Advent: Hibernation, Wintering, and Darkness

Hibernation:

This refers to shutting down in-person social interactions. For me, this was a gritty and concrete process of going through the calendar and systematically withdrawing from all in-person commitments.

If I had a bad case of Covid, or something else with debilitating symptoms, then by default, I’d have to pull out of everything, including Zoom meetings and the sort. It’s a “clean break.” But that’s not the case. I’m the healthy caregiver in the midst of entering into hibernation. It’s anything but a “clean break”; I’m able-bodied and still able to walk the dog to the highest peaks of San Francisco. I assumed I could still engage in Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah festivities. But I can’t, and i’m wrestling through this transition because my body is resistant to this hibernation season.

Hibernation was not welcomed and I really wrestled with accepting it. Jacob’s wrestling with God in Gen 32 gives the best illustration because it highlights the old identities at stake, the well-worn ways to weasel, or in my case, rationalize out of this Hibernation season. I could really identify with Jacob’s craft here. The blessing that awaited Jacob required the expulsion of the root identity driving Jacob’s old manipulative ways and this was accomplished through an overnight wrestling match with God. The blessing couldn’t come until Jacob was literally pinned down, when he had used every trick in his book, and when he realized he was no match for God’s supernatural blow. In that gritty present moment, JAcob’s old identity was flushed out, as if it were synchronized with his breath. I am imagining on his exhale, the confession “I am JAcob – the deceiver” coming through his breath, and “I am running with God” as Jacob breathed in. A profound identity shift came with that exchange…in the context of vulnerability (being pinned down). Now that I think about it, other changes of perspectives in the biblical text happened during vulnerable contexts, often surrounded by prayer and hunger. So that’s where I am. It took some wrestling to settle into this hibernation season, and like Jacob, the wrestling surfaced some of my broken underlying identities.

My wrestling incurred a cost to the one I’m caregiving for because as I wrestled, the loved one I’m caring for had to self-advocate more. For me, I needed time to accept my caregiving role. But for the one needing my care, there’s no negotiation; the hibernation and the need for care started immediately. In fact, I really need to remember that my wrestling is somewhat of a luxury, but that the time I take to pivot will cost the other. That’s a sobering lesson.

Another felt lesson came through this passage, which has been haunting me throughout this hibernation season.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” James 3:13-17

I spent a lot of time in my past exegeting these verses for talks. Yet, I’ve not known these verses as intimately as I have until this season.

“If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.“ That’s always been true, but I’ve never felt it so strong until now. And that’s because I’ve had to withdraw from every commitment I’ve made in-person. I began inventorying the kinds of events I once attended: non- profit mixers, fundraisers for friends, retirement ceremonies, installation parties, monthly lunches for ministers, and more. As a non-profit director, and as a networking enneagram 3, I loved these kinds of events. But today attendance to these is a memory. Then there’s teaching and preaching – again a memory. Fortunately, Kingdom Rice volunteers have gone to some of these key events on our behalf, and filling in to teach. When I began Kingdom Rice, I was over-committed and unfocused. The limitations through the years have forced me to focus, and this present season, so far, has presented quite the apex. If I’m able to put anything back on my plate, more than ever before, it’s “as the Lord wills” and not what I want for my own ego.

Suspending personal events is a bit more painful. Some of these are “standing meetings” that represent community and connection. The most regular meetings include church and weekly meetings called “bike religion” which is a meeting of city advocates that bike to the water’s edge at Pacific Ocean. We’d touch the water as a way to center ourselves before a conversation on our respective advocacy work before reporting to our day jobs. Also, I started a band and we used to practice on Wednesdays. All these standing meetings were put on hold. Then there are ad-hoc meetings, like friends coming into town, etc. I have a soft spot for seeing friends coming into town face to face. But unless the gathering is during my son’s 3x/week program time, and unless he agrees to go (rare for a teen), I’ve sadly declined all such invitations. A third level would be the most personal level…like going for a bike ride, a swim…unless I can take the dog along. I need to be within earshot as much as possible, and so it’s hard to imagine doing personal things until everyone is down for the night. I “could” share more of my inside voice with you, but it really would not serve the purposes of this post. Trust me, I have spaces to do that elsewhere.

Caretaking is a lot more complex than this. I don’t want to use space to describe the complexities introduced by an autistic, impulsive family member with low self awareness being quiet when we need rest, and a dog that reacts to that impulsiveness. I have to minimize either of them being at home if I need to go out. Sigh.

Slowly, a few engagements are coming back. I’m able to attend a few “standing” meetings like church and bike religion. My band usually meets at 5pm; I still have not figured out accommodations to make that happen. But in the darkest of times, I had no idea how hibernation would last. I definitely could not expect things to return to the old normal. “If it is the Lord’s will…”

Just writing that surfaces some “survivor’s guilt.” I imagine like others in a caregiving role, the caregiver, like myself, has it significantly easier than the person I’m caregiving for. The person I’m caring for has had in-person social connections cut off for a longer time, and as in my case, hopes for more fundamental, basic things, like being able to walk the dog, or being able to grocery shop. I can still do those things. Perhaps if God gives me the years, I will reach a point where I too can’t do those things. And in the present day, there’s a lot of basic tasks my neurodiverse son can’t do, like being able to open or untie anything with the simplest knot. In that sense, “survivor’s guilt” is not the best way to see things. I feel the grace to be able to walk the dog, grocery shop…and I do bike, but mostly to run errands. But all of these act as a foreshadow of my needs to come. These are graces, and instills the meme “if it is the Lord’s will.”

