a week of sorting clutter...

Advent One 2025: I HATE clutter. Always have and always will. So, on what became a delightful snow day, I gave my attention to dusting, vacuuming, sorting, tossing, and scouring our home. I have no idea when this happened last, but the accumulating detritus was contributing to my weariness and needed the old heave-ho! (There's still a bedroom in need of attention - and my personal study is a wreck - but that may have to wait for another day.) The "Two of Us" band practice was cancelled, a chicken is in the sink defrosting, and soon our satchel of Advent/ Christmas music will reappear to grace our home with the sounds of Loreena McKinnitt, Vince Guaraldi, John Rutter, George Winston, and a host of subdued Celtic and French carols. All of this, as well as the silence of the snowfall and the absence of our clutter, has brought me a measure of blessed serenity - and I am grateful.

To say that this Advent feels like a reckoning of sorts for me would not be wrong: I am increasingly aware of my own mortality, conscious that on some days my energy dwindles and requires a newfound attention to choices, profoundly concerned about the ups and mostly downs of my loved one's health, and perplexed about the long-term consequences of my nation's ongoing obsession with chaos and cruelty. Earlier in the day, I read C. Christopher Smith's Substack column, Paying Attention to Poetry, which noted that:

Poetry (can be) a way to practice paying better attention—a habit that is essential to resisting the ever-encroaching allure of exploitative technology and consumerism and to being formed more deeply into the image of Christ. Paying attention is a key part of what makes us human, and poetry can be a valuable tool for developing that skill.

https://cultivatingcommunities.substack.com/p/paying-attention-to-poetry?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Could it be that in this season of watching, waiting, and paying attention, beyond the clutter, it's the poetry of Advent that is calling to me for a new hearing? I'm rather taken with this from Wisława Szymborska: A Little Bit About the Soul

A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.

Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.

Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.

It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.

When we’re filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it’s usually given time off.

Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn’t a given,
for it prefers silence.

When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.

It’s choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.

It doesn’t see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we’re not sure of anything
and curious about everything.

Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.

It doesn’t state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.

Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.

This is an act of faith - trusting that our elusive souls can and will use us for something - an incarnational paradox resolved only by patience and practice. Lou Reed sang, "It takes a busload of faith to get by" -  and he wasn't kidding. Kate Bowler adds, "Advent begins in the dark—with one small candle and a stubborn kind of hope. Not the shiny, everything’s-fine version. The gritty, keep-going kind. We wait. We bless what’s unfinished. Because the world is still a mess. And God is still coming." Her reflection for Advent One rings true to me and feels like I do today:

The church, in its wisdom, starts the new year not with champagne toasts or gym memberships but with a candle in the dark. Advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, though you’d be forgiven for missing that detail if your mailbox is already stuffed with glossy holiday catalogues. We start here—not at the finish line of Christmas morning—but in the long, deliberate work of waiting. Advent always begins on (or around) the feast of St. Andrew, the first disciple to follow Jesus and the first to drag someone else (his brother Peter, no less) along with him. Andrew is not the most memorable apostle. He’s not Peter with the speeches or John with the poetry. He’s the brother in the background. But he is the one who told his brother, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

The first week of Advent is devoted to hope. Not optimism, which is a little too seamless, too unrealistic, too pie-in-every-sky. And not nostalgia either. Remember those childhood Christmas concerts in drafty school gyms, where a dozen shaky recorders and one out-of-tune piano were supposed to sound like angels singing? We didn’t care—it was magic. But nostalgia can trick us into thinking the best days are behind us. Advent hope is grittier. It looks squarely at the world as it is—fragile, unjust, unfinished—and still insists that God is not done yet.

And so it is, has been, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Last Sunday, I taught the children of the church some of our Advent hymns - and how to use the hymnal. After worship, we all made Advent wreaths to take home and I was given this stunning and arresting crucifix made of wire and nails. It took my breath away. This Sunday, our children will present the congregation with a new white altar cloth. We will baptize a newborn, too, before gathering around the Lord's table to celebrate Eucharist. Indeed, the world is still a mess - and God continues to come to us for the Holy One is not done yet.