Celtic Advent - Day XL - December 25

 

Celtic Advent - Day XL – December 25

 

Wildly Unimaginable Blessings

Alden Solovy

Let us dream
Wildly unimaginable blessings…
Blessings so unexpected,
Blessings so beyond our hopes for this world,
Blessings so unbelievable in this era,
That their very existence
Uplifts our vision of creation,
Our relationships to each other,
And our yearning for life itself.

Let us dream
Wildly unimaginable blessings…
A complete healing of mind, body, and spirit,
A complete healing for all,
The end of suffering and strife,
The end of plague and disease,
When kindness flows from the river of love,
When goodness flows from the river of grace,
Awakened in the spirit of all beings,
When G-d’s light,
Radiating holiness,
Is seen by everyone.

Let us pray —
With all our hearts —
For wildly unimaginable blessings,
So that G-d will hear the call
To open the gates of the Garden,
Seeing that we haven’t waited,
That we’ve already begun to repair the world,
In testimony to our faith in life,
Our faith in each other,
And our faith in the Holy One,
Blessed be G-d’s Name.

 

When I began the process of writing a reflection for each day of the forty days of Celtic Advent, I really had no idea what I was committing myself to. Seriously. ‘Round about Day twenty I thought to myself, “Really? Only halfway through? OMG!”

 

Turns out, the process became a ‘life review’ of sorts. As I spent time in meditation and reflection, I allowed my ‘monkey brain’ to have at it and see what memories it would uncover. Some were funny. Some were uncomfortable. One or two were actually painful.

 

And, those were just the ones I chose to share in public.

 

The thing of it is I didn’t know when I started was that this was actually important work, necessary work for my soul, especially in the midst of the pandemic.

 

And yes, I’m going to say it: It was therapeutic. Without the therapist. Self-therapy. Well, okay, if I’m honest, a lot of this stuff – these stories – and the insights I’ve received, were first uncovered in therapy sessions.

 

I can tell you this as the honest-to-God, hand-to-Jesus truth: There are at least two therapists out there who have new living room furniture or a lovely new deck on the back of their homes because of my neurosis.

The amazing thing, well, to me anyway, was so many of you could relate. These stories and reflections touched something in you that I thought was just in me. And, it made you laugh and it made you cry, right along with me.

 

What an unexpected gift!

 

Oh, and I got to brush off my skills at using Roman Numerals. Please do note that I remembered the Roman Numeral for forty. XL. Right there. My 9^th Grade Latin teacher is smiling down from heaven.

 

Her name was Ella Bella Philpot. No, I’m not making that up. She was a mousey little woman who was probably in her 40s but looked like she was in her 60s. She had a slight facial tick and often blinked her eyes several times in rapid succession which we all could see despite the fact that she wore heavy coke-bottle thick glasses with thin gold wire frames.

 

She also had a very bad case of dandruff which covered her glasses like her own, personal year-long snow flurry.

 

She wore dowdy tweed Jonathan Meyers suits every day of the three seasons of the school year.  She would often pull down the ends of her tweed jacket with a smart jerk, especially after writing on the board but often after one of us had successfully conjugated a verb – at which point she would add a very rare smile.

 

I saw her out at the town fair one hot July evening. She was wearing a lovely, light colored summer dress with a flouncy trim all around her neckline and the bottom hem of her dress. I remember that she was wearing open-toed shoes – with nylon stockings. She was being escorted by her brother, a very thin, tall drink of water who was wearing a light, short-sleeved, pastel colored plaid shirt, with a pastel blue bow tie.

 

I remember whispering to my mother that THAT was Ms. Ella Bella Philpot and THAT was her brother Robert James Philpot, IV.

 

I was dying to see the reaction on my mother’s face. She managed to maintain control but her left eyebrow escaped and raised itself in a delightful upside down parenthesis which matched the slight uplift to her lips and seemed to contain whatever it was that she wouldn’t allow escape her mouth.

 

“What an interesting pair,” was all she said.

 

As you can see, my monkey brain has been active this morning.

 

Some of you have been very kind and suggested that I have these reflections published. I confess, that thought is rather daunting to me. Mostly because I haven’t the faintest idea about the publishing world. It feels daunting and very presumptuous of me to take all these stories and think I might be able to sell them to people who would actually pay money to read them.

 

It is humbling, however, to think of walking into a WalMart and finding copies of my book in a pile of others in a display marked, “75% off”.

 

We’ll see where the Spirit leads. I do thank you for your kind words.

 

All of this is to say I hope you will “muddle through” all of the restraints and constrains of this most bizarre holiday and have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now.

 

May this be The Best Pandemic Christmas Ever – and, please God, the last.

 

I will leave you with the second prayer Alden Solovy wrote for the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. 

Pervasive Peace

Alden Solovy

May it be Your will, G-d of our fathers and mothers,
That the year ahead bring a pervasive and complete peace
On all the inhabitants of the earth,
Beyond all the dreams of humanity.

,יהי רצון מלפניך, אלוקי אבותינו ואמותינו
,שהשנה הבאה תביא שלום מוחלט ושלם
,על כל יושבי תבל
.מעבר לכל חלומות האנושות

May it be so. Amen.

 

Merry Christmas to you and all those you love, near and far!