First Sun in Advent
by Sheri Kling
No one likes Advent. This time of year, nobody wants to wait in darkness. We like the bright, shiny things that populate the Christmas season – the bigger, brighter, and shinier the better. But in Advent – at least as it is observed in the Lutheran church – the only brightness flickers from four simple candles at the corners of the wreath. Until Christmas Eve; we can’t even sing the actual Christmas carols, but instead must be satisfied with the hushed yearning of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.’ Let’s face it, the ever-darkening pathway between December 1st and the winter solstice makes us a little nervous, like if we have to wait much longer for something to happen we may just jump out of our skins.
But, as many wise ones have said, you can’t push the river.
There are some things that will not be rushed; some seasons that must pass in their own time.
In Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, Sarah Ban Breathnach shares this bit of wisdom from Henry David Thoreau:
Live in each season as it passes; breathe air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.
Live in each season as it passes. That means that we sometimes just have to sit and wait and allow whatever is developing to develop, even when it seems as if nothing is happening at all. Even when it’s dark, and silent, and lonely.
I’ve had my share of stints in the waiting room. And whether I was waiting for a phone call, for a job to come through, for a break in the loneliness, or for God to show up, it was never easy. Sometimes it was downright miserable.
Just two years ago, after having devoted my entire adult life to my spiritual journey, after having given up on closely held dreams for life events that never happened, after having turned my world upside down to go back to graduate school to study theology and to follow where I believed God was leading me, after being the good ‘elder brother’ who always played by the rules with never a party or a fatted calf, I’d had enough. I told people that I was breaking up with the abusive-Father-bad-boyfriend-God that had taken up residence in my head. I was done, and I walked away from everything I thought I knew about God and faith, even though I had no idea what, if anything, would replace it.
And then I waited. Catherine Keller might have called that abysmal period ‘tehomic.’ All I knew was that it was silent; utterly devoid of Christmas carols. The air I breathed was cold, the drink was sour, and the fruit was bitter. Then one day, faith returned on the heels of a dream, and I knew that God was still with me, though the old image had been irrevocably shattered.
There’s another beautiful Christmas message in Breathnach’s book, and it is surely my favorite, though the author is unknown:
If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things, and again with things; if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action, when will we have the time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi? Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds? Or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary? For each one of us, there is a desert to travel. A star to discover. And a being within ourselves to bring to life.
Sometimes, if we wait long enough, and let God have God’s way with us, we will birth divinity.