Scrambling to catch up with the events of the season in the wake of several snow storms has left me both breathless and thoughtful. Breathless in my efforts to shovel out from under and resume my appointed rounds; thoughtful in response to the delightful confinement enforced by mother nature- aka the Holy Spirit. Not for a minute do I suppose that the weather patterns were designed with me in mind, but they have definitely contributed to my experience of Advent this year. It has been a delightful relief to surrender to the realities of winter white and just sit back and watch the snow fall. Blue may be the customary color of peace, but for me the cold white of winter more clearly conveys the experience of chaos being hushed, human striving being relegated to second place, and nature blanketing all of life in uniform crystalline beauty. Conflict is redirected to the effort required to shovel snow, a substance largely impervious to human emotion. Even my overheated and sweaty labor, complete with the occasional rise in temper as I tire and the snowbank grows higher, is quickly cooled and refreshed with a brief pause. It's as if God has built into creation an exercise in humility. Humanity is not in charge; snow is.
As a result of the recent storms, church was canceled. Although we New Englanders pride ourselves on doing our duty and showing up on Sunday for all the wrong reasons, we have learned that risking life and limb just to be able to say we were there despite a storm too often becomes the deadly fall the old proverb warns us about. It's never an easy decision to close the church, but from time to time it must be done. I was especially reluctant not to gather last Sunday; I was looking forward to exploring the pink candle of Joy. As it happened, we have done that, albeit differently than I expected.
Having missed communal worship on Sunday, our Tuesday evening Advent devotional and Wednesday noon lunch were special times of connection and reflection. Our subject for the devotional was Mary, the mother of Jesus. Lunch was a review of Chanukah, complete with latkes and menorah. At both events the theme was the same: God doing something life-giving in totally unexpected ways. It brought us to a thoughtful review of the past year, in which there was a lot of trauma and difficulty for our congregation, a lot of death and disease. There was also a lot of recovery and healing, sometimes through the same experiences of death that wounded us; sometimes through the shared prayer and support found in each other. Perhaps as a result of our enforced solitude via the snow, people shared their sorrows and their comforts with each other in an unusually open way. The recognition of Emmanuel, God with us, was palpable. Totally unscripted, we labored together to make sense out of the difficult events of our lives in the midst of this season of joy.
We arrived, to our own surprise, at the figure of Elizabeth instead of Mary. This elderly first time mother resonated with our 2/3rds elderly community. For those who read their Bible literally, the fact of her elderly pregnancy both horrified and fascinated. For those who read their Bible metaphorically, her circumstances puzzled and bewildered. Putting ourselves in her place, we shuddered collectively at what God was doing in her life, glad that it was her prayer that got such a belated response, and not our own. We would not want to be old, as Zachariah insisted they were, and find ourselves in labor. Or was it possible that we were in that same place and didn't even know it? Asking the question, "Where is God at work in me, laboring to bring something to life?" guided us to the recognition that we were limited by our own vision of the possibilities. God wasn't working miracles of life, literally or metaphorically, through what Elizabeth or Mary thought were possibilities; in both instances God was working outside the envelope. But as one of our literalists joked: "At least with Elizabeth there was proof that you could SEE that God was doing something!" Ultimately, we found ourselves fascinated by the prospect of labor at a stage of life when we customarily think more of rest and retirement. In Elizabeth, our difficulties began to make a different kind of sense; they became a labor of love that held new life. While freely owning our preference for being in control and choosing the kind of life we want to live, we were also able to share our surprise, our confusion, and our budding hope that whatever God was up to would ultimately be more than what we had envisioned for ourselves. Looking at John-the-Baptist didn't bring us the familiar comfort of coziness and security in regard to having a new baby/new aspect of life, instead we found ourselves facing the challenge of a son who was more than a little wild. Without any planned intention, we found ourselves in touch with that pink candle of joy at a much deeper level than might have been possible in our customary worship.
My last few blog entries have focused on the difficulties of Advent preparation when the joy feels forced, and the challenge I perceived to help my faith community celebrate genuinely. As we approach this final Sunday of Advent we'll be lighting both the pink candle of joy and the last purple candle of peace. I think we've arrived at both. We're still feeling the mad scramble of the world around us, perhaps even more so as we struggle to make up for time lost in the snow. We're also feeling more broadly and deeply, perhaps due to that same phenomenon of snow, and the divine interruption of our lives that has shown us the labor of love that we're all part of.
Birth, even the birth of joy, requires labor. It's not magic ,as any mother can tell you. Even a relatively easy labor is still work, and we all know that the fullness of joy cannot be measured by the ease or difficulty of the labor; joy is it's own reality. What matters is that we respond to God's work within us as the biblical women did- with surprise, with affirmation, with recognition that we are engaged in a labor of love. Our little band of weary senior citizens has found the way through Advent to genuine Christmas joy this year along an unexpected route- but then, that's about as biblical as you can get, isn't it?
My favorite Advent help of all time is a short verse by Madeleine L'Engle. For me, it sums up the season in all of it's aspects and keeps my focus where it needs to be. I hope it does the same for you:
This is the irrational season,
When Love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There'd have been no room for the child.
Whatever candle you light this last Sunday of Advent, may your time of preparation bring you into new relationship with Love this Christmas.
nancy hitt.
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