When Things Are Hard During Christmas

Description

As we move through this Christmas season, I find myself holding the weight of so many losses in our congregation, and maybe I feel it even more since losing my dad, yet in the middle of that ache Swedenborg offers a quiet truth from Secrets of Heaven: “The rational mind is deep” and within it rests an inner memory that remains hidden while we live in the body. The outer memories return us to events and moments shared, beautiful and bittersweet, while the interior memory rises from a much deeper place and tells us who a loved one was to us, which is where tenderness settles and waits. When grief rises without warning, when exhaustion rolls in, when the holidays seem to glow for everyone except us, I invite you to breathe and touch that deeper layer, the one where the gift of a person’s spirit stays warm. Over time a gentler peace grows there. A day eventually comes when the mention of a name brings a smile before tears. So we keep returning to that essential truth, speaking aloud who our loved ones were, sharing it with each other like a blessing, remembering Mother Teresa’s beautiful reminder that we belong to one another.