A Faith We Are Always Arriving At: A reflection on the season of Advent
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- Created on Sunday, 07 December 2008 00:00
- Written by Jenny M. Rankin
{player 2008-12-07-11am-sermon.mp3}
It’s been one of those weeks in my household:
Coughs and colds descending in triplicate
Major math tests, swim tryouts
A stack of Christmas cards as tall as the Eiffel tower
Siblings arriving in town
Parents who are getting more frail.
One of those weeks I rise early
And, fingers perched on the keyboard
Images of your faces here in my mind
I watch the screen like a child on Christmas
Waiting to see what words will magically appear
That will make it worth your while
To have gotten out of bed and left the newspaper behind
And come here on a Sunday morning
It’s a strange December by any account
At the hairdresser, the older lady sitting next to me is in tears
With the market’s decline, the money she’s saved is nearly gone
“I just wanted to leave something for my kids”
“When I think about the weeks I worked overtime”
“It’s ok” the hairdresser comforts her.
The tears don’t stop.
At recess at Thoreau school a boy tells my son that his father is losing his job
An employee of a Boston bank says the office party is going to be different this year
Instead of a lavish do, they have to pay $20 to get in the door
For that, they get 5 (small) appetizers
(She shows me with her hands how small)
“And we have to buy our own drinks”
“I’m not complaining, at least I have a job.”
HOLIDAYS DOWNSIZED, the New York Times said last Sunday in headlines five inches high.
News trickles in; the market goes up and down, up and down.
We watch and wait.
* * * * * *
It’s the second Sunday in December and in the Christian church, that means we are squarely into the season called Advent.
The 4 weeks before Christmas
Advent is a special time, a sober time
The color is purple, the tone is introspective, and the prayers are penitential.
The theme is getting ready, spiritually ready,
For the great light that is coming into the world at Christmas.
These days remind me of the 10 days before Yom Kippur
A time to take stock, make amends, consider your life
Advent is like that
A kind of inward time
It’s about as far as you can get from the malls and the ads and the escalating frenzy out there.
But maybe we need
A little inwardness at this time of year
When everything in our culture is pulling us outward
To go and do and buy and spend
The lectionary reading for today is from Isaiah
And begins with the words
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says God”
Not bad words to hear in these days.
I grew up with Advent and it is still a time I treasure
This leading up to Christmas, this getting ready.
I wish we did more now at home to mark the time
It was easier when my children were little and time was less scheduled
Now the rhythm of ordinary days sweeps us along
Even in December, nothing stops
Homework, dentist appts, swim team, the beat goes on
We have Advent calendars at home and
An advent wreath with candles on the kitchen table
On a good day we get all of us around that table for a meal,
Even if isn’t long or leisurely
My kids like a book by Madeleine l’Engle
About a family who finds a way to do one special thing each day of Advent.
We rarely make that goal
But here and there
In the living of our days,
In small ways
We do our best to honor the time.
To me, Advent is an invitation
The making of a space in busy lives
A space where the holy might enter in.
We know how to get the physical things ready this month
How to bake, shop, wrap.
I’m not sure we know how to get ready spiritually.
Or even if such a thing is possible.
What would it mean to honor the life of the spirit
This season?
That is the question Advent asks us.
Our spiritual ancestors tap us on the shoulder
They whisper in our ears
“Go inward” they say
“Prepare your hearts” as well as whatever goes under the tree
However you do it
Whatever it is that returns you to the home of your soul
Whether it’s silence or singing, writing or loving,
* * * * *
Charles Forman was one of the ministers at King’s Chapel the church in Boston where I grew up. He died suddenly and too young. He wrote these words about Advent that I pull out and read this time of year:
“Some of us may think there is no getting ready at all this year.
Perhaps there have been too many dark or anxious hours . . . . .
Perhaps our faith had been overtaken just now by troublesome doubts.
Never mind, Advent is for all of us . . . .believers, once-upon-a-time believers.
Or those who wait and hope for faith's return.
We don't start with faith;
It is something we are always arriving at.”
