John died in early Advent 1971. He was 39 years old — an important member of our extended family. The world was forever changed that year for John’s family, and for all of those close to them. It was the first time that I remember wondering how the days could keep moving relentlessly toward a celebration when lives had been so shattered. The bright lights and Christmas music seemed an affront, wherever I turned. Gray weather matched the gray of my spirit. Casting away the works of darkness — the words from an Advent Collect — was the mantra which stayed with me.

Images and feelings from that time rose up in me recently as I listened to a friend whose Advent teeters on that balance point between the powers of darkness and light. It occurred to me that we have all been living in that precarious place for quite some time now. We approach the time of silent night full of knowing that all is not “calm and bright” in the world we inhabit, before we even consider the state of our personal worlds. If we have been living with a new awareness of evil for the past year, we have at the same time been living with a more constant awareness that what we do personally to move the world toward peace really matters. If we have given lip service before to the global village, we are more aware than ever before how small and connected the world is, and what that can mean, for both the forces of creation and productivity, and the forces of destruction. If war was once something to be read about in history books, and revisited in monuments, its shadow now walks with us daily.

Jesus was born on a holy night, but not a silent, calm one. The world into which he emerged was a world of chaos and struggle. Poverty, religious conflict, pain, terror were standard fare in the first century. Yet it was into this turmoil that the Prince of Peace was given — and into which He comes again.

The relentlessness of the Coming marked that long-ago personal Advent. Through my world’s cacophony I could sense the steady tempo, the whispers that brushed my heart. Rebirth when I expected it least, out of His love, into the reality of my life. The promise of light in darkened lives; peace in troubled hearts; hope for a broken world. It was the time I knew with a certainty never to be forgotten that His coming, and the celebration, were not dependent in any way on my personal state of readiness, but would, if I allowed it, take me with Him into the light.

Once again He is coming — and wherever we may be this Advent, the certainty of the coming moves quietly; pervasively. A presence felt. A glowing shed. A hope renewed.

He is coming — not a season, nor a stable, not a nation or a city or a nave. He is coming. Ready or not.

Lest we miss Him — may we accept each other gently. Give bitterness and hatred no resting place. Make peace with yesterday. Hold hope for tomorrow. Let wonder live — and love light the way.

He is coming. His name is love.

Prev | Next

Editor’s Corner

The ordering of our lives as a family of faith is part and parcel of who we are as Episcopalian Christians. The experiential corporate expression of that ordering is the annual gathering known as the Diocesan Convention. With the November issue of The Advocate, we focus attention on both process and content of the convention and the part of our lives which reminds us that creativity (from which mission and ministry grow) and discipline (of our selves, our souls, bodies, gifts, talents, treasure and community) go hand in hand. The passion, dedication and creativity which produce a Mission Funding Task Force report, a budget, a resolution may not be as evident as the emotion behind a story of reading camp, or mission trips to Haiti, or speaking a faith-based response to a pressing cultural situation. But it is who we are and how we go about being the Body of Christ in this time and place - it is a Faithmatter... it is one of the ways that Faith Matters.

KCM

The editor can be e-mailed at kcollierm@diolex.org

Prev | Next