Advent?
How’s your Advent, this blessed time of waiting, going?
I learned all about Advent while I was living in Germany.
A special time with special props all bathed in the warmth of candlelight and special music to be sung in church and at home. Delightful treats to make and eat with children looking especially cherub-like, eyes wide with wonder. It really was magical and I looked so forward to festive trips to the Christmas Market for a glass of glühwein and a little bag of candied almonds. The scent of a Christmas Market can’t be beat. (If it’s not happened already, someone should really make a candle of that scent.)
Seriously, waiting in darkness for the coming light surrounded by all that sweetness is a predictable delight, not at all a problem.
This year Advent is without all of that wonder and delight.
We have Covid in the house and being in quarantine has forced us to hunker down so we missed the First and Second Advent celebration with our church, we missed the joy of our traditional “Tree Day” with family and friends, and though I baked one recipe of cookies it was all done alone.To top it all off, we learned that the trip we had planned to visit relatives over Christmas is now off, also due to Covid and restrictions.
This waiting feels just like… waiting.
It feels disorienting and irrational. Nothing makes sense right now. My best laid plans have come to nought.
With all of that, you’d think I would be down. Occasionally I do heave a little sigh, to be honest, but here’s the thing… this year Advent seems like it might be more real.
Madeleine L’Engle wrote this poem called “After Annunciation”.
“This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.”
Maybe we have to leave our idyllically formed ideas of what the perfect Advent and Christmas season looks like and see through the lens of a young refugee family who didn’t have all the props around them. For them it was indeed, an irrational season.
But love was compelling them to engage in this crazy act of worship and obedience. This was not an effort accomplished out of certainty and reason. It was pure risk on their part, with a touch of crazy trust thrown in.
So, in this second week of Advent 2021 I am looking out the window at the sun setting and it’s 4 pm. Darkness is settling in and this day isn’t even the shortest one. Even when everything feels like it's closing in on me, this year my hands are open.
I don’t want to be filled with reason. It won’t help me in the dark.
I want to fill up with the pure wild risk of letting love’s bright light bloom inside me.