Hi St. Mary’s,
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving week.
I don’t know about you, but this year (like many other years) I feel like Advent snuck up on me and I just don’t feel “ready.” But this is exactly what Advent is for—the Godly Play story of Advent talks about how we need four whole weeks to get ready because Christmas is such a big mystery.
“Sometimes people can walk right through a mystery and not even know it is there. The Church learned a long time ago that people need a way to get ready to enter or even come close to a mystery like Christmas. The Church set aside four weeks to get ready. This is such a great Mystery that it takes that long to get ready. During this time, we are all on the way to Bethlehem.”
I love the idea of Advent so much, but as someone who has very high (and sometimes unrealistic) expectations of how things should go, I get frustrated when even getting ready isn’t how I imagined it. Like I’m not doing it right or like it doesn’t count if I don’t check certain boxes. There’s a lot of pressure to make Advent beautiful and lovely.
But then there was the year I waited too long to buy Advent calendars for my kids and they were sold out everywhere making me feel like a mom failure (thanks, capitalism), or the year I found the most beautiful Advent devotional and planned to read it aloud to my family every night but we never had time and it just made me feel guilty that we were so busy during Advent when Advent is “supposed to be” restful and slow. Just now, in writing this, I realized that I forgot to get our Advent candles out or to even check if we have the right candles so we can light the first one today.
But Advent is also a time for letting go and giving things up to make space for God, and as meaningful as the season of Advent is, God didn’t send us Advent candles or chocolate calendars or purple banners and altar cloths. God just gave us God. Emmanuel, God with us.
In Godly Play, we have time for kids to work with craft materials or stories and we always say, “I don’t know what your work will be. Only you know that.” Similarly, I don’t know what your getting ready will be like. Only you know that. Your getting ready might not look like mine or anyone else's.
I wonder what would happen if we let go of our expectations of what that is "supposed to" look like? To stop imagining what should be and to just let ourselves love and be loved, right now, the way things are?
And like the following poem reminds me:
May God come close to us anyway. Even when we aren’t ready.
First Coming by Madeleine L’Engle
He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.
He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not wait
till hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
he came, and his Light would not go out.
He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
Peace,
Flo