O sacred Lord of ancient Israel,
who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush,
who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain:
Come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free.
– Kathleen Norris, God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas
Christmas Bells
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Brown leaves are everywhere like an ugly, soggy blanket, and I want snow so badly I ache.
I want to be tucked in beneath that still, beautiful whiteness. I want to sleep on and on and forget how ugly this world is. How broken.
I pray for snow, and I tell God I don’t want to live in this world anymore. I don’t want to wake up day after day in a world where children die such violent deaths (whether it’s one young man with a gun or a government with a bomb). Enough.
I tell God how screwed up everything is, and I’m not praying to an infant in a manger, I’m praying to one whose “… eyes were like blazing fire … [whose] feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and [whose] voice was like the sound of rushing waters” (Revelation 1:14-15).
Snow refuses to fall, the world stays stubbornly brown, and I begin to wonder what that voice like rushing water is saying.
I can speak so quickly, so effortlessly of hope and heaven. Of no more tears and all made right.
I am quick to talk but oh, so slow to listen.
What message blazes in the eyes of the one who kicked over those tables at the temple?
I want to sing of snow and silent nights, but I’ve been walking this Advent road, and I can’t easily forget that Mary sang of justice not silence.
Could it be that I am not grieved enough? Could it be that I am not angry enough?
Because, looking at him, I know what love looks like: giving small children the welcome of my arms and kicking those tables with fire in my eyes.
But this is no Jesus with guns blazing, like a video-game hero out for revenge. That’s the world’s way. The old way. What I see in his fiery eyes is a peacemaker’s fire. A turn-the-other-cheek fire. A fire that brings food to the hungry. A fire that will not let the world forget what children suffer.
This is a radically upside down kind of love. It lays down its rights (to safety, to comfort, to not be inconvenienced) in order to care for the weakest, the smallest, the most despised.
I no longer want the oblivion of snow.
I want a torch. I want a bonfire. I want to shine the light of The Ancient of Days into every despicable, dark corner until, yes, I’ll say it, until all is made right.
Today, Amy Lepine Peterson returns the favor and shares these powerful reflections with us. There is so much wisdom here, I’m taking my time, reading and rereading. These are words I know I need right now.
Thank you, Amy.
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Advent is a season of darkness, of waiting for the light; but I’m warier of darkness than I used to be.
When I was a teenager, I revelled in darkness. I don’t mean that I loved bad things. I loved complicated things, facing the realities of our broken world, anything that seemed deeper and truer than the sparkly cliches I found on tv and in commercial christian products. My teens were when I read Thomas Hardy and Pascal and Kierkegaard, when intellectual doubts were hitting me for the first time, when I first traveled to a third world country and recognized the excess of my own lifestyle. I was in my teens when Dad took me to see Good Will Hunting – despite the language – because of the redemptive themes, and I too wanted to recognize truth like a troubled genius or a holy rebel. I needed a faith that was honest about darkness.
Becoming a mother was what changed me. I first noticed it when I was pregnant with Rosemary. Jack and I started to watch The Road one night- a film based on Cormac McCarthy’s post- apocalyptic vision of a father and son traveling across a barren earth. Though the movie had been hailed as important, haunting, and powerful, and though its bleak, true-eyed vision was something I would have loved in my late teens, I couldn’t make it through even the first half of the film. As a parent, it was too harrowing to watch, and I wanted to sleep instead.
Once your own children enter the picture, the reality of darkness in the world easily becomes overwhelming, your potential for distress growing exponentially with each child you bear.
To be honest, I don’t want to talk here about what happened in Connecticut last week. I can hardly bear to acknowledge that it exists or to read the names of the children who died. I haven’t read a single news story about it all the way through, and I haven’t watched even one news clip, not just because I’m generally suspicious of the reliability and motives of the press, but also because I can’t manage, emotionally, to let myself imagine how those parents feel.
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Tonight before bed, I read to my almost-4-year-old from the Jesus Storybook Bible. We read this, based on Acts 1:
Jesus’ friends and helpers huddled together in a stuffy upstairs room. Even though it was sunny outside, the shutters were closed. The door was locked.
