Happy Advent, friends!
In the Christian liturgy, Advent is the season leading up to Christmas Day. It’s a season of preparation and waiting. Advent is from the Latin “to come.” I now identify as a Jesus-loving, interspiritual humanist (how’s that for a mouthful?!) but this sacred season is still my favorite time of year. It’s a permission slip to embrace the shortening days, love the night, go down and in. It’s an invitation to proclaim that what is most life-changing is often what is smallest, most humble. It’s the darkness of the womb, the fear and excitement of gestation.
Every year, I look forward to reading Gayle Boss’ All Creation Waits. Gayle profiles 24 animals and how they survive the winter. The painted turtle buries herself in the mud. The woodchuck sleeps for seven days at a time. The arteries and veins of the wood frog become frozen canals, thawing during the spring. These creatures give us permission to STOP and focus only on what’s most essential.
Every year, I am enamored with the description of how the muskrat survives:
Every winter day, he has no choice but to dive beneath the ice for the plants that still grow on the bottomlands. Able-bodied as he is for this, the icy water rapidly saps his strength. He has to surface in the middle of the pond to warm up. So, from beneath the ice, he’s built a refuge—a push-up, it’s called—by pushing sticks and stalks up through cracks in the ice into a heap, a mound. He pushes his body up into the mounded shelter, shakes his fur dry and shivers to raise his body temperature. He allows others to join him—even non-kin—for the precious extra heat of a group huddle.
The muskrat invites us to build our own “push-up,” a place where we can stay warm and even share with those we love. I have one client who recently set up a meditation tray for herself that she can take to various corners of her house. A candle, some sacred reading, her journal. I love this idea. This is her “push-up.” I have been swimming in the bay more—this is one of my survival strategies for the winter. It gets me out into the world, alive to the elements instead of fearing them. I am also trying to release any “cherished outcomes” that the holidays bring up. There’s no reason certain things have to be done this year. Like the muskrat, the painted turtle, or the woodchuck, I’m going to take things one day at a time, trusting that somehow, my needs will be met.
I talked to a friend yesterday who’s navigating an unbelievably hard time as she cares for a spouse with dementia. I told her, “I am so in awe of how you are asking for help, how you are not bitter.” She said, “I’ve seen people who choose that path, and it’s harder than this one.” Amen to that. The cold will come. It always does. Survival is harder for some than for others. This life is full of pain! We can either keep being surprised by that, or we can prepare for it. Get that push-up ready. Maybe we will be huddling there together.