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Season’s Greetings!
I hope that you have weathered the cold and the snow and are ready to lean into the Christmas Season.
I have been struggling with all of tragedy and darkness around the world currently. I mean really struggling. I found some hope yesterday during a conversation with a group of Disciples of Christ clergy and a meditation led by Audrey Connor. The meditation was based on a recent post by Kate Bowler on Substack. In her post, Kate spoke of the artist, Marc Chagall, and the deep despair that he experienced throughout his life. Despair is evident in his painting but so is the bursting color of joy and hope. I wanted to share with you some of Kate’s thoughts:
Chagall’s joy is not denial of grief; it is a choice to let beauty outshine despair.
Advent joy asks something similar of us. We do not pretend the world is fixed. But we light a candle anyway. We sing anyway. We look at Chagall’s saturated blues and fiery reds and remember: joy doesn’t wait until everything is safe and orderly. Joy is God’s gift, arriving in the middle of exile, the middle of grief, the middle of an unfinished world.
So perhaps the practice today is to add one small splash of color back into your life. Not because it solves the darkness, but because it dares to say: even here, joy belongs.
Blessed are we who live in shades of gray, and still reach for color. Blessed are we who borrow courage from artists, poets, prophets— all who dared to paint joy over our despair.
I needed to hear this. May we all bring color to this holiday season.
Merry Christmas!
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