practicing joy: advent III

SMALL IS HOLY TEXT
This week we’re asked to light a candle of joy even as we’re surrounded by shadows of sorrow, heartbreak, and despair. Talk about a spirituality of paradox! Intuitively, it seems simpler to me to grasp hold of just one end of life’s polarity or the other – joy or sorrow, hope or despair, light or darkness – but not both/ and at the same time. Yet this is precisely the conundrum at the core of Christian spirituality for adults: can we learn to trust both/and more than either/or? Theologians have tried to describe this paradox in a variety of ways:

· Some speak of the mystery of the incarnation, others say the marriage of the human with the holy, some call it the sacred circle dance of spirit embracing matter, and Christina Rossetti sang it was love coming down at Christmas in her hymn.

· Whatever name we give to this puzzle, the Bible is filled with examples like: the Word of God became human flesh and dwelt among us; or we see by faith not by sight; or now we see as through a glass darkly but later face to face; or the living presence of Jesus is with us when-ever two or more are gathered in his name; or, even we are nourished by the Risen Christ who meets us mystically in ordinary bread and wine.

This spirituality of paradox has long been a part of our faith tradition although in the West it’s been treated more as a minority report. So, consider Psalm 85: after their exile in Babylon, perhaps 500 years before Jesus was born while the second temple in Jerusalem was being rebuilt, ancient Israel proclaimed this paradox in worship confessing that whenever we turn away from selfishness by opening our hearts to sisters and brothers in need the holy is honored: God’s kindness and truth will embrace (in our presence) as sacred justice and peace intimately kiss. Truth shall spring up from Mother Earth as healing generosity falls down from the heavens and the Lord grants bounty to the land by increasing its yield.

The same song was sung by the prophetic poet, Isaiah, in chapter 11 of his vision: In God’s shalom: the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the lion and the fatling calf shall be together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze together as their young lie down to rest in the same field… a nursing child shall play over the hole of the as yet none shall be hurt or destroyed on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the know-ledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

The Bible closes with Revelation telling us that: God’s voice assures us that the Lord’s home is among humanity. God dwells with us and within us and this makes us God’s people. The fullness of the holy will wipe every tear from our eyes for death will be no more; neither mourning, crying nor pain will remain for these first things will have passed away. And Jesus himself said: Those with eyes to see know that God’s kingdom – the promises and presence of the holy – is within and among us always. Therefore, we the light the candle of joy on the third Sunday of Advent even as we experience being surrounded by shadows of sorrow, darkness, heartbreak, fear, and despair.

This suggests that Advent is for adults: paradox is NOT something children can consciously com-prehend. That’s why every culture creates fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and simple visual rituals to open and close the day, mark personal and social milestones, or greet and dismiss the seasons. These rites express the challenges and contradictions of reality in overstated and fantastic ways so that our little ones discover healthy tools to deal with conflict, fear, desire, and human relation-ships. On one level, our Advent candles introduce paradox to us like small spiritual night lights gently illuminating the darkness with God’s loving presence. 

On a whole other level, though, the candles of Advent ask the adults in the room to grow up. St. Paul wrote I Corinthians 13 that when I was a child, I thought like a child, spoke like a child, and acted like a child. Over time, I matured – went deeper beyond the obvious, learned from my mistakes – and put childish things away. Now I know that what I see is only gazing upon a mirror darkly.Later I trust by faith that I shall see face to face beyond the darkness. As an adult, Paul concludes, we choose to trust faith, hope, and love by practicing them in specific ways repeatedly. THAT is what the adult Advent teaches: learning to trust that God’s love is greater than all the shadows of darkness that surround us. Love doesn’t banish the shadows; rather, it accompanies us as we practice moving through them towards the light step by step.

As a child, you know, I heard the promises of this season as one dimensional either/or assurances for such is the organic innocence of our first naivete. I literally believed that one day ALL contradict-ions would perish and there would be a resolution to war and suffering. That’s how I heard the promise of SHALOM, ok? I should probably tell you that for a while I also literally believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, too. As a child, I trusted it all completely…

· … for that’s what sacred stories, poetry, songs, and rituals are supposed to do for children: evoke trust and awe. Childhood resources have been dragged through the sand of time so that distractions and dross are scraped off and left in the dust. They’re calculated to captured us by their light and awaken our hearts to a loving awe of the Lord through time-tested arche-types

· I danced with delight the first five or six times I saw “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens on TV. When Ebenezer Scrooge finally gets religion and brings a feast to the Cratchit home on Christmas morning? I was ecstatic! I was equally enthralled reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. And I’m not ashamed to say that I still weep tears of joy like a child whenever we sing “Silent Night” in community at the close of candlelight worship on Christmas Eve. We’re supposed to be lifted-up, carried away by joy, drawn out of the darkness and towards the light as children. It is the work, Paul Ricouer tells us, of our first naivete.

