Advent: sing in the darkness…
This year, for the first time in twelve years, I have no duties on Christmas Day. Or Christmas Eve either. I was making mental plans to go home for Christmas, to see the family and friends we miss so much. I shan’t bore you with the reasons, but as things turn out there aren’t going to be enough $$$ for a trip home right now. Ten days ago I was feeling a bit down about that, and trying to work out what to do at Christmas in a foreign place with no duties to get my teeth into.
There is a happy ending to this, because my son and I have been invited to spend the Christmas break with friends, so this is not a tale of woe. But early last week, in the midst of feeling flat and disappointed, I stopped to think about Advent as a journey towards the unknown. The patriarchs and matriarchs of scripture travelled through some very dark times in the hopes of finding a promised land; the prophets who envisaged a time of harvests and sunshine and peaceful abundance did so against a backdrop of their own city being devastated and burned to the ground. Holding on to hope when there doesn’t seem any rational reason to do so is hard. The prophets’ words weren’t a fanciful, romantic denial of their circumstances, or a pretence that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Their prophecies were an act of the imagination, in the true sense of the word.
Imagination is a word that has been somewhat devalued – it’s often used to describe mere fantasy, a Pollyanna-like refusal to face up to reality, or a lack of mental acuity that would engage one with the “real” world. But there’s a much more robust definition of the imagination as that part of the mind that creatively projects what could be, dares to conjure previously unthought possibilities, and refuses to submit to a bleak present, summoning up instead a better future. The imagination in this sense is not an escape from reality, but the power to summon up hope, which in turn propels people to bring the imagined future into being. That holds good not just for the small moments in our personal experience, but for the larger scale, world changing initiatives and inventions that make the world a better place.
I’m really looking forward to Christmas now. It will be intriguing to discover what it’s like to have no “job” to do on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning; it will be fun to be in the company of friends, and great to explore a city I’ve never been to before. But I treasure this little darkness-to-light Advent moment along the way; a brush with some bleak feelings, a reminder that we live in a world where darkness falls on us all too easily, but also deep-down thanks that there is a light that shines in the darkness.
3 Responses to “Advent: sing in the darkness…”
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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This made me smile…thank you. Even though last year was only my first ‘working’ Christmas, being on maternity leave this year has given me a completely different perspective. On one hand, I actually feel a little sad to be on the fringes of my church community, an inability to be involved in the planning and build up through advent to Christmas, and just having to watch it happen (difficult when it’s ‘not what I would have done’!!). It’s a very bizarre place to be.
On the other hand, I’m experiencing just how exciting a first Christmas with a child is…as little as she is and as much as she won’t have much of a clue what’s going on, I feel the excitement of what is to come even in the years ahead as we get to explore the advent narrative together.
It seems to me being displaced is very much part of the Christmas story… it can be terrifying, or it can be a challenge , or it can be a gift. I think back over a lifetime and realise that some of my worst Christmas experiences were actually the ones which helped me to grow the most. The light of Christmas, and our hope in it, can sometimes help us to see some very painful truths and to keep travelling into the darkness, because the shabby taudriness of what we imagine we want, is nowhere near as compelling as the truth.
Ruth, I hope you enjoy your first Christmas in a very different “space” from the one you imagined.
Stephanie – nicely put! I feel that travelling in the darkness (with the Advent hope at our sides) is actually what most of life is about. We reach for the metaphor of light so often, and sometimes miss the point that God is IN the darkness too.