Hermenuetics

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November 28, 2011

Advent: Putting the Brakes on Christmas Insanity

The season of waiting reminds me that this world is not my home.

Sally Breedlove, guest blogger

Connecticut, Boston, San Jose, three trips to the Carolina mountains, Alabama, Calgary. The past six months have brought too much travel—too many planes, too many strange beds, too much of fishing clothes out of a suitcase, too many nights without my husband. I wake up in unfamiliar places and I long for the way the sun rises over the oaks in my own front yard, for the feel of my favorite mug in my hands as I enjoy that first taste of morning coffee. A North Carolina potter made the cup, and its earthy reddish tones remind me of the red clay dirt of Alabama where I grew up.

North Carolina and Alabama: the two places my soul most calls home.

By Advent, I will be home. Observing Advent, the four weeks of the Christian calendar preceding Christmas, has become part of the way I walk out my faith. I love the slowing down it calls me to, the learning to long for the coming of the Messiah as the Jewish people did for centuries. I need to be reminded that Jesus will come again, that this world won’t go on as it is forever. I love the brakes Advent puts on December, so Christmas isn’t a mounting fury of activity, food, and spending. Instead, this time becomes anticipation and growing spaciousness.

Advent and home are good for my soul. But I know full well that as I settle in and prepare for the arrival of family, and for a family wedding that is already brimming with gladness, my yearning for home will not be assuaged.

I will get out decorations that I have enjoyed, and then repacked, for almost 40 years. Some are older than I: a paper angel from my mother, some strangely appealing gold-sprayed-plastic-stars, and a carved wooden Swiss music box from my grandmother. Every year as I unwrap them I am reminded again. As a child I belonged to a place and to people where someone else was the “real adult.” In those moments the ache surfaces for something beyond 704 Greenwood Road, a place where someone older than I am makes the home and I simply enter in and receive.

So it’s not just about the travel. Or the places we have lived or the places we have left. This desire for home persists, regardless of geography. Advent provokes us to submit to the out-of-jointness of our souls. We are meant to ache for what is still missing. We are meant to lean into the darkening of winter toward the Light that will rise in the east.

The young family in the Advent story speaks of places that are not home and of waiting: a girl on a donkey, heading away from family just a few weeks before her baby is due. She will have no familiar faces to look into, no mother’s or sister’s hands to hold as the pain of labor drags her into its fury. No familiar room to labor in. No room at all really, just space shared with animals. I am sure she missed home.

That displacement doesn’t end once the baby arrives. The labor room of a cave-barn and then the borrowed house in Bethlehem lead not to home but to exile in Egypt before the family returns to Nazareth. Even when they return, they will live with unsettled hearts. They have a prophetic word: This child will bring both joy and sorrow. A sword will pierce Mary’s heart. Nazareth will not be home enough. Their lives have been disrupted—for good.

Mary’s child will also know the pain of not belonging. As he grows up, he speaks often of the Father who sent him, the Father to whom he will return. He asks his Father to bring those whom he loves to be with him in the house they share. He promises his friends that one day they will have a home with him and his Father. But not yet.

I need the reminder that for the rest of this life I have a choice: try to make this world enough, or receive the unsettledness of my heart as a gift. If I don’t yearn for more, I will miss the One who both entered time and lives beyond it. It is hard to learn patience. But good waiting clears the air; it helps me find out what I really, really desire. When I learn to wait for the truest things, endurance moves past a grit-my-teeth trial to hope and strength. Year by year I have the opportunity to live into Advent. If I listen, I will hear the truth: I’m part of the exile, a woman heading home. Advent coaches me to wish for, to long, and finally to expect and even glimpse what lies ahead.

Sally Breedlove lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she works alongside her husband and closest friend Steve, the rector of All Saints Church. She is the author of Choosing Rest and one of the authors of The Shame Exchange. In 2007, she and a friend developed a monthly small group spiritual companioning ministry called JourneyMates, which now has chapters meeting in five communities. Her life overflows with five children and their spouses, eight grandchildren, and a home that serves often as a guest house for friends, extended family and ministry partners. Her work as a spiritual director gives space and rhythm to her soul; and gardening, arranging flowers, long walks, and writing poetry add peace to her days.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty on November 28, 2011 11:22 AM

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