On the third day of Christmas, a Christmas memory gave to me, Mom's Three Ps.
My mother used to say of discouraging times, "That took the wind out of my sails." Even though we were a landlocked family, without the means to set sail anywhere, her description made sense to me. We all recognize the deflated feeling brought on by those times in life that take the wind out of our sails and leave us afloat on a still sea. Afloat, is how I began this Christmas season.
What do we do when we find ourselves afloat, our sails empty and lifeless? My mother would've said, holding up three fingers, "Make the best of the stillness till the wind picks up. Pray. Ponder. Pray again." Her Three Ps.
I aspire to be a writer, to write, and when learning to write, a writer learns the importance of the margin. The brain needs the white space of the page to organize what is being read. In this day and age, the same is true of a webpage, where the eye requires white space in order to make sense of all that appears on the screens of our lives.
Like our brains and our eyes, our souls need white space. Our souls need time to ponder, where we, afloat on a still sea, can make sense of life.
The need for stillness reminds me of a crowded inn and a young couple who were about to welcome their first child into the world. Crowded inns are no place for giving birth. Sometimes we vilify the innkeeper for sending the couple out to the stable, but it was exactly the quiet, still, "white space" place Mary and Joseph needed to make sense of what was about to happen to their lives.
Bobbing about without direction, waiting for the wind to pick up, is a good time to ponder a baby, born in the stillness of the stable, away from the din of the inn, and how that baby's life makes sense of our own. It is in that pondering, I find the Spirit of Christmas.
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