a little light on my own particular advent.

"Hope begins in the dark"

Anne Lamott

There are word vultures among you, and I am one of them.  We circle around words and pick at their bones for scraps of meat and we’re not too choosy about how long they've been lying around.  We cackle over obscure puns and get into flaps over grammar and chew etymologies down to the last et. For example, the lovely word advent: ad (to, as in toward) + ventus (coming) = coming to.  There’s a very strong chance that you already knew that; I mention it not to instruct, but because it’s funny. And it’s funny because in coming to the word that means “something’s coming”, I was late.

I came of age on the East side of Texas, in churches that steered a careful course around Latin and anything else that had come from Rome.  Narthex, vestment, advent, candles- these were things that smacked of Catholicism, and Catholicism was a dangerous thing to smack of. In fact if the lights went out in the basement fellowship hall of First Baptist Church, Anywhere, Texas and there was the sound of smacking, it had just better not be a Catholic. Or a Methodist. Or a Secular New Age Humanist (but what with the dark , and all that smacking, who could have told the difference?) All things advent belonged to the misguided heathen; we maintained the Godly, Christ-centered traditions of the holiday: Christmas trees, sugar, and Santa.  And any earnest academic who tried to explain the pagan origins of those traditions had reason to wonder whether a sharpened sprig of holly might be placed, with careful Christian love, between his third and fourth ribs before morning.

And then I grew older, and then I grew up. And then one night, at the beginning of a church business meeting, someone lit a candle. The candle burned steady as the meeting nearly (but not quite) became the sort of thing where noisy attempts are made to prove who has more of what no one can measure- the ability to discern the needs of the future, insight into the will of God- nearly, but not quite devolved into the discus throw event in the Spiritual Mini-Olympics, Weeknight Edition.  But the candle kept us focused.

Because that’s what candles do. A candle illuminates the things that deserve close attention and casts into shadow all those things that deserve lots and lots of not very much attention at all.  A candle directs your focus toward the kind smile of your dinner partner, the face of your child as she leans toward her birthday cake, the table where friends are welcomed and fed, the desk where your life’s work is done.  And now, as the year hurries frantically toward its close, the candles spotlight these four, circling their traditional waltz: hope, peace, love, joy.

 And in the center of the circled candles, the source and destination of all that shining, the Word.  

 I was slow in coming to the thing that is coming, but when I drew near, I found out that Advent is so patiently used to being right on time that it graces all comers without ever once issuing a tardy notice. It smiles on all, and gentles us not into line, but into a circle, so everyone can cozy up to the fire.  And it doesn't tally how many shopping days til Christmas- because it’s not too late, not now, not ever, to strike a match, capture a focus, light a candle,

and pass the flame along.