Christmastime Hope

Today, Thursday the 24th of December, has passed much like every other day thus far in Madagascar. I don't work on Thursdays, so these are my errand days: the early morning saw me sleep in (until 7:30!!!!!!), eat my customary breakfast of bread with butter and jam, venture out to the MVola stand to make a withdrawal, and buy laundry soap and jus natural (corossal, of course) from my favorite hotely on the walk home. Late morning was consumed by laundry, taking my customary 2-2.5 hours to complete. Then lunch with my father, cuddling with the cat, language studying, and general free time until dinner. I risked a look at the weather today- RealFeel of 87 degrees Fahrenheit and 70% humidity. Never having been one to enjoy heat or sun, the weather right now is oppressive. Mafana be ny andro!!! Today was a typical Thursday here in Tanjombato, down to the last minute detail.

Suffice it to say, Christmas has actually been the last thing on my mind lately. I checked my email today and saw a full out list of blogs from fellow YAGMs reflecting quite beautifully on spending their first Christmas abroad- how things are different, how homesickness is being felt, and on finding the beauty of familiarity in Christmastime celebrations at their site. I felt obliged to write something similar... So in order to get myself in the Christmas mood, I popped on my holiday playlist.

And the first song to play was "Happy Xmas" covered by Maroon 5. Well, that's cheery. For those of you not familiar, it's melancholy, acoustic, and slightly minor. The first lines are: So this is Christmas/And what have you done/Another year over/And a new one just begun/And so this is Christmas/For weak and for strong/For rich and the poor ones/The world is so wrong. 

The next song to come up was "Christmas Lights" by Coldplay, which is about a couple breaking up on Christmas Eve. Oh, lovely. A sampling of the lyrics: Christmas night,/Another fight,/Tears we cried,/A flood/Got all kinds of poison in, of poison in my blood...When you're still waiting for the snow to fall/It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all. 

Wow. To tell the truth, I really identified with these songs. The overall feel of them fit my mood: acknowledging the season without really having any real feeling invested in it. Kind of melancholy, disappointed, negative, maybe just a bit hopeless... I don't mean to say that life here is any of those things- I am very thankful to be where I am. I love my family, students, community here. But as a person who is prone to such feelings at all points in my life, these emotions were what stuck out to me most prominently in those songs and what I identified with. 

How am I going to write a happy, well thought out, theologically meaningful, 'I love YAGM and Madagascar and Jesus all the time and life is sunshine and rainbows' blog now?!?!

And then I was angry on top of all that! Angry at my own inability to write beautifully about Christmas here like other YAGMs, angry at my feelings of 'what am I even accomplishing here?', angry at having such downers of Christmas songs, and angry at the damn heat!! 

And that's where I'm at. Truthfully, raw and unashamed, this is where I'm at. This Christmas Eve, I don't have any meaningful observations about seeing God here in Madagascar. No heartwarming stories of my community sharing in Christmas traditions new to me and new to them. 

I got stuck on the feelings of meaninglessness. 

It's too easy to get bogged down in these feelings. 

We lose sight of ourselves in the midst of the world, getting lost in the constant deluge of evil that can seem to emanate from every pore. We lose sight of the world in the midst of ourselves, falling so quickly into the sin of pride that allows us to place ourselves at the center of our lives. 

I look at things like the terror attacks in Paris a month ago, at the wars being waged by ISIS, at the way in which my country is responding to the refugee crisis... And I feel so angry at the evil, the selfishness, violence, and hate that exists in our world. All of that darkness, it feels overwhelmingly vast. The world is so wrong. 

I look at my life, here and before, and can't help but to wonder what I am actually accomplishing in the long run. YAGM- young adults in global mission. Sometimes I wonder- what's my mission, really? Teaching English? What have you done? 

And I know that these thoughts aren't the absolute truth, that there is a deeper truth that runs underneath; that of God and light and love. And I also know that I will always be prone to believing first the dark feelings of disparity and meaninglessness over that of God's truth. Got all kinds of poison in, of poison in my blood. 

...and in the writing of this blog, I looked up the lyrics to quote them accurately; and in doing so, I read a few lines more that I had overlooked on my first listen. 

From "Merry Xmas": And so happy Christmas/For black and for white/For yellow and red ones/Let's stop all the fight/A very merry Christmas/And a happy New Year/Let's hope it's a good one/Without any fear. 

And from "Christmas Lights": Up above candles on air flicker/Oh they flicker and they glow/And I am up here holding on to all those chandeliers of hope/Oh Christmas lights light up the street/Light up the fire once in me/May all your troubles soon be gone/Those Christmas lights keep shining on. 

Ha- and there we have the nice neat ending I'd been despairing over. The Lord shall provide, after all. 

For those of you to whom this seems all just a bit too conveniently placed, too neatly wrapped up with a bow, I assure you, it was not my intent. 

Honestly, I was too wrapped up in those feelings of despair and self pity and helplessness to listen to the messages of hope in the end of those two songs. A Facebook friend of mine the other day posted a link to an article describing how hopelessness was in itself a form of privilege- that there are some in our world who cannot afford to lose hope. For some, hope is the only thing they have to survive on. 

Hope... In the end, hope seems to be the overall message of Christmas to me. The prevailing reason for the season. Christians celebrate this time of great hope, given to us in the form of Jesus; I like to think also that other religions all celebrate this same thing in their own way. I believe it is the common thread that unites all of us. I've heard people say that we are all united as children of God, as creatures all having the same divine spark, the imago dei... But I'd disagree. From a Christian standpoint, yes- everyone is made in the image of God and we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. But from a Muslim standpoint, that view might not make much sense. To a Buddhist, it might not be compatible with their beliefs. A Hindu might be lost completely. 

But we all believe in hope. All of humanity. We cannot escape that pesky, overwhelming sense of hope. 

Some despise hope. "Hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torture of man." Friederich Nietzsche

Some revel in hope. "Hope is the thing with feathers." Emily Dickinson

But we all feel hope. And sometimes, I think we take that sense of hope and call it God. 

Maybe that's sacreligious, I don't know; all I can say is that right now, that's my faith. That God is hope. Above all else. One of my dearest friends holds very firm to her conviction that God is love- the most predominant definition of God I've heard by far- and to her I would say, where is the evidence for that? In Jesus, most obviously. "For God so loved the world." But in my opinion, that defines God by what we need him for. When I say God is love, I only see humanity's overwhelming need to be loved, to feel validated. 

In seeing God as hope, I see layers of hoping- the hope that God must have had in humanity's potential, the hope of Jesus in the outcome of his sacrifice, the hope that has been given to us by God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Is love still part of the equation? For certain, it isn't possible to have hope without love. But hope seems a more fitting, encompassing qualifier than love. 

God hopes in us as we hope in God.

In the midst of darkness the Christmas light will continue to shine on year after year- one small pinprick, just one man, can shatter our darkness. 

So that is where I will wrap up this rambling blog of thoughts. 

With hope. 

Christmas lights light up the street, light up the fire once in me- may all your troubles soon be gone. Merry Christmas, and a happy new year- let's hope it's a good one without any fear.