Waiting for Light in the Time of Darkness

Today marks the first Sunday of Advent in the Christian tradition. Advent is a season all to itself, and Advent - the season - is actually longer than the Christian season of Christmas. As you and I know, television and radio and newspaper advertisements would have us think that Christmas - or Hannukah (a festival of light, like Christmas) has already arrived. Every year the seasonal colors are driven into our awareness earlier and earlier, it seems. This year I know I saw Christmas ads before Halloween.

Back to Advent. Advent means: waiting. Advent is the season when we wait for the Light to arrive in the Time of Darkness. People of all places and all ages have known that the cycle of the year leads to a time of darkness. And it is precisely at the moment of deepest darkness that the Light arrives. In Advent we mark this passage of the year into the time of deepest darkness, when our experience and our memory and our lives serve to remind us that the Light does, indeed, come.

Many years ago during Advent, I spent a week on a silent retreat at a monastic community in Big Sur, California. Every morning I worshipped - in the darkness of the morning - with the monks. The worship was sombre. The setting for Advent that year changed my perception of Advent forever.

In our lives, we experience many, many Advents. Advent is the time when we are uncertain about the future: when will this time of difficulty, of emotional turmoil end? When will my prayers be answered? When will there be peace? When will I know peace, so that I can become a movement of peace in the world?

Sometimes Advent is a time of longing. Such was the longing of the people of Jesus' time, who had waited generations for someone to come to save them from being political and social outcasts, oppressed people. Such is our longing when our wishes are unfulfilled, when life falls apart and we don't know how to put it back together again. Advent is a time of longing, a time of hopeful longing.

May you wait - silently and hopefully - for the Light to arrive in those dark places in your life.
Warmly,
meb