Dear Readers,
My husband and I always agree on when the Christmas decorations should be taken down, but this year we disagreed on what should be taken down.
Many years ago, when I taught middle school, a student gave me a charming mantel clock which chimes a few bars of a Christmas song at the top of each hour. None of the songs are pop tunes like “Frosty the Snowman” or “Jingle Bells;” instead, each one is a beautiful hymn, “The First Noel” and “Oh Holy Night” among my favorites.
I told Dave that from now on, I want to keep the clock on the mantel year-round.
“Absolutely not!” was his first response. “I’d go crazy listening to that thing for 12 months a year!”
It took all my powers of persuasion — along with my high school debate team skills and a little college Philosophy 101 — to successfully convince him the year-round chimes need to stay.
The story of the cave
In his famous allegory of the cave, Greek philosopher Plato describes a group of people chained behind a divider in a cave, facing the back wall. They can’t turn around. The only things they can see are shadows on that back wall, shadows created by their captors who walk behind the prisoners but in front of a fire near the cave entrance.
These shadows, even though they are not accurate representations of the real world, form the prisoners’ entire reality; they have no idea there is a whole different world outside of theirs.
Unlike those poor souls, we know there’s a world outside of this one, but still, we often act as if this world is all there is. Forgetting we are but passing through this earthly existence on the way to our eternal existence, we often fixate on the here and now. If we can remember we are “in this world” but not “of this world,” it might go a long way toward eliminating much of the anxiety and hopelessness we feel when we focus all our energies on the shadows on the wall.
Of course, we are called, through our prayer and through our actions, to care for this world and its denizens, but after that, we are called to shift our focus to the world to come.
Comfort in stressful times
Enter the clock.
The last few months have been particularly stressful ones for me with heightened worries about family and friends. And perhaps, if you’re like me, dear Readers, on the national and international front, you’ve been overwhelmed dwelling on the nonstop news concerning wars, natural disasters, and all the other events causing widespread suffering.
It’s in these most anxious moments that the lovely little chimes interrupt my agitation, a bit of a reprieve, a sudden salve to soothe my troubled soul, working to reset my focus on the “good, the true, and the beautiful.” The chimes lift me out of the basement and deposit me on the balcony; out of the cave and into “tidings of comfort and joy.”
And so, if the problems of the world persist, the chimes should persevere too.
P. S. To seal the deal, as a bit of a compromise, I told Dave he no longer needs to silence his phone app which “dings” every time there’s breaking news about the Chicago Bears. Those dings drive me crazy, but to be fair, those dings are like chimes to Dave in that they represent hope — hope that they fire the coach, hope that they sign a new offensive line coordinator. In other words, hope for a football world better than this one!
Linda E. Kelly is a member of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison.