Preparing for Advent (Preparing to Wait)
So it's almost the season of Advent, a time when all goes still and the darkness of winter hangs in the stillness, and that stillness, I find, is inside of me, too. Right now the dark place is not a place of personal suffering, and for that I am grateful, but it is a place of being afraid of suffering, a cave where I am haunted by images of suffering, memories of grief, echoes of sorrow. Is that the dark place of waiting for light?
There's that grey space of interim shade, too, as the sun sets, when weak winter light seems to be sucked away into a void. Even lamps switched on seem to dim during that time, and the suddenness of darkness descends as a relief to me, because then light seems to shine brightly, pooling warmly around the house.
As I grow older and experience small bits of suffering, and as I am called to enter into the suffering of others, I find an unexpected sweetness there. But it is not a sweetness that I generally seek, nor would anyone in their right mind. What was it that my sister said the year we returned to Chicago after seven years in Kenya? Relax into the cold--stop tensing all your muscles, she told me as we stood outside, our breaths clouds in the sharp air. And so I did and for a moment I was warmer. But then I couldn't stand it any more. I gritted my teeth and shivered.
The closest I came to relaxing during physical discomfort was during the birth of Elspeth and Bea; the only way I could get through non-medicated labor pains was to set myself strongly and determindly on a pattern of breathing, holding my breath, chasing my mind away from the pain into happy memories. That pain was an advent pain; it must be lived through, it was an active, excrutiating waiting, but when the babies came, all bloody and smeared and shouting, I knew the waiting had been part of the joy.
I hate to wait. I like to shop Amazon Prime, I like to get my little treasures within two days. I hate to wait, but then I love to wait. Christmas morning is wonderful because of the waiting. As a sudden surprise, it would be lovely, I guess, but not so lovely as my anticipation and the hope of my children make it. I love to wait as something simmers slowly on the stove, all day, filling the house with its smell. I love to wait for a plant to grow from a seed. Waiting makes things miraculous. Waiting through pain makes you feel, when you are finally well, sharpened with gratitude; waiting for joy makes the joy so much more delicious and rare.
And of course Advent is the time when Great Joy entered the world. In the great joy there was already the seed of suffering to come, as it always seems to be in this world. I felt that sharp joy seeded with pain when my girls were born; in loving someone so much, I knew I would encounter pain. But the Great Joy is so great that it engulfed everything in singing, made the crooked places straight, flooded the dark with immense and transforming light.
I am not unhappy this Advent. Happinesses pour in from every window. But I am still anxious, and that anxiety, begun perhaps many months ago when our lives changed so dramatically and suddenly, is a tightly wound spring that may take some time to relax. Much of the time I deny its existence; much of the time I realize it is there and that at some point, I must turn to it, give it a good shake by its hand, give it a cup of tea, and then send it on its way. And what better time to share a hot cuppa with your Anxiety than at Advent? I am only one of all humanity that must do the same.
And so I will wait in the dim and dark places, and I will learn to wait there and not be afraid. And the great joy, which must always come though it sometimes arrives in disguise--and if I do not watch carefully enough, I may miss it or shrug it off as ordinary, though it is the greatest daily miracle of all--it will come. In the meanwhile I must discipline myself again, meet the darkness, and prepare for joy to come to my doorstep.
There's that grey space of interim shade, too, as the sun sets, when weak winter light seems to be sucked away into a void. Even lamps switched on seem to dim during that time, and the suddenness of darkness descends as a relief to me, because then light seems to shine brightly, pooling warmly around the house.
As I grow older and experience small bits of suffering, and as I am called to enter into the suffering of others, I find an unexpected sweetness there. But it is not a sweetness that I generally seek, nor would anyone in their right mind. What was it that my sister said the year we returned to Chicago after seven years in Kenya? Relax into the cold--stop tensing all your muscles, she told me as we stood outside, our breaths clouds in the sharp air. And so I did and for a moment I was warmer. But then I couldn't stand it any more. I gritted my teeth and shivered.
The closest I came to relaxing during physical discomfort was during the birth of Elspeth and Bea; the only way I could get through non-medicated labor pains was to set myself strongly and determindly on a pattern of breathing, holding my breath, chasing my mind away from the pain into happy memories. That pain was an advent pain; it must be lived through, it was an active, excrutiating waiting, but when the babies came, all bloody and smeared and shouting, I knew the waiting had been part of the joy.
I hate to wait. I like to shop Amazon Prime, I like to get my little treasures within two days. I hate to wait, but then I love to wait. Christmas morning is wonderful because of the waiting. As a sudden surprise, it would be lovely, I guess, but not so lovely as my anticipation and the hope of my children make it. I love to wait as something simmers slowly on the stove, all day, filling the house with its smell. I love to wait for a plant to grow from a seed. Waiting makes things miraculous. Waiting through pain makes you feel, when you are finally well, sharpened with gratitude; waiting for joy makes the joy so much more delicious and rare.
And of course Advent is the time when Great Joy entered the world. In the great joy there was already the seed of suffering to come, as it always seems to be in this world. I felt that sharp joy seeded with pain when my girls were born; in loving someone so much, I knew I would encounter pain. But the Great Joy is so great that it engulfed everything in singing, made the crooked places straight, flooded the dark with immense and transforming light.
I am not unhappy this Advent. Happinesses pour in from every window. But I am still anxious, and that anxiety, begun perhaps many months ago when our lives changed so dramatically and suddenly, is a tightly wound spring that may take some time to relax. Much of the time I deny its existence; much of the time I realize it is there and that at some point, I must turn to it, give it a good shake by its hand, give it a cup of tea, and then send it on its way. And what better time to share a hot cuppa with your Anxiety than at Advent? I am only one of all humanity that must do the same.
And so I will wait in the dim and dark places, and I will learn to wait there and not be afraid. And the great joy, which must always come though it sometimes arrives in disguise--and if I do not watch carefully enough, I may miss it or shrug it off as ordinary, though it is the greatest daily miracle of all--it will come. In the meanwhile I must discipline myself again, meet the darkness, and prepare for joy to come to my doorstep.
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Jill