Harbor Blog Guest Post by Lisa Wells, Family Ministries Pastor
I adore everything about the Christmas season. The chill in the air, the anticipation of giving a great gift, the scent of baking cookies and the twinkle of Christmas tree lights. Oh, and I almost forgot: the bickering of siblings, the guilt of over-spending and over-eating, the dread of a to-do list longer than Santa’s twice-checked gift list. Okay, so maybe I don’t love EVERYTHING about Christmas. Those last items I could do without. Yet every year, they accompany our celebrations — like a tone-deaf singer in a Christmas carol concert, the stress and sadness and just plain old sin my family experiences during the holidays sours my hopes for the season and serves as a disheartening reminder that, while Christ has come, the Wells family has not yet fully received Him as King. Why am I always surprised by how far the curse is found? By how my brokenness and my family’s brokenness can and does intrude on the simplest of situations and the most beautiful of celebrations? Why do I still long for a Hallmark movie life?
A friend stopped by our house last year during early December and admired our home’s festive appeal — touches of red and green and sparkly things adorned each room like thoughtfully chosen jewelry. She was complimentary and yet commented in surprise that, while our home looked a lot like Christmas, it didn’t look much like Advent. I asked her what she meant and she began to describe something that felt like an invitation to another world — starkly different, but both wonder and beauty-full. She said that in her home, Advent, observed during the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, was marked by pre-dawn rising to darkness, a chilly walk to and from morning mass, recitation of Scripture and written prayers, maintaining a modest and dimly lit house, and quiet. Lots and lots of quiet. Her kind of Christmas observance isn’t featured on Pinterest. And yet it called to me more strongly than any festive recipe or kitschy sweater ever could. So I decided, along with my husband, to help my family experience a different kind of Advent last year, punctuated by one little habit of intentional discomfort that did more to direct our gaze to the Christ child than any other singular tradition we’ve ever embraced. Very simply, we rose 20 minutes before our usual wake time every weekday, padded sleepily downstairs in stocking feet, being careful not to turn on any bright lights or make much sound, wrapped ourselves in blankets near the propane stove, and sat quietly in the subtle glow of only the fire and the Christmas tree, silent together for a few moments before reading passages of Scripture and common prayer outlined in the Divine Hours prayer book which follows the church calendar (daily Scripture readings can be found here). Each reading was begun and ended in silence, and each word was a testament to pre-coffee concentration wrestled from our fuzzy morning minds and mouths. But it was perhaps the most magical Christmas experience I’ve ever witnessed and certainly the most incredible worship we’ve ever engaged in as a family. That is not to say it was all fairy dust and rainbows, however. Many mornings we had to force ourselves out from under toasty covers, hush complaints from tired kids, ignore the grumble of hungry tummies, and push through the sighs of resistance to this new, strangely understated practice nestled smack dab in the middle of the season of indulgence. But it was worth every ounce of determination we showed. Ever so slightly, it changed us.
One of the more profound ways it did that for me is by returning my focus to my actual life, which is not at all the fantasy holiday highlight reel I’ve been playing on repeat in my head every Christmas since I can remember. My actual body is often sluggish, my actual desires self-serving. My actual kids are sometimes grumpy and inconsiderate and my actual spouse and I frequently miss the mark of self-giving love. But these things merely accompanied our worship, they did not prevent it. Beginning our day with worship together, effort-full though it may have been some days, drained the tiniest bit of excess out of our expectations of the season and of one another. And this benefit holds true whether worshiping with kids or roommates or spouse or solo. Another gift of this practice is it’s study in contrasts: darkness and light, silence and sound. It stands as a simple reminder that Christmas includes both of these conflicting influences and regular life does, too. The Savior who was born into a troubling political climate and whose birth center smelled of manure does not promise a frustration-free life and may even characterize my constant pining for one as idolatry. The tension in my heart every Advent (every day!) comes from my adoption of a cultural creed directing me that satisfaction is found in consumption and the comfortable. The Jesus whose birth we laud each Christmas knows better.
Embracing dark and quiet in a season of garish sensory overload is subversive and, dare I say, just what the typical North American Christmas is missing. But I fear sharing these reflections in a way that makes them sound like some sort of prescription for solving all our holiday woes. That would be a horrible mistake. Practicing early morning Jesus-worship during Advent is a way of proclaiming that woes are a part of the holidays, maybe even, in fact, the unseemly crunchy coating under which can be discovered the sweet core of Christmas joy. Acknowledging the ache that we are not yet what we were meant to be, are not yet whole, frees us to locate our worthiness of love outside of our own quest for perfection and inside the perfect love spelled out in the incarnation. Yup, we’re a mess most days and yet God came to be with us anyway. Advent can be a time to reclaim and reenact that belief by showing up, all disheveled and dazed in morning fog, to the quietest banquet of goodness we didn’t know we needed. I hope that sounds like a summons to a beauty and wonder-filled world, and that this year, you accept the invitation.