Read this week’s newsletter: The Weekly Liberal Dec. 20

Rev. Jen Crow writes:

“Is it beyond thee to turn with the turning of the season?”

This is the question my mentor asked during my first winter in Minnesota. We were making the turn into the deep darkness of December. I had admitted that it was harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning, that all I really wanted to do was retreat into my tiny apartment and eat rice and light candles. I wondered out loud how I would possibly enjoy the holidays when my relationship with my family was strained, I was out of money and living alone, not entirely by choice, and new in town. I wondered how I could be the minister telling the story of light in the darkness when I wasn’t sure I believed the story myself. My mentor’s reply came as it often did – a single line of poetry that felt like an incomprehensible riddle.

Is it beyond thee to turn with the turning of the season?

What the heck was that supposed to mean?

It turns out that this question is a riff on a line of poetry I can never seem to find again even though the question stays with me. Looking back now, this is what I think he meant: Of course you are tired. Of course you want to cocoon in, burrow down, light the candles and stay warm. Of course you are worried and wondering if the age old stories of light and miracles and a vulnerable baby born in a barn have any application to this world and your life. The darkness – this predictable every year darkness and this predictable every year cold is why the stories exist. Because all of us need them and we have for thousands and thousands of years. We all doubt. We all worry. We all struggle and wonder if the light will ever return. And you are no different, no matter your job title or your role or the configuration of your family or whether you have money or not. You are one among many and the stories have the power to capture your imagination, your need and your longing, too. Surrender, dear one. Allow yourself to be just like everyone else – affected by love and loss and light and darkness. Trust what the ancestors know – that each year, every year, the light returns.

So friends, I ask: Is it beyond thee to turn with the turning of the season?

What might this mean for you?

I wish you love and light and comfort even through the longest nights of the year, trusting that the ancestors and all of us here at church are with you as each of us is impacted in our own way by the turning of the year.

In gratitude,
Rev. Jen