what is being born within me this advent...

This year, for about 20 dollars and some attentive shopping at second hand stores, I was able to find four Advent music CDs for Dianne. The sounds of this season have always been as important to how we enter this sacred time as the sights and smells. Maybe more so as a few candles and a little evergreen are enough decorations if the right music is playing. My gifts included a collection of French carols, the tunes of Advent/Christmas in Celtic Brittany and The Virgin's Lament from the Glenstal Abbey in Ireland. Yes, we have a few popular culture holiday albums and CDs, too - my favorite being Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas that I have played relentlessly this year, but there's also Amy Grant, Bing Crosby, Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall and more than a few of the Windham Hill collections but mostly its the medieval chants or those using the instruments of the Gaelic world that capture our attention.

As everything about this year has shifted given my retirement and Di's work with on-line teaching, we chose to make our Advent/Christmas celebrations different, too. No Christmas tree for us because we're going to Brooklyn for the feast of the Nativity. We'll worship on Christmas Eve with Louie and his momma at Trinity/St. Paul's in Manhattan and then feast with their clan. We'' visit with the Massachusetts folk on the Feast of the Epiphany at the end of this season's cycle. And we're heading up to Ottawa tomorrow to be with our L'Arche friends and their Christmas pageant. We'll take in a craft fair or two, get a few simple gifts, stop by our favorite pub, walk in a nature reserve, and celebrate the Christmas story in community. 

This Advent, like every year, has been pregnant with its own charism. At first I couldn't grasp what was striving to be born within me. I knew it was dark. And quiet. And stripped down. That's probably why I kept playing the opening cut from Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas over and over. It is his jazz trio's take on O Tannenbaum - wistful, creative and rhythmic without ever becoming sentimental - a song rooted in tradition but made completely new through their careful improvisation. I think that's what is taking shape in my heart: a gentle playfulness with my spiritual tradition that seeks to let go of sentimentality. 

In Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's To Dance with God, a text I have referred to often this Advent, she writes:

Sentimentality is the emotion we feel when we scoop off a part of the truth, that part which we are willing to accept, and slather it like syrup to cover what we do not want to see. Usually what we don't want to see is our own responsibility to the remaining truth. A half-truth is a very dangerous thing, because it is a lie... 

Advent/Christmas has long been filled with unrealistic expectations for me as a parent, a spouse, a pastor. Now I can let go of those half-truths and demands. Now I can be as tender and quiet as I have ached to be for decades. Now I can rest in the dark, simple silence of this song and let the Spirit speak to me as she will. That's what it feels like is being born within me this Advent: the freedom to follow the Spirit more simply, more playfully, more honestly even through the darkness. This poem, "Adult Advent Announcement" by David Redding, gets close to what it stirring as we move closer to Christmas.

O Lord,

Let Advent begin again

In us,

Not merely in commercials;

For that first Christmas was not

Simply for children,

But for the

Wise and the strong.

It was

Crowded around that cradle,

With kings kneeling.

Speak to us

Who seek an adult seat this year.

Help us to realize,

As we fill stockings,

Christmas is mainly

For the old folks —

Bent backs

And tired eyes

Need relief and light

A little more.

No wonder

It was grown-ups

Who were the first

To notice

Such a star.