As adults we’re asked to practice a second naivete by exploring the light and darkness of Advent at a deeper level. Just as there is a time to be entranced by innocent naivete, so is there also a time to mature in faith, hope, love, and wisdom. James Fowler, Erik Erikson, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, Carl Jung as well as Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb describe this as a fluid, non-linear descent into the stages of faith. Some scholars use prayer language to suggest three stages of faith – purgative, illuminative, and unitive – that is, prayer as thought, practice, and wisdom.

Others have borrowed from the social sciences and speak of seven stages of faith:

A primal faith grounded in trust, an intuitive faith inherited from family and culture, a literal and naïve faith shaped by innocence and institutions, a conflicted and adolescent faith that is oppositional and questioning, a reflective faith that is driven by adult personal responsibility, a conjunctive or mid-life crisis faith that either sorts out paradox or falls backwards into a stagnant literalism, and a universal or enlightened faith that makes peace with the ebb and flow of insights and strives for lives grounded in patience and acceptance.

Now, I chose to tell you all of this before even starting to engage our poetry and scripture because if you’re anything like me these days feel darker and more troubling than at any other time in recent memory. Diana Butler Bass, church historian and popular author, said it as well as any: It may be Advent (and the Advent calendar continues daily), she observed, but there’s still news — and sadly, a lot of that news isn’t very good. In recent days, several stories have appeared about Christian nationalism, the power of authoritarianism, the threat of democratic collapse, and the role of some religious groups in the January 6 insurrection. I’m deeply concerned about all of this. Well, more than concerned. Worried. Really worried. Add to this list from Dr. Bass our own fears about the covid variants and the personal wounds and loss we all carry and right now does not feel very joyful to me. My fears and feelings, in fact, take me right back to that adolescent stage of faith where I wonder if any of this spiritual stuff really matters.

Oh, intellectually I know that there have been times much bleaker than our own and other cultures and individuals who have suffered WAY more than myself. Somewhere deep in my heart I continue to believe that the arch of the moral universe does tilt ever so slightly towards what is right, true, noble, and just. But not always. Like Fr. Henri Nouwen once confessed, sometimes I forget it all and ignore the paradox that more often than not in the heart of our pain lays a kernel of blessing where there is joy hidden within our sorrow:

I know it from my own times of depression (he said.) I know it from living with people with intellectual handicaps. I know it from looking into the eyes of patients, and from being with the poorest of the poor. We keep forgetting this truth and become over-whelmed by our own darkness. We so easily lose sight of our joys and speak only of our sorrows as the only reality there is. And that’s why we need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow can also be the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness. Indeed, we need to be angels for one another, giving each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

Which is why I give thanks to God today that we’re asked to light the candle of joy one more time. It reminds me that I don’t have to rely on and live only in my feelings. Or that Advent is just about my darkness. Rather, I can choose to practice the disciplines of Advent, to listen to the testimony and poetry of those who have gone before me and remember that the journey of faith is a continuum not a predictable, straight line. Over and over again – and probably over and over still some more, too – it is not only OK to re-commit one more time to the adult way of Jesus, but like Mary Oliver says, it’s part of God’s design in acquiring an adult faith. Her poem, “Thirst,” sounds exactly like what I’ve been feeling of late: a testimony to the ups and downs of trusting God’s paradoxical love beyond the obvious darkness in the most ordinary language.

Faith, she tells us, is not only connected to thirst, but because we’re naturally born slow learners, God has created a world filled with beautiful lessons for us to discover in joy every day that are hidden but every bit as real as the shadows. Oliver writes:

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.
I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

Practicing joy makes our wounded flesh holy, encouraging a human generosity and justice that we can share in simple ways. Too often I make this complicated by over-thinking and get lost in the mystery. But the candle of joy points me back to John the Baptist who, like Mary Oliver, speaks of sharing joy simply and practically. “Got two coats? Give one away. No need to get fancy Oliver insists. Just be generous with what is ordinary.” In her poem, “Mindful” says that:

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight – that leaves me like a needle in a haystack of light. It is what I was born for: to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – To instruct myself – over and over – in joy – and acclamation. And I am not talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful – the very extravagant – but the ordinary, the common, the very drab – the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these: The untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made… out of grass?

