Advent Is a Hopeful Season

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, the four weeks in the Christian season leading up to Christmas. In recent years this has become my favorite liturgical season, a time of sacred waiting and longing and anticipation. Not for Christmas, but for The Messiah, God-With-Us, the fulfillment of promises made to humankind that God is and will always be with and for us. Advent brings me hope, even at a very challenging time of year. 

I love the music of Advent and while many people are frustrated with too much to do and not enough shopping or baking or decorating days before Christmas, I am disappointed we only have four Sundays to sing some of these haunting melodies. They tug at my heart.

I find comfort in the readings, especially those beautiful poetic words from the prophet Isaiah. These readings are filled with promise but also with warnings, like in this past Sunday’s Gospel (Matt. 24:37-44), that we must stay awake, be alert, that God can come at any time.  “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. . . . So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

This warning is something I have been acutely aware of for seven years. You do not know when, in a heartbeat, your life will change forever.  These changes can bring great pain and sadness, but they can also lead to transformation if you are willing to allow God to work with you.  God comes to us through pain as well as through love and beauty; if we are awake and alert, God will always be ready to show us divine presence.

In my own life, transformation is an ongoing process; it comes in fits and starts, two steps forward, one step back.  If I focus on what I have lost, on what is missing in my life – which is a very easy trap to fall into – I become mired in sadness and hopelessness. Today while walking Charlie I thought about how my mind seizes on negative thoughts, gnaws on them until they consume me.  In dog training, when a puppy is chewing on something it shouldn’t, the command is usually “Leave it!”  I decided I might try that on myself: when my mind goes to those sad places and I don’t have time to process the thoughts using Byron Katie’s “Work,” I can tell myself to “leave it.” Then I distract my mind with something more positive: the fascinating clouds, the beautiful leaves, a flock of geese overhead.

Gratitude is a good way to distract myself. As I was raking up the huge quantities of leaves in my yard this morning and putting them into the yard debris bin, I thought about how nice it would be to have someone to help with this major fall task.  I tried to imagine what my life would be like now if John had not been killed. And I realized my life would be quite different, maybe better, but I don’t know that for sure. I thought about the new friends and experiences I’ve had these past seven years – including publishing a book this summer – that most likely would never have come into my life if John had not died. I thought about coming to know myself, finding courage and strength and a different kind of joy. Although there have been some losses, there have also been wonderful gifts in my life.

So I continue to live with hope – not expectation, which can bring disappointment – but hope. Next Sunday’s reading from Isaiah 11:1-10 is one of my very favorite scriptural citations:

On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom. . . .

Justice shall be the band around his waist,
and faithfulness a belt upon his hips.
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.

How can I not have hope when I have been promised that God is faithful? As Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes in his daily reflection: “In Jesus’ birth God was already saying that it was good to be human, and God was on our side, and on the side of all creation.”  If God is on our side, how can we not have joy?

Heroism Is Alive and Well

Yesterday’s White House ceremony awarding the prestigious Medal of Honor to Salvatore Giunta got me started thinking about heroes, people who go beyond the expected, who put their courage to the test and sometimes their life on the line to help others or make a difference in the world.  President Obama called him heroic, but also humble. “He'll tell you that he didn't do anything special, that he was just doing his job, that any of his brothers in the unit would do the same thing," Obama said. “He just lived up to what his team leader instructed him to do years before: ‘You do everything you can.’”  I think that’s a great definition of a courageous hero: just doing what needs to be done, facing down the odds, the threats, the fears and just going forward.

Our society often considers professional athletes our heroes. I think this dates back to ancient Celtic times when warring chieftains had personal champions. These warriors, highly trained and greatly esteemed, were sometimes called upon to engage in hand-to-hand combat against the champion of an opposing king or chieftain. This match was used as a substitute for pitched battle between two armies, with victory determining which side ultimately prevailed in the conflict. I think we in modern society view our Trail Blazers or our Mariners, our 49ers or our Ducks as the champions for our own little fiefdoms.  Believe me -- I have experienced the highs and lows that come with following a sports team. But unlike medieval times, which team wins or loses these sports battles is really inconsequential. And although these young athletes often work very hard to perfect their skills, sometimes overcoming difficult challenges, very few of them are true heroes. Most of them are motivated by the financial rewards, not altruism.

Most of us will never have the opportunity to save a life, or will never be asked to put our own lives in jeopardy by trying to save others, as did Staff Sergeant Giunta. Most of us will never have the combination of physical size and athletic ability to compete with Kobe Bryant or Peyton Manning.  But I believe we all have the opportunity to be heroic, to show courage and fortitude and strength of will in the face of challenges.

