Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas!  I feel like I have been waiting so long for this day to come - we really do the anticipation part of Advent thoroughly here at the Priory!  I'm also really looking forward to going home to celebrate with my family and friends, so that has added to the sometimes impatient waiting I've been doing over the past month.

I've had a variety of feelings this week as Christmas approached and finally came.  The beginning of the week was filled with busy shopping trips and finishing school work and just running errands.  I wrapped presents and wrote cards and started to wish we didn't have a ban on listening to Christmas music.  We decorated Christmas trees on Tuesday and Wednesday, and we finally got to turn on the Christmas lights on Tuesday night, the solstice.  I started whistling all the time because I always had Christmas songs in my head-they subconsciously slipped out since we couldn't sing them!  I kept counting down the days until December 27th, when I will fly home, and I really kept myself busy helping and baking and getting into the spirit of Christmas in Washington.

Then it was Christmas Eve.  I managed to find things to do all day - something I learned from my Thanksgiving experience here - and I wasn't homesick at all!  I just enjoyed the day as my experience of Christmas in a monastery.  But then came Christmas Eve mass.  It was beautiful, and the chapel was packed, and it was all so familiar and timeless.  As we finished the service, we sang seven or eight Christmas carols, and during about the second one, my eyes started to water.  I had looked to the side, expecting to see my family ready to break into harmony with me on Angels We Have Heard on High, and they weren't there.  It got harder to keep singing in unison, but I was singing with my sisters in Christ, and I made it through. 

Opening presents was also bittersweet - I loved watching the care and time all the sisters put into their gifts for their special sister (we drew names at Thanksgiving).  Every gift was thoughtful and special, and I could feel the love in the community as everyone shared what they had received and given. My chin trembled a little as I thought of my family - I've never not spent this day with them before - but I was surrounded by the love of my Washington family, and they filled me with joy.

A couple things have stuck with me this week.  We prayed Psalm 27 three times over the past few days, and the line "Be strong, and let your heart take courage" bolstered my spirits each time we read it.  I know that I will always remember this Christmas, and I want the memory to be one of the shared love and joy of the community, not my impatience to get home.  Which brings me to my lesson (yes, there is a lesson, even on Christmas Day).  Yesterday, we had a reading from Meister Eckhart, and it ended with the sentence: "Eternity is now."  I have a tendency to let my mind wander during praise, but this line echoed through my head long after the reading was finished.  I was struck by how much I've spent thinking about "in a couple weeks" or "in a few days" or "soon" - my mind is always in the future, dreaming, planning, hoping, wishing.  I started thinking about what I'm doing NOW to bring Jesus's love to the world - not what I'm going to do or what I'd like to do or what may happen, but what I'm doing now, at this moment, during this day, to let God work through me.  And I realized I don't concentrate on that very often.

I like to plan things.  I like to make sure things are going to work out just right.  I spend so much of my time thinking about how to make things go smoothly.  But this Christmas, I have begun to learn that I can't just live in my plans or dreams.  I can spend thousands of hours thinking about what it will be like to finally arrive in my loved ones' arms, but that doesn't make the moment come any sooner - and it takes away the time I could be giving to the people around me now.  And the people in my physical community, right here and now, are so wonderfully loving and thoughtful.  My service and presence here changes the community, and the way I choose to love and give to them makes a difference. 

The essence of my Christmas lesson is this: eternity is now.  God is now.  Love is now.  Sometimes it's scary to let myself be open to now - I'd rather plan for later.  But I am learning to find the gifts in the now because they are eternal gifts.  God is always giving me strength and courage and love through the sisters here - all I have to do is be willing to receive it.  Not later, when I've planned for it or made time for it.  Now.

Peace and love, hope and joy, and every blessing!  Merry Christmas!