These are comforting words for me
Here in these days when faith can seem a little scanty
Here in these early days of December when the ground is iron hard
The sun sets at 4:12 pm
The economic news is ominous
Images from Mumbai swirl in
Stinging us with the salt of shock and sadness
We don’t start with faith
And I remember Charles Forman now
His ruddy kindly face
His black clerical garb with stiff white collar
That made him look more like an Anglican than a Unitarian minister
He was part of the Advent picture there at the church where I grew up
Joe Barth, Carl Scovel, Charles Forman, Dan Pinkham the music director
Advent hymns and purple vestments
Advent meant making advent wreaths in Sunday school
Rehearsals for the Christmas pageant
Who would get to be Mary, the angel?
It meant caroling at nursing homes on Beacon Hill
Where I wonder if I got my first glimpse at what loneliness might look like
Making things in a workshop that my brother and sister and I set up on the third floor of our rambling house
Yes preparation and anticipation
To the heart of a child, Advent wasn’t too somber a time
Because after all I was a child
And so some of life’s sadnesses hadn’t become real for me yet
There was a lot still outside of my ken.
It is different navigating Advent as an adult and so I appreciate Charles Forman’s words all the more.
“Faith is something we are always arriving at”
I don’t need to have it all settled,
Don’t need to have my faith all wrapped up and tied with a bow.
There can be doubt mixed in there, with my faith,
Skepticism, downright disbelief.
There can be rough edges to my faith.
There can be real life in there too,
Real life with its setbacks and sadnesses.
In my family, when something unexpected or unwanted happened, we have a little expression that we say.
“It’s just a part of life” we say.
It’s part of life and so it’s got to be part of faith
Because faith and life can’t be too separate things.
Religion isn’t something to be added to a life, said Emerson,
It is a life.
“Advent is for all of us,” says Forman
And Frederick Buechner
For Buechner, Advent sums up the paradox of the human condition
How we live in that in-between place
Between the darknesses in our lives, in our selves
The depressions, worries, concerns, confusions
The light places of our lives
The places of wonder, hope, flashes of beauty that shine out so as almost to blind us at times
“Some where between the darkness and the light,
That is where we are . . . .
And not just at Advent time but at all times…
That is who we are.”
Advent confirms for us the experience
Of being
Not-quite-there yet
Buechner says “What is coming is the light
But it’s not there yet, only our longing for it
And “in the meantime we are in the dark
And the dark, God knows, is also in us. “
“We watch and wait for a holiness to heal us and hallow us, to liberate us from the dark.”
And so Forman and Beuchner and now I’m thinking of the words of a new theologian
Angela Herrera
Angela told a wonderful story last week in her sermon about a time in her family’s life where there was more darkness than one might have liked
And she said in her lovely calm way “it happens”
Our personal winters can be cold”
What matters is that we’re not alone
Angela writes:
“We can’t take away one another’s troubles or sadness, any more than that mysterious gift-giver could solve my little family’s hard times. What we can offer one another is the light that never goes out. “You don’t have to keep it up all the time,” we can say, “because I’ve got it for you.”
* * * * * *
Advent is a season in the Christian church year
But I am wondering if, more than that,
It’s a season in our hearts
A state of in-betweenness
Of being not-there-yet
A season of casting around for hope
A season of wishing for a little more fortitude
Advent as a season of the heart
There is longing in it
There is fragility in it
There is hope in it
There is wanting in it
There is desire
“Pay attention to what you desire,” writes Carl Scovel, writes Ignatius of Loyola, for your desire comes from the Holy One
Desire for more holiness within the ordinary cast of our days
Desire for the transcendent to come along and lift us up and out
Away from the coughs and the colds, the chores and the bills
Give us a glimpse of something beyond, something more
If Advent is a season of the heart, it is a tender time
If we are honest
A time to be tender with ourselves and with those around us
“Comfort, o comfort my people” says the text from Isaiah
And truth be told
In these early days of winter, we long for comfort
A comfort that will wrap around us like a warm blanket
A spiritual comfort that will deep and far reaching
So let us travel the Advent journey together,
Pilgrims all,
On the look-out for the holy in all the small and ordinary moments of our days,
That flash of beauty, when we see the crescent of a winter moon hanging low in twilight sky,
That glimmer of wonder in a child’s eye,
That moment when,
doing something completely ordinary,
Like Emerson walking through the puddles on a cloudy day
We are lifted up and out of our lives by a flash of the transcendent that comes upon us
Transfiguring all that it touches.
Remember, Advent, writes Buechner:
“Is like the hazy ring around the winter moon and that means the coming of snow which will turn the night to silver.
Soon.”