We All Go Through Cycles
From
February 1, 2021
From the Pastor
Man, I hate February. I’m honestly not a fan of winter in general, but at least Christmas is nice. And that first snowfall is pretty. And I have to say that I enjoy the feeling of being warm indoors with nowhere to go when it is cold and inhospitable outdoors. It makes me feel like a very successful caveman.
But by the time February rolls around, the novelty of snow has worn off. The weeks upon weeks of cold have worn me down. And the luster of Christmas has worn off and is now not even a super recent memory. Heck, by February, even my New Years’ resolution (if I make one and if it goes the way most do) has already hit some serious snags.
Sure, March can be pretty nasty, too, but by the time we get into March, the end is in sight. Spring Break is just around the corner for students everywhere, Easter is, more or less, coming up over the horizon, and there are steady signs that soon spring will arrive, and with it the promise of my favorite season of early summer.
But February? Bleh. If it were not for the fact that one of my children was born during February, I’d say let’s just strike it from the calendar altogether. Just skip it.
If you agree with me, then you might find it galling to discover that angels experience winter, too. Their seasons, however, are not due to the passage of time and the orbit of a planet, but rather are externalized representations of cycles of change that go on inside each one of them. Luckily for the angels, winter in heaven is mild:
When heat and light are united in heaven, the climate to angels is like that in springtime. But when they are not united, the climate is either like that in summer, or like that in winter, though not like winter in the colder zones, but like winter in the warmer zones. For the reception of love and wisdom in equal measure is the essence of what it is to be an angel, and an angel is an angel therefore according to the union of love and wisdom in him. (Divine Love and Wisdom 102)
As you can see, even in heaven, we have some learning and growth to do. As angels, we will have times when our love exceeds our capacity for wisdom, and things might get a bit warmer than perfect. (Although, I can take a lot of heat…just saying.) And at other times we will find that our understanding of what’s true gets ahead of our inclination to do what’s good, leading to cloudy days that are cooler than we would ideally choose.
None of it will be bad–once in heaven anything truly evil and false within us is put away where it won’t cause us real trouble anymore. But as part of our process of getting ever more loving and wiser, we will go through cycles of first one and then the other growing out of sync with its partner.
So, seasons have their place. And I suppose even February has its purpose. Maybe. At any rate, the inventor of February at least had the sense to make it shorter than any other month.
So, I hope you have a healthy, not-too-cold, appropriately short February!
Rev. Glenn “Mac” Frazier
Pastor, Washington New Church, 2021-01-26
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