"So who is adventing this Sunday?" asked one of my congregation members.
For a moment, I had to chuckle. Adventing? Like the season of Advent is now a verb? "So, what did you do today?" "Oh, I did a few errands and some adventing..."
Now before there is some confusion with a denomination, the Seventh Day Adventists, or something involving them, the question referred to who was the assigned readers for this Sunday's Advent Wreath ceremony. The four candles in the wreath represent four Sundays until Christmas and carry the title of hope, peace, joy, and love. The center candle is the Christ candle. Advent is a liturgical season of waiting, hoping, expecting. Less somber than the season of Lent (the season prior to Easter), but more serious than Common Time (a terrible title for the time between Pentecost Sunday and Christ the King Sunday), Advent is not just a time to remember the coming of Christ as a babe, but more importantly, the coming of Christ now and in the future.
The meaning of Advent is coming, arriving, or appearing. It is a forward leaning season, even as it turns backward towards Christ's earthly birth. It is best practiced as a season of anticipation. I know I have shared before my tradition of the traveling nativity figurines of the Butterick household. None of the pieces arrive at the same time. Joseph and Mary arrive on Christmas Eve Day. Baby Jesus arrives Christmas Eve evening. The wise men arrive at the nativity on January 6, the day of Epiphany.
Each Sunday is a moment to recognize what is coming, arriving, or appearing. In the darkest of nights, hope still arrives. In the midst of wars, fights, and troubles, peace still arrives. In the midst of sadness, joy still arrives. In the midst of hatred, love still arrives. Advent helps remind us that we have not arrived but are arriving. We are journeying along the paths of becoming, arriving, or appearing.
Beyond Advent Sundays, we may recognize other moments and occasions of coming, arriving, or appearing. Two people coming together into a relationship. Arriving at a new place. Appearing in an unexpected role or accomplishment. Life can easily been seen as an extended train of coming, arriving, or appearing.
So perhaps my congregation member was not incorrect in "adventing" this season. Maybe it is good to think of this time not as a moment to be still (although rest is just as important as action) but rather a time of coming, arriving and appearing. I think we all could call it "adventing."
May your "adventing" season be blessed with moments of coming, arriving, and appearing.
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Friday, December 7, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Home Again?
Recently, I returned to Christian Theological Seminary for a public seminar. While a majority of my wife's family reside in the Indianapolis metropolitan area, it had been more than a year or two since I had walked down the grey stone hallways decorated with modern art and sculpture, peered up to the bells in Sweeney Chapel, admired the looming pipes of the Holtkamp organ, or gathered in the Shelton auditorium. In many ways, it appeared unchanged. In other ways, everything had changed.
I suppose it is what to be expected. Time is a relentless scorekeeper. For four years, this spiritual center had been a weekly experience of challenge, comfort, and community. Those years have long been sealed by time. Each experience is now some form of memory. With the years between, unexpected changes have intervened in my life, and I am not exactly the same person I was when I was last striding across the stage of Shelton Auditorium to receive my MDiv degree.
The same is true when it comes to my first college experiences at Millikin University. Construction has certainly intervened to physically change the appearance of campus and even department locations. Where my car nearly always parked is now where the Leighty-Tabor Science Center now stands. With the current capital campaign, the Richards-Treat University Center, like Mueller Hall and the homes on West William Street, will be just a memory in my Millikin memories. I can stand in Staley Library, sit at my favorite study table, and yet marvel at the road my first alma mater and one of her son's has traveled since we met in the recent past.
Perhaps your childhood home is no longer where your parents live. Driving by it today, it seems like a distant part of your story. Or a favorite park, or store, or a popular festival or event. Traveling home again, you realize that home is not exactly what it used to be. Like a stage play, the scenery is changed for the next chapter, the next scene. Each moment is never fully captured, but slips often too quickly from our grasp and control. No amount of money or education can make time stop. It moves, irregardless of wealth or poverty, doctorates or drop-outs. While it is easy to form judgments, whether some place was "good" or some event "bad", time seems to allow each to happen in its own time and its own place.
I used to chuckle when I heard the phrase, "You can't go home again." Naively I believed time is a bit slower in the midwest. Now I believe it runs the same speed, but its consequences may be slower to comprehend fully. On some level, yes I can go back to 248 E Franklin. The physical location has not changed. But my relationship between my childhood room and my adult life has changed.
The same is true about high school, college, and graduate school. Each is still physically in the same location as they were when my life traveled with them. But each now has a different relationship to my life now than then. Some educators, some instructors, some professors have moved away. Some still remain, a spot of familiarity in a place that has become less familiar.
These places in our lives, our career paths, our experiences, remain with us. Each is in some way a loving parent, each has given us some part of our current life. But like our parents, they also change, and our relationship to them evolves. We will always be children of the institutions who were formative in who we have become. Yet we cannot remain children forever. Home again? Yes and no. As a stepping stone, yes. As an unchanging shelter, probably not.
I suppose it is what to be expected. Time is a relentless scorekeeper. For four years, this spiritual center had been a weekly experience of challenge, comfort, and community. Those years have long been sealed by time. Each experience is now some form of memory. With the years between, unexpected changes have intervened in my life, and I am not exactly the same person I was when I was last striding across the stage of Shelton Auditorium to receive my MDiv degree.
The same is true when it comes to my first college experiences at Millikin University. Construction has certainly intervened to physically change the appearance of campus and even department locations. Where my car nearly always parked is now where the Leighty-Tabor Science Center now stands. With the current capital campaign, the Richards-Treat University Center, like Mueller Hall and the homes on West William Street, will be just a memory in my Millikin memories. I can stand in Staley Library, sit at my favorite study table, and yet marvel at the road my first alma mater and one of her son's has traveled since we met in the recent past.
Perhaps your childhood home is no longer where your parents live. Driving by it today, it seems like a distant part of your story. Or a favorite park, or store, or a popular festival or event. Traveling home again, you realize that home is not exactly what it used to be. Like a stage play, the scenery is changed for the next chapter, the next scene. Each moment is never fully captured, but slips often too quickly from our grasp and control. No amount of money or education can make time stop. It moves, irregardless of wealth or poverty, doctorates or drop-outs. While it is easy to form judgments, whether some place was "good" or some event "bad", time seems to allow each to happen in its own time and its own place.
I used to chuckle when I heard the phrase, "You can't go home again." Naively I believed time is a bit slower in the midwest. Now I believe it runs the same speed, but its consequences may be slower to comprehend fully. On some level, yes I can go back to 248 E Franklin. The physical location has not changed. But my relationship between my childhood room and my adult life has changed.
The same is true about high school, college, and graduate school. Each is still physically in the same location as they were when my life traveled with them. But each now has a different relationship to my life now than then. Some educators, some instructors, some professors have moved away. Some still remain, a spot of familiarity in a place that has become less familiar.
These places in our lives, our career paths, our experiences, remain with us. Each is in some way a loving parent, each has given us some part of our current life. But like our parents, they also change, and our relationship to them evolves. We will always be children of the institutions who were formative in who we have become. Yet we cannot remain children forever. Home again? Yes and no. As a stepping stone, yes. As an unchanging shelter, probably not.
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