I’m thinking of friends I know who have been unemployed for many months, years even. My friend Michael, who finally found work after two years of searching, had to sell his house, live with friends, lost nearly everything. But he kept applying for work, taking the next step, when the temptation to just give up had to be overwhelming. I celebrate his heroism and his victory.

I’m thinking of friends who have faced or are facing incredible health challenges. My friend Marilyn recently spent a month in the hospital following very extensive surgery to remove a tumor. She has been such a source of inspiration and wisdom for so many people; reading the comments posted on her CaringBridge site confirmed how many lives she has touched. I know that throughout the daunting task of recovery and recreating her life she will continue to inspire and touch others by her great courage and strength of character. She and I visited yesterday for the first time since her surgery: she knows she has many challenges ahead but stated it is worth the fight to chose life. I am moved and inspired by her, and I know her battle will help give me strength for my own journey.

As an ironic aside, when I was researching the history of “heroes,” one source mentioned that mythological heroes often had “close but conflicted” relationships with the gods and were often tormented by them.  Marilyn has spent much of her career working in spirituality, giving retreats and classes. She is a living example of Teresa of Avila’s challenge to God: “If this is the way you treat your friends, it is no wonder you have so few.” I feel certain this will give Marilyn a good chuckle.

I think of my sister, a grade school principal, and the many other teachers I know. Most don’t literally put their lives at risk but many of them are incredibly dedicated and work long hours, often sacrificing other things, to encourage children to learn life skills that will help them become adults who can fulfill their own destinies and contribute to our world. I know sometimes it is a thankless task but they just keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking the next step, doing their jobs, doing what they can.

Here’s to my heroes: people who face down their fears and frustrations, who keep fighting when it seems hopeless, who choose life and are willing to do battle against all odds to defeat darkness and despair.  These are people who can’t always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but they have faith that it is there. Their courage and strength inspire me, and that’s what heroes do! 

Falling

Fall always feels like the last season of the year to me. Winter starts so late in December that the year is all but over by then.  We who live in the Pacific Northwest are preparing for the usual gray, drizzly, short days so when we get gifts like today (and tomorrow is supposed to be even nicer), we store them up like the squirrels are currently storing up walnuts.

This year the leaves seem much more striking than usual here. The reds and bronzes, crimsons and carmines, the golds and yellows dance in the sunlight and I gaze in awe at them. This blaze of beauty seems a bit of a paradox as the year is winding down towards its end. Another example of new life rising in spite of a world preparing for winter rest: with the fall rains the grass has returned to a rich, almost spring-like, emerald green.

As I was out walking Charlie this morning I pondered the amazing plan of creation that causes deciduous trees to go through such a gorgeous transformation just before they become bare, stark, exposed.  I wondered about this process in people: do we have an age of transition into elderhood during which a new kind of beauty shines out from us? There are some who say that human beings often become more beautiful as they age. I’m not so sure that’s true if we use the world’s definition of beauty to measure this process. But then, not as we see does God see.

Often gracefulness and a discernible presence of wisdom and kindness can shine through certain older people; a twinkle in the eye or some gleam of deep knowing that is its own kind of beauty. I think this comes as we begin to accept that we cannot control most of what happens in our lives, that we can only control how we respond to life. It comes as we stop worrying about how we look to others and start actually looking through loving eyes at all around us. We learn to let go of things, not take them so seriously, to stop judging and comparing. We learn to be thankful for the many gifts we have received and put aside our wish-lists and our expectations for more. We become less driven and more willing to be. Well, some of us do, anyway.  I think those are the gifts of beauty that can come to humans in the autumn of their lives.

This time of year is also traditionally the time that we in the Catholic tradition remember those who have died, who have touched our lives, made us better people. Many Spanish-speaking countries celebrate Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. The first time I was in Mexico I was appalled at all the skeleton-people I saw; little dolls or statues of skeletons dressed in all manner of garb: a garish yet joyful celebration of life after death. Perhaps their culture has it right and we have it wrong: bury the people we love and then try to forget about them. We don’t like to think about the possibility that the dead might still have a role to play in our lives.

Early this morning I was lying in bed, mostly asleep, when I heard a flock of Canada geese fly overhead, honking to encourage each other as they travel south for the winter. At the time I wasn’t thinking about this being All Souls Day, one of the “thin days” in the Irish/Celtic tradition, days in which the veil between this life and the afterlife becomes so thin it allows the dead to pass back into the land of the living.  I fell back asleep after hearing the geese and had a dream in which John came to be with me. He just held my hand to reassure me, to encourage me on my own journey. 

This dream brought me a great sense of comfort that no matter what happens in the autumn of my life, there is beauty to be found, grace and gifts abound. It’s all in the way I look at life and how much I am able to let go of how I look to others and what I am no longer able to do. I pray I will always have the strength to smile and laugh, to be grateful and joyful, compassionate and kind, and to know God finds me and all of us beautiful.