Advent Strangeness
How do we reconcile the busyness of what we have to do with the hushed expectation of the. church season of Advent?
It has been a strange Advent so far. For a start, the church we currently attend is not a liturgical, Anglican one. So seasons like Advent do not get much attention. That’s no criticism; it’s just how things are done in this sort of church, and after a lot of years working in the Anglican church it takes some getting used to. My daughter helped me preach a sermon, she was baptised, and the day I’m writing this is her seventeenth birthday. It looks as though we are going to have to say goodbye to one of our much-loved dogs. All this has happened in this Advent season, and we’re only just starting the second week in December.
The church season of Advent is supposed to be a hushed time; as I saw it rather well expressed last week, it’s the dimming of the lights before the birthday cake is bought in. That’s a stark, deliberate contrast to the crush of busyness, of getting ready for the holidays, of rushing around to see family and/or friends, shopping, and whatever else crosses your to-do list at this time of year. It’s a little different in the Southern Hemisphere, where early December is a time of winding down towards a big summer bout of relaxation, but there’s still a sense of getting everything in order so this can begin, of lists to fulfil and tasks to achieve. For me, living with (slowly improving) Long Covid and other medical conditions, I’m less about rushing around doing things than I might be otherwise, but I’m certainly caught up in the roller-coaster of emotions described earlier. Joy, healthy pride, sadness and grief, thankfulness, and more besides, all crammed into a handful of days, is quite the collection of feelings in a small space of time.
How do I reconcile the expectation and hushed waiting of the church season with the lurching unpredictability of the various emotions I’m experiencing? I’m not the only person experiencing this; all I’m living through, really, is what it means to be human, alive in the world, with relationships and feelings. A lot of other people will be going through a lot of similar or more serious things.
What’s in danger of happening with this is a kind of bifurcation, a splitting of the being into the realm of the spirit or the soul, and that of the world. Which is precisely what we’re not supposed to do; we’re meant to be rooted, alive in the here and now, spiritual life in dialogue with, in relationship with, shaping and being shaped by the world in which we live.
Maybe the key here is to consider what it is we’re waiting for in the season of Advent. We’re waiting for God with flesh and bones on to arrive amongst us, to take up residence in the neighbourhood, to be born into a world of all these feelings and things to do and experience. We’re waiting for the certain fulfillment of the promise that we no longer have to live through any of these things alone, that these feelings and experiences are given meaning and dignity by the way God comes not to somehow trump them with a blast of perfect spirtituality, but rather to inhabit them, experience them from the inside, to dignify them with His presence and blessing. All these things and more are caught up by the One we’re waiting for into the divine life that we instinctively like to shut off into neat corners of existence; that’s for church and the spirit, the rest of life something different. No, Advent reminds us that all these things, whatever the ‘all’ is for us here and now, are precisely what Jesus comes to dwell with us within and to walk through with us. We don’t need to shut them off from Him, or ourselves, or others any more. As I grieve, shed tears of healthy pride, am thankful for the gift of my daughter; as we think about gifts and meals and family plans; as I get things done or flail around not managing to acheive all I wished I could; all of this and more is no longer ours to stagger under the weight of, but to let Another bear them with me, to no longer have to carry the weight alone.
The seeming contrast between the church season and the rest of life isn’t, it seems, the problem it appears to be. Stop and think a moment, and I see it’s the point itself. The ‘rest of life’ is now picked up and gathered into the life of my soul, carried with me by the One born to live life in all its fullness with and for us.