"Drops of water"

I think of a line from Garrison Keillor, about how at Christmastime, some people cry, people you thought "never had a drop of water in them."

I tend to be like that. I try VERY hard not to show much emotion in public, be it anger, sadness*, extreme elation...

(*though a lot of times when I cry, it's not exactly sadness - I cry when I am very happy about something, especially if that comes with a sense of relief, like when someone I care about has a "questionable" health result and they go for further testing, and the results come back "Not indicative of cancer")

I admit, I'm more prone to spontaneously tear up during the Christmas season. Part of it is, I am sure, the time of year - I am tired, having come off a full semester of work (and fall semester is often challenging, because there is a new crop of first-year students to initiate into How College Works). But part of it is just the season.

And again, the tears of relief - back a little over a week ago, sitting in my office after exams were done and trying to work a bit on research, I found the YouTube recording of lessons and carols from King's College (the one I posted on Christmas) and I played it in the background while I worked, and when it got to the reading from Luke 1, about the Annunciation, it just hit me, and I teared up. And yeah, it was the sense of relief, the reminder that the ugliness I see in the present world isn't the only thing out there, and that there is a different way to be, and that there is hope, and all of that....and I did tear up, right there in my office. (And yes, I don't like doing that - what if someone stops by. Though with some people, or some students, they'd understand, I could wave my hands and go, "They just did the reading of the Annunciation" and they'd get it.)

I think also one thing I need to remember is Britons During World War II. I've read a lot about that era, both the so-called Phoney War and then the Blitz. And you know? Things looked AWFUL then. There were people who genuinely assumed the Nazis would invade and take over - that's the origin of those "Stay Calm and Carry On" posters, and I admit, I've never been able to look at the various iterations of those without a slight frisson since I learned that. But now, coming through on the other side of history - things worked out. Oh, they were terrible for a long time, and a lot of families were affected in the worst way possible (losing their son or husband or brother). But ultimately the bad times ended.

They also did a reading during that program of a letter about the Christmas Truce of World War I, which I still marvel at having happened. (And then they sang Stille Nacht in the program. And that struck me, because I have known a few British people old enough to have lived through WWII "over there" and many of them still have a very low opinion and very hard feelings towards Germans and Germany, because of what happened. And yes, you can argue it's better to let go of those things but I can kind of understand, when a nation tried, literally, to starve you out and bomb you into submission, feeling animus toward them even 70 years later)

One of the things that I think I find hard is that I do lack that perspective. I see "history" and then I see "the times I am in" and I don't think a lot about "the bad stuff you see now will at some point be history in the history books" (And, God willing, we will have better times). I think I once remarked that shortly after September 11, 2001, I was worrying about something related to the times over the phone to my mom, and she quietly told me about how she was a young-married (had not even reached the point of planning a family yet!) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how people thought the world was coming to an end *then*. And really, I suppose, times have always been bad in some way, and there's always been ugliness in the world....but when you're in the middle of something bad, it's easy to lose perspective and think this is the only thing ever.

And I think that's why the things like the Gospel readings are so important to me. (And many, many ministers have pointed out that those present at the Crucifixion didn't know what was coming next, and that the world really and truly had ended for them....and it wasn't until later on that they saw what was going to happen, and even then, many of them did not understand). Also, the Gospel readings and old carols and all of that give me a sense of continuity, of how there are things about this December that are like the December when I was 16, or 8, or whatever age, or even Decembers from before I was born, and that even amid all the ugliness I see in the world, there is still good.