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Advent: 'waiting for' and 'hastening' - Faith & Spiritually

Catholic New Times, Dec 1, 2002 by Margo Ritchie

A few weeks ago, four people I work with gathered together at a cottage. As we gravitated toward the kitchen puttering about making lunch, I asked, "So what would you say about Advent?"

There was a thougtful pause--bread being buttered, cheese being cut. Then someone replied, "Hope. If you do not hope you cease to ask questions--there is no point." Another added how the movement of Christmas in this culture overrides the aspirations of Advent. And so, we began a thought process together.

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There is a paradox about the marking of Advent. Traditionally, we have spoken of it as a time of waiting, and then we wonder, "For what are we waiting?" Many of us become chronically conflicted at this time of the year as we resolve to disconnect from the consumerism that is particularly obvious among us from November 1 onward. Many of us long for the freshness of the story of this God who pitches tent among us even as we live in the midst of a culture grown weary from too much work, from too much speed, from to much fear, from too much war. At times, isn't it all just too much?

Poet Adrienne Rich invites us to step back from our culture and to take in the long view. She reflected on her sense of our human predicament in the last part of the 20th century:

In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible.

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather

Screaming and plunging into our personal history indeed. We see ourselves torn apart by concepts of we/they. We have come to believe that "they" are not "us," and so live a radical separateness. And then you throw oil into the mix and we have war with "them." And then you throw God into the mix and we have righteous defence of the truth, which usually means imposing our way of construing the world.

We create public policy that leaves some struggling to survive. Will I buy groceries this week or will I pay the hydro bill?

In 1846, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted that carbon dioxide from coal would lead to an overall increase in temperatures on the planet. And now, 150 years later, as more of us breathe with less ease, we are discussing whether we can "afford" to cut CO2 emissions.

And into the midst of this predicament, we hear the story of God whose favorite preposition is "with." While Rich did not have Advent in mind as she wrote these lines of poetry, they do capture the sense of what Advent is in the Christian story. Perhaps it is as simple as finding our way back to "we."

I suggest that part of the spiritual discipline of Advent is to relish the ways of our own experience, when we have known in our bones the place beyond what the poet is naming, that place in which we have not been "reduced to I." We all know these places and moments and people.

A good friend, Mary Sue, had suffered chronic illness for many years before she died suddenly at the age of 60 in October. She was unable to leave her chair and had long since faced the painful reality of what being chronically ill was like in a culture enthralled by productivity. Many of us who are still so enthralled would drop by to see her, knowing she would always be home, knowing that we did not have to make an appointment three weeks in advance. And we would talk. She shared what was happening in the world: her thoughts on education, how governments were not caring for the poor in the policies we were creating, the sadness she felt as she observed her family observing her suffering, how what she was living made no sense. We shared our own lives with her: what mattered and what was moving into the realm of "no longer mattering." In that little living room on Elworthy Avenue, the world shifted from the "I" alone to the "we."

Similarly, at a recent gathering, a 60-year-old woman who was dying of cancer called her friends and acquaintances together for prayer, food and stories. Sounds all very familiar, doesn't it? Her main message to all of us was "thank you." In a setting large enough to contain all of the stories of connection and disconnection, of sorrow and of joy, the group knew we were a "we." We tasted what it was like to live in the shelter of each others' love. And, somehow, the experience awakened in us the desire to seek out and to recognize the many places in our lives that cry out for a recognition of "we."

This is like the small group that gathers monthly to hear stories told by recently arrived refugees who have digested enough of their own experience to be able to share it.

Or like the small movements inside ourselves, when the person we have seen as our enemy stands before our imagination simply as the person who is struggling to be seen and heard as we are. Or the group of 25 people who gather monthly and who are passionate about creating affordable housing. They are willing to engage in the long and at times tedious process of making that happen.

Advent: 'waiting for' and 'hastening' - Faith & Spiritually

Catholic New Times, Dec 1, 2002 by Margo Ritchie

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