I think the thing that troubles me the most about this is people spending money they do not have on stuff they do not need, and worse feeling that if they do not do this for their children as well then they are failures. And so they will pay twice as much for something they don't really need by buying it on credit and streeeettttching out those payments for months.
And all this is going on during Advent, a time when reverence and waiting-- not fulfilling our desires now now now!-- should be our attitude.
Maybe that this is a time of year when some of us-- myself in particular-- have a hard time seeing the beauty around us. It's cold. It's dark. This crap called "snow" comes down and makes life miserable, at least for me. I long for sunlight and warmth. And it's at this time of the year that the church chooses to celebrate the birth of our savior. But perhaps it's at this time of year that I am called to pay attention most of all. There's nothing else to distract me, after all. And is the darkness, the glow of a candle burns with a purpose.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story in her book An Altar in the World. She talks about how she was taking care of a neighbor's cats while the neighbor was away. The house was full of fleas, and as she was carrying out the trash she could hear the fleas flinging themselves against the plastic garbage bag as she made her way to the garbage cans:
I could not wait to be shed of it, which was why I was in a hurry. On my way to the cans, I noticed a small garden area off to my left that was not visible from the house. Glancing at it, I got a whole dose of loveliness at once-- the high arch of trees above, the mossy flagstones beneath,the cement birdbath, the cushiony bushes, the white wrought-iron chair-- all lit by stacked planes of sunlight that turned the whole scene golden. It was like a door to another world. I had to go through it. I knew that if I did, then I would become golden too.
But first I had to ditch the bag. The flea popped against the plastic as I hurries to the big aluminum garbage cans near the garage. Stuffing the bag into one of them, i turned back to the garden, fervent to explore what I had only glimpsed in passing. When I got there, the light had changed. All that was left was a little overgrown sitting spot that no one had sat in for years. The smell of cat litter drifted from the direction of the garbage cans. The garden was no longer on fire.
'I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it,' says Shug Avery, one of the wise women in Alice Walker's book The Color Purple. I noticed the color gold, but I did not turn aside. I had a bag full of fleas to attend to. While I made that my first priority, the fire moved on in search of someone who would stop what she was doing, take off her shoes, and say, 'Here am I.'
So much about Christmas in our culture is about as appealing as that bag full of fleas, but we tell ourselves that this has to be done and that has to be done, forgetting all the time the real reason why there is all this gift-giving in the first place. As we rush from store to store, we forget all about the coming of that baby who will lay aside everything just for us, who will be God With Us, Emmanuel. We have been given a gift in Advent in being called to be watchful, and reverent, in making ourselves ready.
We are given a gift in the coming Son of God who will be with us always, if we don't barge right past him on the way to that holiday sale at the mall. The purple of Advent beckons quietly.
There is a voice I want to hear. The voice says, "Be still, and know that I am God." The God that loves all of us, that wants us to give our time and our attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment