Advent II: Darkness and Light

There’s no getting around darkness. Pushing the hands of a clock back an hour doesn’t help. The days still seem shorter and the sun more reluctant to rise at this time of year. It’s not what anyone wants, but it’s what we’re given. This Advent, I’m beginning to see the value of the darkness. I don’t like it, but I can now see the important spiritual lesson it’s teaching, if I have “eyes to see.” 

Because we are waiting for Christmas, that day (season) when we celebrate God’s presence in the world and our lives, it is fitting that we wrestle with darkness. Yes, it’s all around us. There’s no getting around it. Whether in the news, our homes, or our hearts, the sun can sometimes seem particularly low in the shy at this time of year. Rather than wish the darkness away, Advent is an opportunity to accept the darkness - to stop and examine it and see what it’s trying to get us to see: God’s light, like a candle in a dark room, shines brighter in darkness.

Life makes more sense, or feels more manageable, when we arrange things in neat and tidy boxes - good here and bad there, happy here, sad there – but the wonder of our faith is that it’s bigger than any boxes we create. Everything belongs, as Richard Rohr famously reminded us . . . that means the good as well as the bad, the darkness as well as the light. As hard as we may try to embrace one and push the other aside, Advent is time to hold them both together.

In John’s Gospel, we are reminded that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Those are particularly comforting words at this time of year when darkness abounds. It doesn’t say the darkness goes away, just that the light is stronger.

I’m not sure there’s better news than that.

Advent I: Waiting

Like eating my vegetables, being told there’s value in waiting was advice that never had time to go in one ear and out another. If I could see something, imagine something, I didn’t see why I should have to wait. I’m grateful for the ability to see and imagine, but I’m not proud of my inability, or my unwillingness, to wait. It has often done me more harm than good and prevented me from the wonder that’s found in waiting.

Nowhere was that impatience more evident than during my childhood days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The music could begin soon enough, tree put up fast enough. Each day after school I would go into the living room and organized (and count) the presents as they slowly found their way beneath the tree. By the 24th, my brother and sisters tell me, I actually began shaking in anticipation of what was to come.

Fortunately, with age, I’ve found a deep joy in the days leading up to Christmas - Advent, as the church calls it. It is the season of waiting, and now it is that waiting I treasure most about Christmas. With each carol played, each ornament placed, and each candle lit, my soul takes a deep breath and dreams dreams like at no other time of year. What if . . it sighs with childish wonder. 

Fortunately, I have all month to contemplate my answer. What a gift it is, a gift found only in waiting.

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (feat. Flo Paris & Sera Oakes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GMYo2pqAv0

(If you listen all the way through, you’ll see why I picked this version.)

Thanksgiving 2021

His mother’s glare was enough to stir the dead, or at least get him to stand and open his hymnal.

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;

He was always aware of God, thankful even. He didn’t know why he needed to go to church, let alone on a Thursday, to be reminded of all his blessings. He’d learned about God in church, but he felt God could be worshipped anywhere.

who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

I guess he’d learned about God from his parents, too, not so much from the things they said, but from just being their child. He loved how it felt to sit in his mother’s lap, to talk alone with his father. He knew they loved him, even when he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t something he understood, but he figured God was somehow like them.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us, to keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills of this world in the next.

As the youngest, he spent a lot of time alone, but he didn’t mind. He had a great big back yard (one of the things he was thankful for) and a dog who always found it easy to wag his tail. When they played, he was never lonely. He liked the way the sunlight touched the branches, how the clouds made funny shapes, and how the wind caused the leaves to dance. God was a part of all that. God was all that, he thought. It was as if God was playing beside him.

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given, the Son and Spirit blest, who reign in highest heaven the one eternal God, whom heaven and earth adore; 

His mother reached down and lightly touched his head during the third verse. His father looked over and smiled. It was like they were one and the same, but different, too. He stopped thinking about the fact that it was Thursday, that he had to get up and go to church, or wear fancy clothes. He was grateful to be standing there. Loved. By them and by God. He didn’t know what to do with all that love. He fidgeted, looked around, then decided to join the others and sing.

for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore. 

Happy Thanksgiving Brushstroke Readers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov8b9rF6VSg