If ever I were to write a spiritual journey memoir, I might begin with this, one of my earliest memories…

She tells me to sit here on the braided rug. She places a wheel of colors on the floor in front of the silver tree, decorated with red and blue glass ornaments.

Watch, she says. Watch. She plugs in the color wheel’s cord and switches off the overhead light.

We are plunged into darkness. I shiver. There’s a small click and suddenly the room is ablaze with amber light. The tree before me is no longer silver but gold, glittering as if lit with thousands of tiny candles. The color wheel hums. Gold gives way to green, red, blue. The tree deepens to shimmering emerald, glows like redhot fireplace embers, descends into sapphire glimmers bluer than flames of the gas stove burners.

Everything is transformed by the light. The ornaments on the tree go dark, throwing sparks in the colors that touch them. Over by Granddaddy’s black recliner, the ashtray on its thin pole makes a long, flickering shadow. Its curved brass handle, a little leaping ram, gleams like pure gold. The moving colors make the ram seem a living thing. The knotty pine walls watch it all with a hundred unblinking eyes. The polished wood organ, with legs curved like a deer’s, reflects the whole scene…and nothing is as radiant as my grandmother’s smiling face, bending down to mine…

I can’t remember what she said, exactly, but her expression was one of joy. I would see it many times over in my life, most often connected with stories of my birth or upon seeing spotted fawns by the roadside or when receiving a gift from someone in the family. And always with snow and Christmas. She came into the world the day after Christmas of 1915 and left it the day before Christmas Eve, 2006. She never lost her childlike joy of the season.

This memory of her aluminum Christmas tree and color wheel is from the late 1960s, when my grandparents lived in an apartment near mine. Probably the Christmas I was three.

I did not know about separations then. Or loss. I did not know all that my grandmother had already suffered in her life, from deprivation to death. Neither of us could know the shatterings that lay ahead of us.

But in these shards of memory I see great love reflected. Something pure and bright despite the brokenness. My grandmother believed in Jesus and heaven. She tried to live it. She prayed, and even when her prayers seemed unanswered, even when she grappled with not understanding, her faith held fast. Try as it might, darkness could not overcome her bright spirit. It could not extinguish the flame of her inner joy. She sang hymns. She spoke of angels. She never would have thought of herself as a warrior angel, but she served as mine as long as she lived. She loved me fiercely.

God loves us fiercely. That is the story of Christmas. That is the song of the stars. That is the light I find reflecting in the sharpest shards of life. It is the holiness that remains in the unholy fragments. We catch glimmers of it. We desire this light, but then we want to bend it. We would color it our own way and to our own purposes. That’s the story of humankind. We want to be our own authority, not to submit, and then to play victim. Our vision of truth and justice is skewed. We want to judge without being judged. We don’t want to love everybody; we nurture our hatred of one another. We fail to see our self-worship and idolatry (except for when we deliberately choose it). We fall farther and farther away. We have lost direction and think we can find it on our own, despite the darkness of our hearts.

Yet…

I loved you at your darkest is my favorite paraphrase of Romans 5:8.

Thoughout life, iridescent sparks are sent to guide us beyond the brokenness. Like my grandmother and countless others who are imperfect but real conduits of God’s love, ever drawing us back to the awe and worship we were meant for.

Therein lies the real spiritual journey.

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with thanks to my fellow Spiritual Journey Thursday witers and Jone Rush MacCulloch for hosting us in December.

Light and joy to you all on your journey.