Advent

Friends,

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent, the liturgical period that begins four Sundays before Christmas. I celebrate Advent not only because it honors the birth of Jesus, but it also gives us time to consider the larger context of the hope it represents. I consider the nativity narrative and the season of its commemoration a spiritual recognition of the primacy of hope over despair. Here we are in the beginning of the harshest time of the year. Leaves have fallen; sunlit days are shortened; our souls and nature withdrawn; and so we wait expectantly for a new birth despite the apparent odds against overcoming the darkness and cold.

But something continues to stir in the womb of life despite the discouragements of these dark days. For example, one of the greatest natural symbols of hope for me are the remarkably resilient buds that have formed on the rhododendron and azaleas in our yard even with icicles encasing them. They have weathered these cold days year after year, generations after generations, knowing that they will slowly shed their ice jackets and open into some of the most beautiful of springtime bouquets. I often stop before them and just take in the gift of promise they offer. I like to think the buds remind us of a life force that has the ultimate word.

The other great symbol of Advent is, of course, pregnancy. Years ago I attended a mass at Weston Priory in Vermont during Advent where the congregants sat in a circle. The brothers had just accepted a refugee Guatemalan family, and a very pregnant Guatemalan woman sat with her family directly across from me in her native dress. As I looked deeply at her shy demeanor and humble face I found it bore all the world’s political suffering that I associate with the millions of people who suffer a similar history of deep sorrow and dislocation. Here she was, in a Vermont winter, tending her family, away from her family and friends as she became dependent on a strange land and a foreign language. Suddenly I realized the Jesus nativity narrative had become real before me. Jesus was likely born into a similar circumstance of dislocation, poverty and dependency, yet, like the bud on the rhododendron bush I did not feel despair for her sadness but a belief that, like the Jesus story, there was great promise and hope in this pregnant woman and Jesus' humble birth.*

So for me Advent represents the powerful resilience that resides in the heart of the mystery and wonder in the human soul, in nature and in life itself. I assume other cultures celebrate variations of rites of rebirth and the victory of hope over despair, but we do have our nativity narrative and our traditions of song, food gifting, and fellowship. We humans need to “tangibilitate” (one of my favorite words, thanks to the Rev. James Forbes) our feelings of despair and hope, to name and share the experience of naming them in common, and Advent and Christmas have given us sacred rites and creative ways: angels, wise men, sheep and donkeys, bright stars, a solemnly humble birth, and, yes, pregnant bulbs on the rhododendron bush “tangibilitate” the life and hope we need to seek in this uncertain time.

I wish for you all time during Advent to look at the buds on a rhody, to remember family and friends who represent remarkable resilience, and honor the deepest part of your own soul to find that there is an ultimate truth that our own love of life and our family and friends will have the final word in our own lives as well as the whole world.

Peace,
Tom

___________

* I visited Weston Priory twenty years later and found that the Guatemalan family had made a successful adjustment to American life. The older children had attended college and had important jobs related to their Guatemalan story. Not all refugees are so fortunate, of course, but the experience of being part of a story of a successful transformation of lives has continued to inspire me. And I can easily imagine how many lives across the world exist somewhere on the transition from resilient survival to successful lives. And now, of course, I think of how the trauma of those who have found refuge in the U.S. are now cruelly subjected to another traumatic dislocation of deportation.

Further footnote: I need to acknowledge the radical difference between my spiritual celebration of Advent and the often overwhelming holiday schedules. But I want to suggest that in addition to - or in spite of - the busyness that also happens during this time, we can and perhaps need to choose some quiet reflection on our hopes, especially during this dark time for so many people.