OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE WINTER SOLSTICE
My friend Jane, who, like me, used to drink a little bit more than was perhaps good for her, said on the winter solstice this year that for her, being a pagan, the solstice is not just about the darkest night of the year but also about the darkest night of the soul. She and her goddess-worshiping friends celebrate this because the seeds of new growth lie in this darkness and develop in the winter to bloom in the spring.
I said, What do you pagan homos do at your midnight celebrations-put a bunch of dogs in wicker baskets and push them off cliffs, with Holly Near playing on a nearby boom box?
And she looked over at my big Italian crucifix on the kitchen wall, at the thorns, at the bloody wound, the nails through his palms, and then she turned to me with a look of such amused condescension that all I could do was laugh.
As soon as she left, though, I went and stared at the crucifix for a long time and breathed it in. I believe in it, and it's so nuts. How did some fabulously cerebral and black-humored cynic like myself come to fall for all that Christian lunacy, to see the cross not as an end but a beginning, to believe as much as I believe in gravity or in the size of space that Jesus paid a debt he didn't owe because we had a debt we couldn't pay? It, my faith, is a great mystery. It has all the people close to me shaking their heads. It has me shaking my head. But I have a photograph on my wall of this ancient crucifix at a church over in Corte Madera, a tall splintering wooden Christ with his arms blown off in some war, under which someone long ago wrote, "Jesus has no arms but ours to do his work and to show his love," and every time I read that, I always end up thinking that these are the only operating instructions I will ever need.
My friend Jane, who, like me, used to drink a little bit more than was perhaps good for her, said on the winter solstice this year that for her, being a pagan, the solstice is not just about the darkest night of the year but also about the darkest night of the soul. She and her goddess-worshiping friends celebrate this because the seeds of new growth lie in this darkness and develop in the winter to bloom in the spring.
I said, What do you pagan homos do at your midnight celebrations-put a bunch of dogs in wicker baskets and push them off cliffs, with Holly Near playing on a nearby boom box?
And she looked over at my big Italian crucifix on the kitchen wall, at the thorns, at the bloody wound, the nails through his palms, and then she turned to me with a look of such amused condescension that all I could do was laugh.
As soon as she left, though, I went and stared at the crucifix for a long time and breathed it in. I believe in it, and it's so nuts. How did some fabulously cerebral and black-humored cynic like myself come to fall for all that Christian lunacy, to see the cross not as an end but a beginning, to believe as much as I believe in gravity or in the size of space that Jesus paid a debt he didn't owe because we had a debt we couldn't pay? It, my faith, is a great mystery. It has all the people close to me shaking their heads. It has me shaking my head. But I have a photograph on my wall of this ancient crucifix at a church over in Corte Madera, a tall splintering wooden Christ with his arms blown off in some war, under which someone long ago wrote, "Jesus has no arms but ours to do his work and to show his love," and every time I read that, I always end up thinking that these are the only operating instructions I will ever need.
Anne Lamott
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