I think one of the most powerful things someone said to me preparing for Christmas was when listening to a choir singing "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" and that line that goes "from now on your troubles will be out of sight." She turned to me and said "We do sing a lot of rubbish at this time of year."
Today here in Hastings is a foggy, damp, miserable day. Facebook is full of people expressing "got to go back to work" negativity. The news is full of fiscal cliffs and Prime Ministers telling me we are going the right way and yes, there will be cuts and it will hurt but we are in this together and it is the fault of the last administration etc etc, and as every January, rail fares have risen so it is a bit gloomy out there. "From now on your troubles will be out of sight"? I don't think so.
But I am mad enough to believe in hope still, I think. There is still enough goodness, people who share their light, a belief that the misery won't last in me to keep going. January's reality feels hard today. I feel crap today. I've just been sharing with someone not in a good place. They cannot believe at the moment. I felt my role there with them was just to listen, not to judge and certainly not to give them Christian platitudes that what they are going through is God's plan. I don't believe that rubbish anyway.
I was deeply moved by the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury's words in a documentary shown last night. A deeply honest man, not always understood by the Church, bore his soul as he shared some of what the last ten years in office have done to him. He saw his role as a priest to work out a response to what is going on around us, that doesn't always make you popular, he suggested, and sometimes, like Thomas A Becket of old, it got you killed in the past. But he said something I have been thinking about all day, and it is this:
"What is it that makes it possible to make a stand for the Kingdom of God?" Why do I do this job when sometimes it is so hard? Why keep going when the Church is its own worst enemy? Where do the resources come from to be authentic as a Christian in a world of doubt, fog, an inability to believe and full of bad news people can't cope with?
I have no easy answers, but like one day the sun will shine here in Hastings again (picture is of sun over Eastbourne viewed through Hastings pier) I believe in the goodness of God being there in the midst of things I don't understand. That's the whole point of the incarnation. God doesn't come to nicey nice perfection and sugar coated fluffiness, he comes into the middle of life, that's the point of the story people wrote down to get God's way across.
I am glad if "from now on your troubles will be out of sight" - I am really pleased for you.
My reality is nothing really has changed the second day of the New Year and most people are still struggling on working out how to cope with life. All I could do with the person I was with this afternoon was be there and say it is okay to feel like you feel, and to listen and care, no more than that. Sometimes we say too much and that being there will help far more than empty words.
Perhaps today in the cold and damp i accept there are times I can't do anything and if I feel miserable it is okay spiritually to feel miserable. And then I offer that God who holds us in the cold and damp and dark and anger and frustration and times people want to really kick off, to those I meet. Like those words on a wall of a concentration camp in the Second World War, I believe in the sun even when it is not shining, I believe in God even though I feel him not.