“Wait in Jerusalem,” Jesus had told them, “I am going to send you a special present. God’s power is going to come into you. God’s Holy Spirit is coming.”
So here they were. Waiting. Actually, mostly what they were doing was just being scared and hiding. (You can’t blame them — their best friend had left; the Important People and Leaders were after them; and Jesus had given them a job they didn’t know how to do.)
As they waited, they were praying and remembering — remembering how, from the beginning, God had been working out his Secret Rescue Plan.
I wondered as I read: how much of what I do is just “being scared and hiding,” waiting, in this long Advent season, for the Secret Rescue Plan to be completed, hoping I make it through unscathed? Although for me, unlike for the disciples, the Holy Spirit has already come, already made my heart burn within me, I still cower in fear when faced with the realities of a world in need of resurrection. I know about this Secret Rescue Plan, and I’ve been assured of its success. The Prince of Darkness grim? – one little word shall fell him. I ought not to tremble.
And yet my fear is legitimate; after last week, there’s no denying that even our safest places are vulnerable, that the “control” I think I have over my life is illusory.
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So how do I, with my tender mother-heart, open up again to face the realities of a complex world, where the End is certain, but in the meantime, the ways can be inscrutable? How can I embrace the spirit of love, rather than the spirit of fear? How can I trust God enough to face the suffering of the world – and the potential of suffering for my own little ones – with clear eyes and an open heart?
I know that I need to face the darkness head on and ready to fight. Taking comfort in shiny happy cliches and ignoring reality may feel good for a season, but ultimately helps no one, ultimately turns me into one of the shallow “phonies” that Holden Caufield and I used to despise.
Leaning into the meaning of Advent means remembering that our hearts have to be split in order to open wider. And leaning into the meaning of Advent means believing that because a baby was born, there is a promise that if we lean into the suffering of the world instead of protecting against it, we find love. This is a long wait, but we’re not waiting alone.
I don’t have to watch The Road. But I think I do have to watch Half the Sky. I have to begin by being willing to see the brokenness of the world, and then I have to be ready to fight against the darkness. I have to combat the urge to construct a “safe” life. I have to be willing to acknowledge the brokenness of the world, not just intellectually, but emotionally, if I’m going to be able to help usher a new and better kingdom in.
We wait, this long Advent, for that kingdom to arrive, but we must wait with honest eyes and willing hands, practicing resurrection in the dark.
Amy Lepine Peterson teaches ESL Writing and American Pop Culture at Taylor University, and spends most of her time making a home for her best-friend-husband and their two (frankly adorable) children. You can find her in the cornfields of Indiana, or online at Making All Things New.
I met Amy at The Festival of Faith and Writing in Michigan last spring. During a five minute chat, we discovered we’d attended the same college, attended the same college-town church, majored in English lit., and had recently found ourselves at home in episcopal churches. Needless to say, we kept in touch.
I’m delighted to share this advent story at Amy’s place today:
I know that Advent should include repentance. In fact, repentance is supposed to be an integral part of any advent observance. The idea, I think, is that we must prepare ourselves to receive Christ.
I’ve mostly avoided thinking about it.
I far prefer to meditate on ideas like wonder or anticipation.
If I think much about sin at all it’s to imagine the sin out there. For instance, the dark injustice of human trafficking or the world orphan crisis.
I’d rather not confront the darkness in my own heart.
Until the parents of twenty first-graders walked into a nightmare.
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You can read the rest of the story here. While you’re there, check out Amy’s own beautiful advent series. Like me, she’s posting every day this season.
I reserve Mondays for poetry, but, truthfully, I keep opening books and closing them again. The loss of so many children and their teachers is too heavy, and I have no poem for you today.
My head is bursting with words I want to share: words of anger, words of lament. But I think it better to follow the example of Job’s companions: “they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was” (Job 2:13).
Instead of writing, I’ve been listening. Mostly to this song. It asks a question I can’t get out of my head: is love alive? Some part of my mind is sure of the answer, but most of me is anything but sure.
We are approaching the longest night of the year. We’ve known it was coming, but we didn’t know how dark it would be.
The pace of advent requires that we walk through the darkness. There can be no Christmas without this long, long night. For me, it means sitting with my questions and my tears, without reaching for answers too soon.