Rebecca Blair, Ph.D
Stated Clerk
We have been waiting too long.
Waiting in socially-distanced exile with little patience for the day’s manna. Waiting in a weary wilderness not of our own choosing, our harps unstrung and dusty where they have been hanging since March by the rivers of Babylon. We have been waiting for too long, yet here is Advent, one of those holy moments in the liturgical year when we are called to actively wait, called to inwardly reflect, called to hold the darkness close.
Sometime after the 6th century A.D. the Church designated the four Sundays before Christmas as Advent, a Winter Lent of fasting and penitent expectation, communal discernment, and personal examination, an echo of Israel’s deep yearning for the promised Messiah and then the fulfillment of that promise in the parousia, that Greek word that points both to the Incarnation and Second Coming, reminding us that we wait for One who has already come.
Over the first three weeks, Advent scriptures pulse with insistent urging to be watchful, to turn, to prepare, yet watchful energy draws us not to frenetic activity but to meaningful being, being for its own sake surrounded by nature, immersed in scripture or poetry, rapt in prayer or meditation. Advent invites us to rediscover that waiting brings rich rewards—waiting for loved ones to visit, for the birth of a grandchild, for peace in our world or reconciliation of conflict, for God’s presence, God’s peace, God’s realm.
And in this numinous stillness, this pregnant pause, we wait for something we need but do not have, someone we love but have not seen, something for which we hope amid this nine-month recess in which we have been perplexed by the unexpected, troubled by persistent suffering and injustice, and saddened by the absence of goodness or meaning. Yet, perhaps the God of abundance surprises us this Advent with the essential realization that less is more. Perhaps, as Richard Rohr affirms, what decreases in a culture of busyness and abundance is “precisely and strangely time—along with wisdom and friendship.” These are the very things that the human heart was created for, that give our hearts life. So perhaps we might use the gift of time during this strange but wonderful Advent season to literally recollect—our hearts, our wisdom, our relationships, our common humanity, and God’s presence in our midst. May it be so!
