it is advent. my favorite time. this year it seems we are crawling to the end of the 12th month like a marathon no one signed up for. we are longing for rest and hope and joy and meaning. maybe more than ever before.
our tradition is to wait until the day after thanksgiving before we can begin to look toward Christmas. this means we wait to watch or listen or decorate. we wait. this year the struggle was real. a few times, i almost gave in and my kids held me up to my word. this year there is a desperation for the things that advent promises.
this year has done us in. laid us bare. flattened us. tested and toughened us. everyone has lost something or someone. there is collective grief. a mourning.
advent promises us the gift of Love. advent is the season of hope, anticipation of a celebration, a birth, of joy, of abundance, of divine entrance, of true miracle. LOVE. radical love.
this year, more than any other i can remember, i am sitting in the need for radical love. and everything about Jesus's birth, life, death and resurrection was radical Love. He spoke radical words that made the establishment mad, He did radical things and hung out with the "wrong people", He turned things upside down - with a clear and simple message- Love one another as I love you. He was inclusive always, He chose people over rules, people over money, forgiveness over judgement, always. period.
our hope is here. radical Love, inclusive Love no matter what by God. that is the good news of Christmas, the hope of advent.
for me this week, this first week of advent, i'm going to be still in a time of reflection on this year. this is not my tendency. i like to avoid the negative and skip over the bad feelings and get to the good ones. but as i get older, i'm learning the value of holding hard things, the lessons learned in dark nights of the soul. i'm beginning to brave the cold and experience what is there for me.
i have hung some little white lights (my favorite) and the advent calendar made by my sweet sister and i'm listening to Handel's Messiah while I reflect and sit with the year. the equatorial sun shines and outside it looks and feels like my childhood summers which still seems a bit confusing,
oh come oh come Emmanuel!
