This winter is different. As the last leaves lose their hold and drop to the earth, as the newly arrived cold front bids us to wrap that scarf another turn or two to keep the chill out, as we seek the warmth of this sanctuary in search of the warmth of each other, as some of us, pilgrim-like, gather our nerve and travel downtown–all the way downtown–to pay our respects, this winter mirrors a season that began this fall. It’s different and we know it.

But we know to come together, we know to seek the company of other seekers, we know that our time of worship shakes free the tears that bathe our souls. It’s been a long year and a longer autumn, with light growing progressively less, a season in tune with our spirits.

We know, of course, that the days are not utterly dissolving, that light is not unbearably postponed. In fact, we are on the upside of the Winter Solstice. The sun sets at 4:38 this afternoon, a full minute later than yesterday. We are moving with the cycle of the seasons and in rhythm to the march of days.

We cannot mourn eternally; neither can we forget. We will not speak indefinitely of loss and of war; neither will we ignore the chronic nature of loss and the human penchant for war. We cannot sustain indefinitely our anxious stance atop the tightrope of uncertainty that reaches from here to wherever; neither can we shove vigilance aside. We know that we each have our days of joy and days of sorrow, our days of humdrum and days of wonder. That life goes on is anything but a truism if we move mindfully with it.

Where, for example, did the F train go, and how do we get it? And the V train. The V train? Why was the subway messed with anyway? That’s right, we think about this kind of movement too–that subterranean energy that pulses through the vast web of our city.

We know that eventually we’ll stumble upon an entrance to the F train. We know that somehow we’ll make our way from point A to point B however much we lurch en route. Ah, the matter of what’s important and what’s not.

We reach into the trove of this year’s blessings, mixed as they are, and we consider what’s important, what really matters. What matters most to me are the faces–the faces I see in that subway day after day, the faces I encounter on the streets, the faces that I fix on in the newspaper every morning, the faces of my family, and your faces, and the faces of those children of life yet to arrive, faces which if I’m fortunate enough I will come to know as well as I’ve come to know so many of yours.

Let me tell you about a face that lingers.

I was working one morning as a chaplain at Pier 94–the site set up by the Red Cross just over three months ago as the official Family Assistance Center for surviving family members and New Yorkers numbering in the thousands who have been displaced from job or home or both. I can’t begin to describe the array of souls–some of us among them–who have come there for solace and sustenance since September 11.

One morning in mid-October I was wandering about the formidable expanse of this site and sat down next to a young man in his mid-20s. Let’s call him Chad. He had worked in the South Tower, high enough up so that escape was the upshot of a heartbeat decision and was narrow. He had lost friends and co-workers, many of them. While shaken, he wasn’t shattered. While reflective, he wasn’t time-frozen.

In the high-tech high-rise world in which he had been employed, this young man–handsome, articulate, tired-eyed but with a residue of sparkle–had made it a habit of bringing his guitar. And Chad played. He actually played his guitar during lunchtime and coffee breaks. His colleagues had loved it. As his story continued to unfurl, so did his smile. He spoke of his desire to write music. What genre he wasn’t quite sure, but he wouldn’t be boxed in to pop, hipop, whatever. Chad would define his own genre. Then his voice dropped. "In the last weeks," he told me, "I just haven’t been able to write anything." "And now?" I asked. "What about now?" "Most of the time I can’t even play," came the reply. "Hmm," I murmured. "I’m guessing, Chad, that everything you’ve seen and heard and felt is stirring inside you into songs that will remind us as only music can remind us of what happened." "Really," he said. "You really think so?" "Yes," I replied. "I really think so, and I’ll be waiting to hear them." His smile returned, and with it, a palpable unspoken promise that we all will hear those songs.

I have no idea what Chad is doing, if he found a job, if he’s playing his guitar in his new workplace, or if the notes stumbling around inside him are now flocking together and melding into that first song. But I’m convinced that there are songs in gestation now that will carry haunting echoes of this fall and this winter.

Just as Chad’s music was stirring inside him, with its time not yet ripe, so it took a hundred days and a change of season for the words to coalesce for Marietta. Then in she walked, into my office clutching her poem, asking if I’d like to hear it.

"I raise my voice in song." As we have gathered here over the past months, music and song have set free what no other form of worship can liberate, the deepest sighs of our soulful spirits.

Long familiar and newly poignant, it is impossible, simply impossible, for me to hear these strains without returning to that evening when so many of us gathered in this sanctuary to mourn and to worship and to light candles, with our memories so fresh they were raw. As the voices of our choir rose among us, the river was there, the river as route to safety, the river where so many souls seem to have gathered longer than they ever counted on, the river that defines this island of our city.

Now it’s winter, and the river is cold. It’s winter, but the songs rise inside us slowly and surely–our songs of sorrow, our carols of Christmas, our Chanukah choruses, our hymns of praise, our ballads of hope. And we dare to celebrate– Ramadan, with its appointed times of fasting and feasting; Chanukah, with its miracle of lights; Christmas, with its miracle of birth and hope for a better way.

Today we are amid another holiday of hope. Kwanzaa is Swahili for "first fruits" and celebrates through foods, story-telling, gift giving, music, and the lighting of candles principles that Kwanzaa’s creator, Dr. Maulena Karena, describes as principles by which "’Black people must live to…rescue and reconstruct our history and lives.’"

We can all learn from these principles that rise from another long night of the soul, the roots of so many Americans who knew oppression in its starkest forms. I speak of the principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith–seven in number, one for each day.

Today is the fifth day of Kwanzaa, in which Nia, Swahili for purpose, is celebrated.

Let me tell you a story of Nia and celebration which speaks to me as I consider how our purpose as a congregation and a nation might unfold from the lessons of this fall into the realities of this winter and the celebrations at hand.

How large a table has been a pesky question as we have moved through the strain of this fall and enter the chill of winter. Who should be fed, and who should be at the center of feasting and celebration and song? Who should receive the benefits of a generous public, and who should be at the table making the decisions? Who should live and who should die in consequence of the death and carnage visited upon us? And how do we sustain an international coalition if we are the nation that must call the shots?

A song in the wintertime? We need all the songs we can get. We need the Psalms of lament and anguish and hope and praise and joy. We need the anthems that bring us to the river that flows through it all and is as large in spirit as the village square of Sango Oba. We need the ballads that will tell the stories we cannot, will not forget. We need the carols that remind us of the birth of hope and love year after year. We need the strains of Chanukah that bid us light those candles however much oil we have, trusting that light will increase day by day. We need our hymns to speed the leaves on their way, knowing they will return in spring. We need the first fruits of the harvest to nourish us into the coming year through the principles of unity and purpose and faith and collective work and responsibility.

sings songwriter Jackson Browne,

(from Jackson Browne, "For a Dancer")

A song in the wintertime can be a joyful song, because real joy always shouts atop the precipice of despair. Real joy always sees the follies of humankind and says we can do better. Real joy knows a lot about human suffering–suffering we have known and suffering we inflict. Real joy braces itself against a winter’s wind by embracing whoever needs embracing.

Make a joyful sound. And watch and listen. With the turn of the seasons, we just might catch the songs of Chad, ripe at last, freeing the stories of our hearts as we gather again and again in the expansive square of this large village we know and love and this larger planet we are called to share.

Amen.

 

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