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CountUp/CountDown–Another Advent Paradox

December 24, 2015 by Sybil Macbeth Leave a Comment

Advent for me has been both a countup and a countdown to Christmas.
Countup:
My two Advent calendars are a colorful accumulation of prayers and ponderings. On one I started out with 26 blank trees and prayed for someone each day with doodles and color. The other calendar began with a blank piece of purple cardboard. On circular stickers are words and sentences captured from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas. Both calendars started off with nothing on them and grew. They are evidence of daily time sitting in a chair and staying focused—if only for a few minutes.

Finished Advent Calendar Collage 2015 Resized

The dry, brown paperwhite narcissus bulbs planted at the beginning of Advent npw have tall green shoots. One bowl even has blossoms. Watching their growth each day was like having a living Advent calendar in my house.

Narcissus

Both of these Advent practices began with almost nothing and day by day revealed new growth. I was waiting for Christmas, but it felt like I was not waiting in vain.

Countdown:
The candles on the Advent wreath were beautiful on Advent One. They get smaller and more distorted each day, ticking off the days and hours until Christmas. Wax drips down and clumps on the table. The greens around the candles were so dry, they were a fire hazard; I threw them away. In spite of their demise, the dried–up greenery and the disappearing candles herald the imminence of Jesus’ birth.
Advent Wreath Collage (1)

The countup/countdown combo feels like just another Advent paradox to add to a growing collection: light/darkness, already/not yet, faith/fear, countup/countdown…. During Advent we pay attention to the paradoxes and sometimes act as if they are just an Advent thing that goes away with Christmas. But living with paradox is a constant part of daily life.

Life, for me, is both a countup and a countdown. These words do not fit nicely on a sequential or chronological timeline. Neither is necessarily a “better” experience than the other. Sometimes things are built up, sometimes torn down. Often countups and countdowns walk hand and hand. Both my countup and countdown Advent experiences were beacons to point the way to Christmas.

 

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: Advent, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, Paradox

Advent Paradox

December 3, 2014 by Sybil Macbeth 1 Comment Leave a Comment

Advent is not just the waiting and watching we do in December as we prepare for the annual celebration of the birth of Jesus. Advent is the training ground for how to live as watchful, expectant people the entire year. Expectancy (as I’ve said in other posts) is not about entitlement or having my personal agenda met; it is about remembering what it feels like to be wide-eyed and full of wonder in spite of tons of evidence to the contrary.

During Advent we are reminded of the paradoxes and incongruities of life:
Light and Darkness
Faith and Fear
Joy and Sorrow
Vulnerability and Power
Weakness and Strength
Done, but not Complete
Already and Not Yet
These pairs of contrasting ideas are not just for Advent. They are the daily themes and dilemmas of ordinary, everyday Christians–the people who believe that an embodied, flesh-and-blood Messiah has already come, but that the transformation of the world is not yet complete.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann describes Advent with an elegant paradox. “Advent does not begin in buoyancy or celebration or in a shopping spree. The natural habitat of Advent is a community of hurt. It is the voice of those who know profound grief, who articulate it and do not cover it over. But this community of hurt knows where to speak its grief, toward whom to address its pain….And because the hurt is expressed to the One whose rule is not in doubt, the community of hurt is profoundly a community of hope.”*

What Brueggemann describes is what I imagine as the Body of Christ. I would love to say that Church is both a community of hurt and a community of hope. But many of the churches I have attended and maybe many of your churches are not safe places for hurt. The Church is not always a place where I feel I can show up with all of my weaknesses and my sorrows. It often does good works for the weak and suffering in the broader community outside its walls, but we don’t often share our own hurt and failures. As a consequence, I see little expression of real hope and joy within.

And I know I/we have failed when absent church members say to me: “I’ll come back to church when I lose 20 pounds; I’ll come to church after my divorce; I’ll come to church when my son gets out of treatment; I’ll come to church when I get a job.” Their shame and their sorrow are too embarrassing to bring through the church door. Without their life all scrubbed and together they don’t want to come.

As someone who has had a lifelong relationship with Church, I think, “If we cannot bring our hurt and our brokenness into the nave, what business are we in? We live in a culture and a country of “brokenness avoidance.” It’s not okay to be less than perfect or at least on the way to perfection—even in church.

The one place people describe as both a community of hurt and a community of hope is the Twelve Step programs of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. The assumption when you walk in the door is that you hurt, that you are broken, that your life is unmanageable. You can no longer do life without a community or without a Higher Power. This is a community of brokenness. In sharing brokenness, there is laughter and prayer and healing. “In the rooms” people share their “experience, strength, and hope.” But they can only share those things because of their weakness. Their powerlessness and the unmanageability of their lives is the ticket into “the rooms.” Weakness and strength are both part of the package. First a community of hurt, then a community of hope. This is what Advent looks like.

Darkness and Light resized

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Walter Brueggemann, Advent /Christmas Proclamation 3: Aids for Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year, Series B (Philadlephia: Fortress, 1984), 9.

 

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Filed Under: Praying in Color Tagged With: AA, Advent, Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, Body of Christ, Paradox, Walter Brueggemann

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