Thoughts as Advent draws to a close...

Every year I tell myself that I will deepen my formal prayer life during Advent, but it rarely happens. This spiritual charade has been going on for over 25 years; you would think I might have learned something from all of this, but... apparently not. And yet something of Christ still often breaks through to me during this season that is revealed as the real gift - the authentic spiritual discipline - and almost I am surprised. I look at the prayer book and candles nicely set out on my home altar and notice that the book mark is still in the week of Advent One.

So what was revealed to me as this Advent draws to a close? I think at least these things...

+ First, my heart, mind and soul has been stretched and nourished this season by playing with the Sister City Music Ambassadors. Having to learn - and practice - jazz riffs and walking bass scales has been both fun and demanding; it feels like when I was learning Spanish while studying at Seminario Biblico in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1980. There were days when my head hurt from trying to do simultaneous translation. And then, often before I realized it, there were times of real communication and connection in this foreign tongue. Same thing with the jazz: lots of practice and fretting (sorry for the pun) - feelings of true inadequacy and humility, too - and then I'd find the groove and it was sweet. What's more, these musicians are both demanding and gentle - living models of the peace-making we hope to share - and I've learned a lot from them already about keeping silent (which for a preacher is a very good thing.)

+ Second, it would seem that my connection with my congregation is moving into a deeper level of trust and love, too. I find I have a deeper affection and concern for their well-being - individually and as a body - and throughout the day I find I am holding them up to God's love in prayer almost spontaneously. Our worship series - peace-making through music - has given us a chance to sing and talk about our journey with Jesus in new ways, too. There have even been some folks who have let themselves be touched by the great songs of the heart - people I would never have expected - and once again I am humbled and reminded to let go of all judgments when it comes to God's work within and among us. This isn't about me, it is what God is doing in our hearts - and clearly (and thankfully) God isn't finished with us yet. I am so regularly surprised by grace...

+ Third, I've found that only a few Christian authors really communicate with me during the Advent season - most either bore me or seem too abstract - except for Peterson, Buechner, Chittister. Rohr and Brueggemann. I am rereading the December section from Buechner's, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations, and they cut deep. I've started Peterson's Practice Resurrection - his exploration of the book of Ephesians (which I think I will use during worship in those long days after Epiphany and before Lent.) Fr. Richard Rohr gave me a clue as to why this might be true for me this year when he wrote:

First World cultures tend to think that more is better. I am told that busyness is actually a status symbol for us! It is strange that when people have so much, they are so anxious about not having enough—to do, to see, to own, to fix, to control, to change. What decreases in a culture of affluence is precisely and strangely time (in spite of our many “time-saving” devices)—along with wisdom and friendship. These are the very things that the human heart was created for, that the human heart feeds on and lives for. No wonder we are producing so many depressed, unhealthy and even violent people, while leaving a huge carbon footprint on this poor planet for the following generations.

My professors at Seminario Biblico said much the same thing when they told us that we would only read two or three books each semester - and we would read and discuss them in depth - rather than read LOTS of writers but only brush the surface. My Advent teachers this year have been long trusted friends who invite me to go deeper - and call me to pay careful attention - to the long journey of "practicing resurrection." I am grateful.

+ And fourth, I've learned a little bit more about the value of shutting up. I could say a LOT about this, but let's just say that once again it has become clear that when I have strong feelings and thoughts about something I sense is an injustice, it is always better to be like Mary and "ponder these things in my heart" for a while rather than rant. It takes time for these things to simmer and bake, yes? And most of the time they are better left unsaid...

So, I may not have prayed formally much this Advent, but it has been saturated in prayer - and blessings, too. Buechner says it best:

(The sacred story) that faith tells in the fairytale language of faith is not just that God IS, which God knows is a lot to swallow in itself much of the time, but that God COMES. Comes here. "In great humility." There is nothing much humbler than being born: naked, totally helpless, not much bigger than a loaf of bread. But with righteousness and faithfulness the girdle of his loins. And to US came. FOR us came. Is it true - not just the way fairytales are true but the truest of all truths? Almighty God, are you true?

When you are standing up to your neck in darkness, how do you say yes to that question? You say yes, I suppose, the only way faith can ever say it if it is honest with itself. You say yes with your fingers crossed. You say it with your heart in your mouth. Maybe that way we can say yes. He visited us. The world has never been quite the same since.

It is still a very dark world, in some ways darker than ever before, but the darkness is different because he keeps getting born into it. The threat of holocaust. The threat of poisoning the earth and sea and air. The threat of our own deaths. The broken marriage. The child in pain. The lost chance. Anyone who has ever known him has known him perhaps better in the darkness than anywhere else because it is in the dark where he seems to visit most often.

That rings to true for me... and I give thanks.