The Advent texts tell us that the spiritual practice of joy starts with simple

generosity and justice shared within our ordinary lives. My friends in L’Arche say: Joy ripens one heart at a time. if you only look at the massive brokenness overseas or pay attention only to the tragic headlines on the Internet, you’ll trap yourself in despair. But if you practice the 10-foot rule, loving and sharing generously with those you can actually touch, the joy of the Lord will ripen in your heart as you cherish another one heart at a time.

Simple acts of generosity eliminate all distinctions between gift-giver and recipient in what looks like the polarities of grace. You give and I receive, then I do likewise in the ebb and flow of reality that moves not in a straight line but more like a circle dance. Joy takes us deeper into a continuum of alphas on the way of becoming omegas until there is no beginning or end. Just now, right here and right now. How does the Servant Hymn put it: I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh, I’ll laugh with you; I will share your joys and sorrows till we’ve seen this journey through. I do this for you trusting that you will do it for me. This is putting childish things away and practicing Advent.

And that’s another reason I am grateful for today: I once thought I understood Advent. I suppose I got some of its wisdom. But this year, thinking paradoxically about so much of what I used to take for granted – even the Advent candle lighting ceremonies – I’m realizing Advent is something I must practice rather than simply observe. “Practices shape us to be better, wiser, more gracious people now,” Dr. Bass insists, “even as these very practices anticipate in our lives and communities the reality of God’s kingdom that has entered into the world and will one day be experienced in its fullness.” She goes on to say take the practice of hospitality: “It opens our hearts to those who are strangers and anticipates that, in God’s Kingdom, there will one day be no strangers. The practice of forgiveness cleanses our souls from guilt and shame and anticipates that, in God’s Kingdom, all will be forgiven.” So, what do the practices of the Advent wreath anticipate?

The first candle of hope asks us to practice mindfulness: being awake and empty enough that God can show us what to embrace in our ordinary lives. Hope in an adult Advent is NOT about being filled-up. Like John the Baptist says elsewhere: I must decrease so that Christ may increase. Fr. Richard Rohr notes that: “when we desire satisfaction for our hopes, we’re demanding to complete history on our terms. It’s wanting to be in control. Same goes for demanding that our anxieties or disappointments be taken away; saying as it were: Why aren’t you this or that for me? Why didn’t you do want I wanted.” Hope as the practice of mindfulness helps us to let go, become emptier, awake and trusting that God will be God. It is the practice of letting the holy finish the picture – complete the poem – write the last verse of the song. It is incarnating the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer.

The second candle of peace asks us to practice shalom. Peace is so more than the end of conflict or a cessation of fighting. In an adult spirituality of Advent, shalom is about right relations between people, nations, religions, and creation. Sometimes that means finding out what has been TAKEN AWAY from someone and returning it. You may recall that repentance, metanoia, is changing our minds and actions by turning back to God’s love. And sometimes that looks like returning land to those whose ancestral homes have been stolen, or returning dignity and safety to people who’ve been ignored or wounded including ALL the creatures of earth who were created to be our partners in creation. Shalom is living into the rhythm of the seasons, honoring the prayers made out of grass and anticipating that time when sharing by all means scarcity for none.

And the third candle of joy asks us to practice generosity from a heart of
delight. What some-times passes as gift-giving can be driven by obligation or manipulation – and there’s no joy in that. Mark Twain use to say about the Pharisees in the time of Jesus that “they were good men in the worst sense of the word.” Mary Oliver tells us this is the wrong motivation for generosity; it should come from that “something that more or less kills you with delight.” Or, like Frederick Buechner says: it is sharing your greatest joy with the world’s greatest need. 

To light the candle of joy today – and all this week – encourages us to ask like the Baptist: what can you give away to bring joy to the world? What “chaff” could be cleared away from your heart to be more kind, more just, more luminous in your everyday, walking around lives? What are the prayers of the grass saying to you – and God? The prayers of the trees? The prayers of the stones? As you listen for these prayers: let your heart and mind be open. Empty. So that you can react to them without hesitation. Wise Advent wisdom keeper, Mary Oliver, tells us that:

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty: Joy is not made to be a crumb.

So I want to practice giving in to joy right now: I was going to ask you to sing “Angels We Have Heard on High” to get ready for Eucharist, but after reading my friend Pam’s blog I realized that today we need to sing “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.”