are some who are ill or alone or lonely at this time of year and I pray that in awareness we may reach out to someone or ones in need of our companionship and support.

Ramadan, a month long observance of Islam, began November 6, and the Hindu festival of Divali occurred in early November. These are not rituals I usually celebrate. But this year they had and have special significance to me: Ramadan, because President Sinkford of the UUA has asked for others to join him in a day of fast in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters at Ramadan and Divali, because this year, of war and impending war, in the gathering darkness, it seems especially important to raise up all the human diversities and honor all the festivals which bring light to the darkness and hope to the heart.

Chanukah begins November 29th and continues into December for a full 8 days. And this coming month brings also Solstice, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Though gift giving is at the center of the holidays and offers families and friends a chance to think of one another with a generous spirit and express love for each other, I also think of these holidays as embodying themes of integrity, hope, and peace.

Chanukah's story is of a people who insist on being who they are. It tells us that we must be a world that encourages not conformity in spiritual things but integrity, a world that honors individuals and groups in the freedom of their true identities and fully accepts diversity.

Solstice is the ritual honoring of the natural world as the seasons change, but it is also symbolically a moment in time when we remember. It is dark and we remember light, the returning sun. Living plants have died and we remember life. It is a festival of darkness, honoring the deep soil that nurtures waiting seeds. It is a festival of light, honoring the beginning of the sun's return. Most importantly to me, it is a festival of memory and of hope.

I love the persistence of Christmas, Christmas which is not a promise but always a possibility. A baby is born, over and over, and over and over again we honor the baby's birth, the birth of love, the birth of hope, the birth of dreams. This particular baby represents a great deal in western society, from personal salvation and the salvation of the world on the one end to the mystery of human goodness and possibility on the other. He holds in his baby hand a dream of a redeeming love that forgives and reconciles even enemies and of a peace that embraces the world. Every year he opens his baby hand and gives us the dream. And we know that what we do with it is up to us. This year as war is here and more war seems inevitable, we absolutely need the dream revived. We need the belief in possibility that pulls us up from the lethargy of despair, the complacency of thinking that history is determined and can't use our caring. We need to believe our small actions, gathered together, can help make a difference to our world even when we don't see immediate results.

We end the month of December with an affirmation of the African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa. This is one of the most moving holidays we honor in our church. It is moving because it truly brings families together in a spirit of faith and trust. It is moving because we honor it together in multicultural, multiracial unity. And it is moving because we honor the seven principles of Kwanzaa: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics,
purpose, creativity, and faith. We honor them both for their particular and unique meanings for the strength of African American communities and the universal values they raise up for all of us in these times when deep, positive values are so important to guide our living.

Our faith calls us to praxis, to a dialectic between reflection and action, celebration and embodiment of the values we honor. We are invited to give thought this month to the small actions we can take in our daily lives, even in the midst of the heightened activity of the holidays, to embody the values they represent and hold up: the generosity of love, integrity of identity and the spirit, hope for the future, a reborn dream of peace.

In faith, with love,

Nina