The First Week of Advent is upon us. Advent is a liturgical season in its own right, the Church tells us; it is not just the prelude to Christmas.
I have heard these words from the pulpit all my life. From the pulpit it makes sense that Advent is separate and apart from the Christmas season. The readings for the 4 Sundays in Advent are full of fire and brimstone and dire warnings to get our acts together and remember that this life is not the life that matters. They are full of pleadings and intercession to the Lord to return to earth and save us.
Why do you let us wander, O LORD, from your ways,
and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?
. . .
No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you
doing such deeds for those who wait for him.
Is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7
In my mind, Advent is the hemming off of the liturgical year – although it is actually the beginning of it. For me, it is bringing the binding forward, as we quilters do, to wrap the unfinished edges of the quilt in a story, hemmed binding. So too, we tuck ourselves inside the Advent season, allowing ourselves to be subsumed by it just when we want to rip it off the most. We want fairy lights and candy canes and we are handed reminders that we are dust and unto dust we shall return.
As a child, I just tuned all this out and concentrated on counting on
my fingers the number of days that were left until Santa came. I
crossed the days off the calendar I had made with magic markers and
construction paper, I opened the little tiny doors of the Advent
calendar, and I marked the season by the appearance of Rudolph the Red
Nosed Reindeer, always the first Christmas cartoon special of the
season. I'd much rather be dreaming of Santa bringing me a Tressy doll than listen to the priest extolling us with the words of this cautionary Gospel:
Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and places his servants in charge,
each with his own work,
and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
Watch, therefore;
you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,
whether in the evening, or at midnight,
or at cockcrow, or in the morning.
May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”
Mk 13:33-37
Now, in middle age, I have come to appreciate the fierce warnings and cautionary psalms. This year they seem especially apt: financial recessions; careening stock market; gas pump shock; layoffs; plunging retirement and college funds....
Winter is indeed upon us. The ground is freezing, the trees are bare, the waters are icy gray, and the sky is low and dark. We are being marooned on the island of darkness and cold and our despair has stranded our emotions.
Advent is the reminder of the darkness before the light. Advent is the representation of the darkness that we must acknowledge before we can begin to cross the bridge to the light. Advent is both the culmination of the loss of the Light and the preparation for the Coming of the Light. It is both the yin and the yang, the despair and the hope, the retreat from and the movement toward the Light.
Was there ever a year when my state of mind so clearly dovetails with the season? tI can more easily respond to the warning to, “Watch!” so that he may not come suddenly and find me sleeping. My eyes are fixed open more nights than not, and when sleep does come, my first thoughts on awakening is whether the mountains have been rendered down while I sleep.
Of course, my mountains are so much smaller than those of the Old Testament. The tribes of my heritage, my quaking mountains are the sleeping forms under the covers of Mr. Pom, the children, my mother, myself. I am ever vigilant, obsessed, compulsive, ruminating. But I don't think that this is what was meant.
I need to be reminded to watch - but not to watch my fears, but to watch how the Light returns. I am dithering in my anxiety and confusing myself with my fears. This Advent I pray to keep my eyes fixed to the horizon so that I may be the first to see the crack of light cleave the night sky and cross the bridge of my self-imposed exile and be drawn to its warmth.