____________Collect, I Advent_
Let
us
cast
away
the
works
of darkness
+ put on the armor of light
_______________________________________________
From Advent until Epiphany. the 12th Day of Christmas, which is on January 6 when the Wise Men arrive at Bethlehem I am going to post the daily the meditations on averse from Scripture from the Episcopal lectionary written for more than a decade now each Advent and Lent by the parishioners of St David's San Diego. (For non-Episcopalians, a + after a name connotes a person who is either a deacon or a priest who is in one way or another a part to St David's. ...if we had a bishop on board ,that +would trantionally appear before the name...)
The phrase with my whole heart was really appealing, my heart, my along with my attention and focus having been distracted for months now. With the pandemic and its economic and social disruption to our routines, rituals. milestones and celebrations; the election, and now the post- election; to say that life has been scattered and fragmented is an understatement.Time itself is no longer predictable - it stands stock still and then rushes forward and all of a sudden, it’s next month! It’s stultifying and confusing. Blessedly, I don’t seem to be alone in this.
As I began to really consider the psalm, and me, and Advent, my heart whispered that this is only half the verse; the whole of it says “I will give thanks with my whole heart in the assembly of the upright, in the congregation.” And that’s the challenge here: how to gather our whole heart when we are not physically present together to cerebrate Advent, Christmas and Epiphany?
How do we do this? How do we “green the church” alone? I think we begin - I begin - by remembering that we are not separate: even if we live alone we are One, as Jocelynn prays so comfortingly each week, “whenever and however we gather.” And so I begin the journey just as Mary and Joseph did. Both were confronted -well, visited at least - by an angel and each, individually, needed to commit to the heretofore unimaginable. Both individually said yes, which was followed up by teach of them “ taking their own next step, and then next and the next. None of us know ahead of time what comes next, so we need to pay attention. Mary and Joseph did not know they would be traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and so late in her pregnancy! They went not by choice but by political necessity. So it is with us: Intellectual assent is never enough. So much for expectations, for comfort and certainty!
The same is true for the One we follow, Jesus, our Lord and our brother. For him the journey of saving us from the mess we’d gotten ourselves into began with conception! Consider for just a moment the sheer audacity of it - God the maker “all that is - seen and unseen,” taking human flesh, becoming. choosing to be, one with us - not separate, not safe, not shielded, but one of us; He’d never been in human flesh - he who divided day from night, summer and winter, had never been cold and wet and hungry. Talk about uncharted territory!
So this particular, peculiar Advent, we join the Holy Family-to-be, our albeit tiny congregation, our cohort, and set out on the journey of a lifetime. With our whole heart.
- Louise Buck
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