Wintering:

I first read about “Winter” seasons decades ago (through C. Swindoll). But the term has never held so much weight until now. By way of introduction, here’s a quote from a bestseller on the term:

“But here it is: my winter. It’s an open invitation to transition into a more sustainable life and to wrest back control over the chaos I’ve created. It’s a moment when I have to step into solitude and contemplation. It’s also a moment when I have to walk away from old alliances, to let the strings of some friendships fall loose, if only for a while. It’s a path I’ve walked over and over again in my life. I have learned the skill set of wintering the hard way.” – Katherine May

Reading that, “wintering” sounds like “deep cleaning for the soul,” something I’d not choose of my own accord. And indeed I did not. In retrospect, wintering seasons have come; I can’t think of one that was welcomed. If anything, all were disruptive to varying degrees…the most disruptive ones led me to EMDR therapy to help process the trauma. But in each of those episodes, I resonate with the quote above. Each one built on the last one, each one was a portal to a more sustainable, less chaotic life. I believe God allowed seasons of wintering to come precisely because I would not have chosen them for myself.

Darkness as Regeneration:

(Photo credit: nuosformation.com)

Darkness invites regeneration, new rhythms of health, creativity, and focus. All I’ve written up to now represents both external and internal preparation for regeneration.

The internal preparation to get to this point was by far the hardest. It required soul work to bring internal acceptance to my outward reality. Actual progress is hard to measure except to say that sending others to go to networking events in my stead have resulted in much less FOMO (fear of missing out). I remember the grip FOMO had on me previously. And the journey has progressed far enough to where I can see where I was…which is well documented through most vividly a “360” consultant report from mid 2021 that brought to surface the ugliness of my FOMO, mainly lack of focus (for several years, i had every new board member read this. Now, we’re discussing its retirement; it has served its purpose and the report is no longer descriptive) Using one of my favorite companies, Apple, as an analogy, I had way too many “products” and partnerships prior to 2021. My strengths aside, my lack of focus was driving my board and my wife crazy! Ironically, outwardly, I could brag about the impact we were having in a myriad of spaces: schools, universities, churches, and more. When Steve Jobs reentered Apple he saw a huge, but unfocused product line, and began ruthlessly cutting. I can’t claim the nerve to do the same similarly, but seasons of wintering have forced huge cuts in my “product line” in recent years. One of the most significant cuts was preaching. I’ve preached in dozens of places over years, and it was a significant way to introduce listeners to our non-profit. At one time, I accepted practically every opportunity no matter how long the flight. But the cost to family was too high. First I cut preaching that required plane trips, then I cut all retreats (a past favorite of mine). Then I cut preaching altogether. But it’s the internal work would bring my soul to feel the serenity of such cuts, and to bask in newfound simplicity.

Preaching falls under a bigger condition I have called “Big Man on Campus (BMOC).” This is a perspective that means I need to always bring a solution to every space I’m in. In my former engineering spaces, this served me well, and I was compensated for this kind of perspective. In educational and social circles, this meant I attracted the dissenters in most groups. another way to put it, BMOC describes my social justice nerve, but without the healed soul of a sage. e.g. In seminary, I felt the “empire” and white-centeredness of my program and refused to pay good money for classes that seemed to propagate such injustices. The fact that this was “seminary” only fueled such drives; we were indeed studying the Word of God! I reverse engineered the program, attracted fellow dissenters (mainly international students, those on the margins) and brought my case to the dean. They sympathized but could not “bend the rules” in spite of my evidence…because of accreditation (i.e. empire). I went on to suppress the grief of what I was going to do next, and that was to withdraw from the MDiv program I was enrolled in. I did graduate with an MA…but the MA does not name the rigorous original languages I studied (and did well in) for the higher degree. I did not want a degree that did not fit what I actually studied. Looking back, I’ve lived with this shame for a years. When I was invited to contribute to a book with many Ph.D authors, I felt such a strong mix of shame and pride…that I listed zero credentials (and the only author to do so. Perhaps this is akin to authors like bell hooks who have chosen not to capitalize her name). Being an outlier in that sort was a little spite. “I don’t need degrees to be in this book.” But yet I carried the shame too because the power of those letters by one’s name still had a hold on me.

Darkness is giving the space to look at such BMOC dynamics. I have many of them. Alongside the therapy, perhaps the biggest tool that’s helped me heal from BMOC has been the spiritual director training 2-year training I just completed. At its core, spiritual direction is “loving listening,” which is antithetical to the BMOC I carried in my bones. Before the training, I was perhaps thought to be a good listener, but looking back, much of my listening was more data gathering to form polished responses, perhaps like AI. My homiletics training and decades of preaching, along with engineering training were brought to most every conversation, and that robbed my presence. I can handpick times where I DID feel presence, where I did not have a plan. Spiritual direction training identified many of my BMOC roots, sometimes graphically. In one example during my second year of training, I had to play a consented recording of me offering spiritual direction. It was a painful scene; I was listening to myself on tape offering spritual direction to someone, and NOT listening, being BMOC. It’s weird; people often tell me they LIKE my “talking” – but that feeds into my BMOC. Right there, listening to myself, among spiritual directors who were training me, i.e., in a context of acceptance, I saw very vividly my brokenness. That was quite teh repentant moment.

When I talk today, often people who knew me in the past tell me they sense a new peace they’ve not sense in me before. It’s as if seemingly disconnected people conspired together with this unified front. In any case, i feel like I’m just now pivoting to new rhythms and habits from my BMOC persona.

I could speak of many other aspects of new rhythms and creativity from this season of darkness. The pivots are rather multifaceted. I don’t really have a sense of how far along i am on this regeneration journey. I only know that I’m on it, and that is solace enough.