Help with the Holidays

"I believe in all that has never been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing  you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea."      Rainer Maria Rilke

Calling the Thanksgiving and Christmas season "the holidays" was always a cruel irony  for me.  During my nearly 40 years of music ministry, November through Christmas was the busiest, most stressful, and most emotionally difficult time of the year.  The last four years not so much since I was only responsible for the music of one adult choir.  But the Christmas of 1983 was one of the most challenging.

That year, like many years before, I was responsible for children's music, youth choir music and adult choir music.  That particular year I not only supervised two younger children's choirs, but I rehearsed and  directed the older children's choir, the youth choir and the adult choir.  All three of them were doing major Christmas productions. Also our Hanging of the Greens service was a big deal involving all five choirs and a handbell choir that I directed.  Musically during December there was a lot going on that I was responsible for.

This year, since I have retired from vocation music ministry, I have experienced a strange mix of emotions.  Before now, the early Christmas decorations and Christmas music in the mall would send chills up my spine.  The Muzac may have been "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year", but all it meant to me was that the clock was ticking on the Christmas music.  All that the Christmas cheer was saying to me was, "You're running out of time".  This year my hypothalamus, the reptilian brain, ignites with the fight or flight response before my frontal lobe processes that I have absolutely no performance responsibilities. My only obligations for Christmas '15 involve family and friends. Thankfully, the stimulus- response "holiday" fright lasts less than a second..

It was unfortunate that all those years I missed out on much of the seasonal celebration for focusing only on what was my responsibility. Or what I thought was my responsibility. The worst part of my delusion was that I not only felt responsible for the Christmas productions, somewhere in my psyche was the thought that I was responsible for everyone's Christmas. As goes the music so goes their Christmas.

In 1983 during early December I was in really terrible emotional shape.  Back then, on a good day, depression was just below the surface. On a bad day, it could get pretty bad.  That afternoon I was sitting in the back door of our unfinished basement with my feet out the door and my head in my hands. At that moment what I had bitten off for Christmas seemed like much more than I was going to be able to chew.  All of a sudden my two year old son was standing beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder.  Having no good reason to know what I was thinking and feeling,  he hugged me and said, "Daddy, Jesus loves you and he'll take you to Christmas." Imagine that.  This One that we celebrate will take you to His celebration.  He's planning the party. All you have to do is show up.

I would like to tell you that I gave up all my Christmas stress that afternoon.  I would like to tell you that the message to me that came, as far as I was  concerned, from Gabriel through my son cured me from my magnificent obsession with my own importance. I would like to tell you that my over- inflated Christmas ego was immediately shrunk to a reasonable size.  But I still had the same hypothalamus. I still had the same gut reaction to the same stimuli.  But that year and every year since then I took into the season the realization that Christmas would happen with or without me. That  Christmas has its own beauty and power.  That the Baby who caused all the fuss in the first place would somehow Himself  take me to Christmas.  That Christmas joy takes care of itself.

"May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back".  One of the largest and most powerful hydroelectric dams in the country is less than fifteen miles from where I sit.  Those mighty turbines do nothing to turn but to be available.  The water supplies 100% of the energy to spin the turbines and generate hundreds of gigawatts of power. The entire process is effortless on the water's part as well. It just flows downhill.  All I have to  do is plug in the lamp and turn the switch. I have come to imagine Christmas being like that potential and kinetic energy.  The power of one Christmas world-wide is beyond comprehension.  You can't stop it if you try. What I can add to it, regardless of its scope, is a drop in the ocean. An important drop for those I love the most, but just a drop.

Now because of additional holiday travels and  my winter driving angst, I've got to learn to deal with "Let it snow!  Let it snow! Let it snow!"