Advent Devotions

As I write, the light is dawning in the distance.

I've been struck by the beauty of Christmas already and Advent hasn't even begun.  The longing for God's light to be seen, and his justice to be done has appeared in my soul.  Words will fail to convey what is better carried by melodies of hymns.  "What Star is This?" already on a daily basis reminds me of "the still point in the turning world", the night that Christ was born, the stunning proposition that ultimate peace and justice meet us in manger-turned-nursery where Mary cradles the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who ultimately cradles each of us in his hands.  Indeed, the lights of the sky, the stars, the sunsets, which suggest untold distances, yet so apparent to my eyes, the moon in various shades of waxing and waning, also seem to already fully proclaim the cosmic praise of angelic and starry host - what star is this? - that was and is heaped upon the nativity - that the unoriginated one, the Son of God, had an origin point, a birth, an entrance.

A tradition is a gift, not only for an individual, but also for families, for congregations, for nations.  The feast of Thanksgiving a week ago was filled with feasts of the imagination as I considered the gifts of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Nicholas of Myra, or St. Nick, George Herbert, Cecil Frances Alexander, and thought about what keys, roots, and royalty have to do with Christ.  Traditions aren't always life-giving.  Hymns, poems, recipes, instincts to give gifts, to sing, to gather together - all were once works of art that were not created to burden, to kill, to suppress life, but rather arose expressively from life, from devotion, from humble, grateful hearts.  They were not the dead leaves littering the ground.  They were new buds of fresh life.  Many religious traditions have a calendar to keep.  Tradition, at its best, meets our already-kindled longing, and stabilizes it, surrounding it with a community from the centuries.

Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, which cluster begins this Sunday, arises largely out of innate human experience: we don't celebrate unless we prepare.  Sure, we can force the matter, but this pattern of living issues forth in hollow cheer, with shiny tinsel, but without any true kindling of light, of knowing traces of melodies and songs telling of cheer and goodwill and being 'merry' without really being able to trace them back to any joyful world-changing moment.  The world is troubled today.  Racial controversy, geo-political controversy, and of course all those newscasters have been cast into the news themselves: how can we make it all right again?  One answer from the centuries, from the democracy of the dead, is that when the world is too much with me, and I can't rise above it anymore, and the very things which are given to me for joy - friends, food, money, homes - fill me with anxiety - I can fast.  Not aimlessly, but I can fast from aspects of the world so that I can learn to feast again.  Advent traditionally is a season of fasting so that the twelve days of Christmas can be a season of feasting.  As Christians, we are not ascetics: we don't become virtuous by constantly withdrawing from the world.  We are also not gluttons: the world and everything in it is not there for our entertainment, which is certainly what I'm most tempted toward.  I'll be fasting from YouTube, for instance.

The light is in the distance.  The world keeps moving.  If living life is like trying to improvise a comedy, how do we know when we reach the climactic wedding with its joyful toasts and dances?  How does Christmas become Christmas again?  By engaging deeply with God in attentive, prayerful ways.  The seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, with all of its stories, hymns, poems, show us the riches of the Scripture, and of the salvation we have inherited.