Advent is a time of preparation, but not a time of frantic busyness. Advent is a season of waiting, but not of passivity. Advent is suffused with silence and stillness and peace, and somehow also urgency. Advent is not about what may come in time, but about this place and this time.
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Inaction is my vice, and so Advent is a time of great temptation. I can too easily give in to the siren song of the couch as a place to disappear from life entirely. Unread E-Mails are my constant companions, even and perhaps especially when I am too tired to sleep. There is no peace to be found in withdrawing from the world. Advent is not a season of avoidance.
We can be so high-minded in our indifference to the world, as we engage in the spiritual bypassing of rising above the fray of politics and engagement with the suffering that is everywhere. It is easy to laud ourselves for our superiority to those who are mired in such lousy muck as everyday existence. We mistake ourselves for isolated spiritual creatures whose salvation is secured by some private selection by God as chosen over others. There is no hope to be found in being cut off from the rest of humanity. Advent is not a season of smugness.
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In the world of psychotherapy, we talk about “readiness for change”. We often find ourselves in places in life where we are experiencing significant distress or difficulty, but are not yet even aware that there is a problem. If we are aware that something is wrong, we may not be prepared for what it would actually be like for it to be different, we may not be able to imagine things being otherwise, and we are almost always not prepared to go out and experience the disturbance and disruption of making things be different.
Most of us have something in our lives that we know could, and maybe even should, be otherwise. There are changes we are not ready to make. There are bad habits we are not prepared to let go of. There are good habits that sound daunting. We fear that we will fail in making change. In truth, we fear that we will succeed. If things get better, what then might get worse. Most of our maladies are our best effort at managing something unmanageable. We may find that on the other side of anxiety, which has taught us how to be small, there is anger that we do not know how to experience, let alone express.
Indeed, no change occurs in isolation. If we have lived a lifetime trying to please others, we will find that life might be more satisfying as we learn to state our needs and even to assert ourselves. We might also discover that the people around us are all accustomed to our being pushovers. Even if we are ready for change, we may not be ready for all that comes afterwards, and our environment may be equally unprepared.
We know all of this intuitively, and so however miserable the current way of doing things may be, we would rather blunder onwards, at least for a little while longer, until we are more ready.
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My preferred way to become more ready for change is to become more and more aware of frustration. There are actually things that are intolerable about the situation as it is, and although we are accustomed to them, we are also sick of them. How much longer can we really go on letting the same ridiculous things play out again and again? Is it bad enough yet to be worth trying something else? Do we really want to give up without trying?
Frustration is a gift, it spurs development. The child who is sick of waiting to be fed will learn to communicate their needs, and then to find ways to meet them more directly. You will learn to walk, to explore, to problem-solve, and to cook if that is what it will take to sate your hunger.
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There are things that are calling to us which are unmistakable signs from God. There are things nagging at our conscience and urging us to act. There are things in the news that demand urgent intervention at all costs. There are grievances it is time to let go of. There is grace to accept.
We try to live by denial and by false spiritual superiority and by retreating to the things that are comfortable, but the itching does not go away, the hunger only grows, and there are deep irritations and frustrations that demand a change. This is the work of Advent.
To be clear, this isn’t about needing to wallow in misery. If anything, most of us probably do too much of that. You don’t need to beat yourself up. There are, though, calls you have put off answering, alarms you have tried to snooze for years. It isn’t working.
I do not know what it is for you, but I suspect that you have some idea. For us collectively, at the scale of the whole world it is almost too easy and too heartbreaking to even begin to name all that we must urgently attend to. Every day there is devastation in the news. It seems impossible.
There are, however, things we can do close to home. Some of us may well be called to find ways to gum up the workings of the systems that destroy, terrorize, and oppress around the world, but for most of us there is other work to do closer to home, too.
I have not yet set foot at Phoenix Landing, even though I suspect that in deepening bonds with the Chuan Society, I would find not more work, but the challenging nourishment of relationship.
I do not get involved in speaking out proactively about several urgent local issues, but I mutter about how someone really ought to at every chance I get. It would be less effort to just speak.
I often do not ensure that I begin and end the work I do with the Church with prayer. I find myself trapped in the bonds of scarcity, and then trying to give from a place of debt. I know that I could structure my time more intentionally and treat prayer as the important act I know it to be.
I am not honest with myself about my limitations. I do too much and too little.
I am waiting to make those changes until it becomes unbearable to do otherwise. I am courting disaster and inviting a crisis. This is what it is like to be a person.
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Advent is an invitation to stop waiting. If we are depleted, then we must rest, urgently. If we are bored and restless, then we must act, just as urgently. Now is the time to stop holding ourselves back from the spiritual practices and the moral actions that we know we have put off too long. We do not know how long we have, and the right moment may never come. We have now.
May your soul speak to you in silence. May you hear God in your waiting. May you make ready the place that you know that you will need. May an urgent peace be yours.