Yesterday I posted something on Facebook about my Christmas resolution.
Such an unexpected thing, now that I think about it. Usually, resolutions are made at New Year's.
But the phrase -- and the reality of it in my heart, was out there before I had time to stop and re-think it. It seemed deeply natural to be making a Christmas resolution.
Maybe it's from all those repeated annual viewings of "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life" -- two stories about Christmas Eve as a time of life-changing reflection and life-saving resolve. Maybe it's from reading and hearing about the new film, "The Man Who Invented Christmas," and the suggestion the Dickens, in the story of Scrooge, created for us the image of Christmas as a time for self-examination, repentance and conversion of life.
And why shouldn't Christmas Eve -- as much as New Year' Eve, be a time for life-changing reflection and resolution?
As far as New Year's Eve is concerned, of course we measure and mark our lives by calendar years, and January 1 is a nicely identifiable time of beginning and then tracking a new resolve. There's a sense of beginning afresh that seems to invite a moment of intentional self-improvement or correction. The
calendar has a nice, clean look to it -- beckoning like a field of
new-fallen snow graciously covering up the old ways, giving us the freedom to start carving new paths in their place.
But is not the day we celebrate the birth of the Christ not also a good time to take stock of our own life journey, and of where at this moment we feel called to a truer way of life? For he is the one we regard as the true human, God's Word of life and for life made flesh among us. And each time we come to celebrate and see his birth, and see him so weak and vulnerable in the manger and in our care, is there not some change, some different path, some new commitment or re-commitment to true living ourselves that we feel called to?
For me, I woke up Christmas Day knowing a desire to read daily something I have so far read only randomly -- Fr. Richard Rohr's daily online meditation. It seems a little thing. But Rohr in particular writes so lovingly and gently about the eternal Gospel invitation to grow up into our truest Self, that at this stage in my life-journey I know that daily reading of his experience, strength and hope in this direction cannot help but have good and growing effect on my own life and spirit.
And isn't that what resolutions -- at either New Years' or Christmas Eve, are about?
Maybe the difference for me right now and at this stage of my journey, is that a clean, blank field covered in fresh, fallen snow doesn't quite give me the direction I think I need to necessarily begin carving out the new paths I really need.
But coming to the stable, seeing what life is given to all of us there, and feeling what new directions it evokes and what next steps it inspires within me, does.
Recently I was chatting with a friend. About what, I don't remember.
At one point in the conversation, though, I changed whatever the subject was, and asked, "About gifts," referring to Christmas gifts, since Christmas Day is less than a week away, "did we decide not to exchange any?"
To me the question made sense when I asked it. I have a few relationships in which over the past few years we have decided not to exchange gifts. I thought maybe this may have been one of them, but I wasn't sure. I just wanted to clarify the expectations.
My friend, though, seemed taken aback by the question. "Well ...," she began, and I don't remember exactly how she phrased it, but it was instantly clear she had prepared a gift for me and for Japhia. Separate gifts, in fact. Simple, not expensive, thought-out, and hand-made. She explained that whatever I did or didn't do was fine, but she just likes to give gifts.
I wonder when I started to think of gifts as something we exchange. Instead of simply give.
It's not like I haven't received gifts from people to whom I did not give one.
Nor that I haven't also over my life simply and freely given something to others just for the pleasure of giving. With the question of receiving something in return being irrelevant.
So I wonder about this concept of "gift exchange."
And I marvel at the ability and willingness of the human heart just to give.
Fifteen seconds can be a long time. Especially to be doing something counter-intuitive.
I was told recently that the human brain is naturally like teflon and like velcro. Like teflon in the way it handles positive, complimentary, affirming things we receive; and like velcro in the way it handles negative, critical, judgemental things that come our way.
And it's not just our psycho-social history that predisposes us in this way. This predisposition to remember and hang on deeply to the negative -- the things that threaten our sense of self, is hard-wired into our brain chemistry through evolutionary eons. It's how we survive.
But it's not how we thrive.
We thrive when we grow into a settled, grateful awareness of ourselves as good and blessed children of a good and loving God -- lovable, loved, and able to love.
But how do we undo or fight our way through the natural chemistry of our brain?
The other thing I was told is that it is possible to rewire our brain, and that this is what spiritual -- rather than natural, evolution is about.
One simple way of rewiring our naturally defensive brain, of growing beyond natural evolution to matured spiritual humanity, is a practice of 15 seconds of gratitude. At different times of the day -- when something happens, when someone crosses your path, when you see something that catches your attention, when you do something as simple as lift a cup of coffee to your lips ... instead of just noticing and moving on in good teflon fashion (or even not noticing at all!), take 15 seconds to become aware of the ways you feel gratitude for whatever it is.
A cup of coffee? Take 15 seconds to be aware of the gratitude you feel for its smell, its taste, its warmth -- including the warmth of the cup in your hand, the comfort it brings you, perhaps the kindness of the person who poured it for you, the memory maybe of a special time you shared a coffee with a friend, and who knows what else.
I've practiced a full 15 seconds only two or three times since I was told about it two days ago. And already I notice a new awareness of even momentary (2 or 3-second) gratitude for things that I would normally just slide by.
Like the mist I saw from the Skyway Bridge this morning on the lake in the winter cold, and my gratitude for its gentle and haunting beauty, for being able to be there at that moment, for the wonder of the world all around me, for the memory of mist just like it on Lake Superior that I saw years ago on a mid-winter train trip from Winnipeg to Toronto, for the family I had visited there and still am part of, for different relationships I have been blessed with in my life, for the fact that no part of my life is lost, that in spite of everything my whole life is still one blessed and graced journey.
In less than 5 or 6 seconds, I felt my self so graciously held and supported in such a deep matrix of love and beauty far greater than myself, that I continued my journey into the rest of my day with more faith, hope and love within me than is often the case. I felt alive and free.
And ... it's not just "the good stuff" that this practice can be used with. I notice in the past two days a new willingness in my mind to seek out reasons for gratitude in things that disturb, interrupt or annoy me as well. That I will leave for another time, though.
For now, enough for me to know that 15 seconds can be a long time to be doing something counter-intuitive, but that 15 seconds can change my life.
