Solstice Reflection

It’s nearly Christmas and the wild turkeys keep pooping on the labyrinth at the top of our hill, my sacred space.* Their droppings are large and infuriating and despite the Christmas tree glowing in the living room and the tiny lights twinkling on the mantle and the homemade fudge nestled in the cupboard and the joyful music filling the kitchen I keep thinking about the turkey poop on the labyrinth.

LabyrinthMy mind goes there over and over again even though I know the hillside belongs to the turkeys as much as it does to me, after all it’s THEIR home and it’s THEIR toilet. But they are leaving their shit in my sacred space and it disturbs me.

My mind travels to a conversation I had with a woman last summer on her 90^th birthday when she told me my brother-in-law, Reverend Jack, now deceased for nearly 30 years, once preached an Advent sermon about the manure in the stable where Jesus was born. This feisty old gal told me that the “Manure Sermon”, as she called it, ruined Christmas for her forever. Jack told her about the shit in the original sacred space and it scarred her for life. I can relate!

Having to deal with shit at Christmas is no fun because, well, I’m dreaming of a white Christmas just like the song says! Christmas is about nostalgia and things being the way they are supposed to be, right? Hope, Peace, Joy and Love is what the season is about.  Families get together and everyone feels good. Right?

Evidently not because a lot of us are trying to survive the longest darkest night here so would you please pass the fudge and leave the Christmas lights on all night? Some of us are hurting.

It is significant to mention that today is the Solstice which is the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year. Perhaps it is the reason my mind keeps focusing on the darkness of turkey shit in my sacred space. I just hate that turkey shit, it looks like dark, fat, wet, brown twigs.

Some of us are hurting. I did a memorial service last week for a 55 year old man who lost his struggle with addiction and died from substance abuse complications. Years ago I baptized his three children who are now amazing young adults trying to make sense of their father’s death. There was nothing fair or comprehensible about his death for them, it was just darkness and loss and they could only take comfort from the knowledge that he isn’t suffering any longer. During his good years he had been a loving and attentive dad until a lot of shit came into his sacred space. His sacred life was contaminated with drugs and it is not a mistake that the drug culture calls drugs “shit.”

Those three and a lot of us are hurting right now and Christmas makes it worse because it is a time when we are supposed to be happy, hopeful, peaceful, loving and joyous…unless we aren’t.

One year I was hurting so much that the Christmas cards we received with beautiful photos of families doing wonderful things together and the holiday letters that read like “brag sheets” filled with travels and accomplishments were so painful that I took them outside and burned them. They were so opposite my experience that I couldn’t tolerate the dissonance they created.

So why do I keep thinking about wild turkey poop on my beloved labyrinth? My Solstice reflection honors the darkness of this day because darkness keeps coming and coming and coming into our lives. I give my blessing to any of my friends who want to burn the “brag sheet” I sent this year as a Christmas Letter. I honor that Christmas holds the heart of darkness as much as the birth of spiritual Light into the world. I’m glad there was a lot of manure in the stable where Jesus was born.  And even though I could write a sermon about how the darkness and the manure do not overcome the light (and I believe it) I’m still never going to like having turkey shit in my sacred space…

…well, until I learn just how sacred shit really is.

* My husband, Ed, as a birthday gift for my 65th birthday last June, built the labyrinth. With a crew of dedicated workers he hauled 40,000 pounds of fieldstone, cobblestone and decomposed granite up 65 steps to create a seven cycle Chartres Cathedral style labyrinth under the five oak trees at the top of our back yard. In addition to being a special place to pray it is sacred because it was an incredible gift of love from my beloved.

Copyright © 2013 Gayle Madison