It's Advent Time!

photo by James Ogley / flickr

It’s that time of the year. Advent. The season when we are supposed to get ready. For mot of us it is a sad-happy time. I stopped two of my friends who had been in my Grief group when I saw them yesterday. “I know this is a hard time.” They both said: “You have no idea.” And I don’t really. And yet this I know. All around me are people that are having a tough time. Worrying about loved ones. Worrying about health. Worrying about the craziness of our time. Wishing, somehow we could just pull the plug and stop the madness that seems to be everywhere. I remember one of Annie Dillard’s lines. She said: “He asked: ‘O death where is thy sting?” And I thought,” she wrote,”Where? Just about everywhere.”

And yet—as I write these words I heard a noise outside my window. A large truck had pulled up. Two Hispanic workers are digging large holes in the grass across the street. And in the truck I saw three large trees. They were planting trees on this cold day. They were planting trees despite whatever death and whatever stings there are all around us. For them I suppose it was just a job and yet I wonder as they planted what fears they carried for their families and their children and their futures in this United States of America: 2018.

But despite it all they planted three trees. And up and down the street we strung light and set lights in our windows and hauled artificial trees out of the attic. Maybe we are all getting ready. The Hispanic workers, those two grievers dreading Christmas and the rest of us. 

Most of us have lost the wonder we had as children. When we just could not wait for Christmas and all its brings. And yet—we keep doing what we do every late November. We get ready as the old Advent calendar says.

Isaiah wrote: “The people that walked in darkness have seen as great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them the light hath shined.” Isaiah wrote in a terrible time. Death took away more than it passed by. The people were terrified of foreign invaders. Poverty and hunger were rampant. And yet—Isaiah wrote of light in whatever darkness surrounded them all.

So maybe, just maybe we need to get ready too. We cannot hold the dark back—and yet in the middle of it all—there is this unexpected light. Just enough to keep us going. History helps me here. John Henry Newman lived in a hard time. He was far from home. He was beset with a terrible sickness. He almost died. Swirling around him were awful political and church battles. And in 1833 despite the darkness and the spiritual bewilderment he felt he wrote a prayer for the guidance of God which became a great hymn: 

                     “Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,

 lead thou me on 

                The night is dark and I am far from home;

Lead thou me on!”

It’s my prayer for me and mine and maybe everybody. That somewhere in the busyness or heartbreak of these Advent days we will find just enough light to keep us going. I love that poem by Langston Hughes that expresses this hope so well. 

“Well, son I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light. 

So boy, don’t you turn back. 

Don’t you set down on the steps

‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey, 

I’se still climbing;’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” 

photo by Bart / flickr

—Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com