We anticipated the dinner for several weeks. Reservations were not easy to come by, which only built the hype. The company was good and the conversation included plenty of back and forth with laughter, but the food was underwhelming. It was okay. Nothing was bad. The service was very good. It was just that nothing met Greg's favourite descriptor of late, "exceptional". He was probably unaware of how often he has used that word. Now he will know; sometimes blogs come in handy.
I thought a lot about peace last week, knowing the second subversive Advent blog would address that topic. Sometimes Christmas feels like the visit to the restaurant and I am left with my gritty hope and my peace in tatters because real life has a way of shredding us and leaving us disappointed. Unfulfilled hopes and dreams, unreturned love, loss, racism, bigotry, and unexpected anger can all undo us. There is not a single one of us who is not susceptible to being undone, not just at Christmas but all year long.
By the time I was ready to sit down and write I was bordering on depressed. We attended a family funeral last week, we watched the world bubble and churn in a stew of selfishness, and we were too busy to get the Christmas tree up. Christmas was bearing down on me and I wasn't feeling the gritty hope or the peace.
I was feeling shredded and undone, until the idea of patchwork peace lodged inside my head. Then the what ifs began. What if, I stopped thinking about peace as some gigantic miraculous feeling and I reframed how I thought about peace? There were threads of peace in my days. If I paused quietly and waited I could identify patches of peace. I felt peace in my grandkids' cuddles and heard peace in JMH's words, "I love you Nana". Patches of peace were present as my shoulder rubbed my mother-in-law's in the church pew at her brother's remembrance service. An absolutely glorious sunset on Thursday night, splashed peace across the horizon. Pieces of peace were all around me even as I felt undone.
When I imagined the pieces of peace becoming a patchwork, the fragments were gathered up and began to link one to another. I was aware of a sense of restoration and recreation. Something new and beautiful was being borne of the shreds of my undone-ness. Like a wonderful patchwork quilt, little scraps of peace were being sewn together and repurposed.
Generally, we want peace to magically descend on us. We have been led to expect that Christmas will automatically be accompanied by a feeling of well-being or peace. We've been led astray. Peace isn't a big bang, one and done affair. It is more subversive than that. It might be troublesome to you to think of it differently, but go ahead be a revolutionary. Don't wait for peace to magically descend on you. Resist the urge to expect peace to overwhelm you during the Christmas season. Start to seize the scraps and shreds of peace the Creator has gifted you, boldly improvising and composing your patchwork peace.
I thought a lot about peace last week, knowing the second subversive Advent blog would address that topic. Sometimes Christmas feels like the visit to the restaurant and I am left with my gritty hope and my peace in tatters because real life has a way of shredding us and leaving us disappointed. Unfulfilled hopes and dreams, unreturned love, loss, racism, bigotry, and unexpected anger can all undo us. There is not a single one of us who is not susceptible to being undone, not just at Christmas but all year long.
By the time I was ready to sit down and write I was bordering on depressed. We attended a family funeral last week, we watched the world bubble and churn in a stew of selfishness, and we were too busy to get the Christmas tree up. Christmas was bearing down on me and I wasn't feeling the gritty hope or the peace. I was feeling shredded and undone, until the idea of patchwork peace lodged inside my head. Then the what ifs began. What if, I stopped thinking about peace as some gigantic miraculous feeling and I reframed how I thought about peace? There were threads of peace in my days. If I paused quietly and waited I could identify patches of peace. I felt peace in my grandkids' cuddles and heard peace in JMH's words, "I love you Nana". Patches of peace were present as my shoulder rubbed my mother-in-law's in the church pew at her brother's remembrance service. An absolutely glorious sunset on Thursday night, splashed peace across the horizon. Pieces of peace were all around me even as I felt undone.
When I imagined the pieces of peace becoming a patchwork, the fragments were gathered up and began to link one to another. I was aware of a sense of restoration and recreation. Something new and beautiful was being borne of the shreds of my undone-ness. Like a wonderful patchwork quilt, little scraps of peace were being sewn together and repurposed.
Generally, we want peace to magically descend on us. We have been led to expect that Christmas will automatically be accompanied by a feeling of well-being or peace. We've been led astray. Peace isn't a big bang, one and done affair. It is more subversive than that. It might be troublesome to you to think of it differently, but go ahead be a revolutionary. Don't wait for peace to magically descend on you. Resist the urge to expect peace to overwhelm you during the Christmas season. Start to seize the scraps and shreds of peace the Creator has gifted you, boldly improvising and composing your patchwork peace.
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