A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the
year
For the journey and such a
long journey:
The ways deep and the
weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
T. S. Eliot
Eliot’s
famous poem The Journey of the Magi is
about his own path from proud agnosticism to humble faith. A brutally honest poem, it does not shy away
from the hardness of the spiritual journey. A
cold coming we had of it. Not a feel good weekend. Not a Praise Jesus
exuberance. But a grappling with the threatening fact that the spiritual life
is all about transformation – change. Do not be conformed to the ways of this
world but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind. Romans 12: 2. And change is hard. There is a grief in it.
Eliot knew that Christianity would cost him something, maybe everything. It did
not come easy.
. . . Were we lead all this way for
Birth or Death. There was a
Birth certainly . . .
I had seen Birth and Death
But thought they were
different. This Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for
us, like death, our death.
We returned to our places,
these kingdoms
But no longer at ease here,
in the old dispensation . . ..
And he knew it was not a do-it-once-and-get-it-over-with
thing but a lifelong process of surrender in faith, a process leading into the
unknown. Such a long journey.
The
change we undertake is the birth of Christ. Christmas is always coming as
Christ is always being born. He was not born just once long ago. He is eternally begotten of the Father.
(Nicene Creed). So as we consider the spirituality of Advent, think of words
like labor and transition. The coming birth of Christ is not bit of news that
happens somewhere far off and we watch it on the news. It is far more intimate
than that. It happens inside us. The 14th Century Dominican friar
Meister Eckhart said, It does not matter
that Christ was born in Bethlehem long ago unless he is born in you today.
Advent
is not the birth. It is the pregnancy and the labor. This is the time when we sense change coming
and we live in that expectation. From where I sit, I am acutely aware of
impending change in three arenas – individual lives, congregations, the
diocese.
The
place I see it most clearly is in congregations. An unusual number of our
congregations have been engaged in major shifts the past couple of years. For some that has involved clergy
transitions. But other changes have been afoot as well. In some places those
changes are coming to the final stage. They are in labor. A lay leader in one congregation has been
saying for the last few weeks “It is Advent at our church.” He means they feel
a change a-comin’, and the feelings are complicated. There is hopeful
expectation among some while others are lining up against a new clergy person
they have not met yet. It reminds me of my Face Book friends who are in a
frenzy of opposition to “the New Prayer Book” though not a word of it has been
written; nor will a word of it be written for some year yet. It is perhaps
unfair to poke fun at the irrationality of our resistances to change. We are
all prone to it. I am kind of opposed to the non-existent new prayer book
myself. We resist because though we may not know what change will bring, we do know
what it won’t be – it won’t be the familiar past. We don’t know what is being
born. We only know what is dying.
Being
a congregation is a frustrating proposition because sooner or later all
congregations become bulwarks against change – but change is the grass growing
up through cracks in the sidewalk. We can’t stop it. It just keeps on a-coming.
Birth happens. How shall we respond to it?
It
matters how we cope with change in our congregations because that is part and
parcel of how we cope with change in the rest of our lives. We may not have a
priest, vestry, or bishop to blame for the shifting sand of our families, our
health, our jobs, our homes, etc. But change will happen whether we can find
someone to blame or not. Church is a training ground for life; so dealing with
Church Change is our gymnasium for coping with Life Change. How then shall we
go about the project of Advent?
Let’s
start by being honest about how change feels.
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the
year
For the journey and such a
long journey: . . ..
This
Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for
us, like death, our death.
We returned to our places,
these kingdoms
But no longer at ease here,
in the old dispensation . . ..
Change
usually – at least often – feels more like this than Deck the Halls with Boughs
of Holly fa la la la la.
So
I suggest it is helpful to do three things at once. First, it is important to
acknowledge what we love in the present and to allow ourselves to grieve it.
And yes grief consists of denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, and resignation.
(To see that concisely fleshed out, check http://www.recover-from-grief.com/7-stages-of-grief.html
We
can’t skip the process. As the great Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich said, There is no truth without the way to truth. So
all those feelings are necessary. I have only one word of caution about them.
The feelings generate thoughts that may not strictly conform to reality. So
remember this dictum: don’t believe
everything you think.
Second,
even though we are accustomed to the way things are, we are not satisfied with
them. We feel something missing. It is the human condition to long for a better
world in large and small ways. The lessons and the music of Advent express that
longing. We are “captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xtpJ4Q_Q-4
We
need not be slaves to consistency. The fact that we are accustomed to the
familiar ways of “this present age” (Galatians 1: 4) does not mean we are not
also hungry for something we are not yet being served. Ambivalence is the human
condition. That’s why we are still watching Hamlet. It is far more workable to
acknowledge and experience our conflicting feelings than to acknowledge one
side and stuff the other into our unconscious.
Third,
when we turn our thoughts to expectation – when we imagine what is about to be
born – it helps to cultivate an attitude of openness. That basically means a
wait-and-see attitude. A few folks have exaggeratedly optimistic views. More of us tend to be pessimistic. If we want to be realistic,
we will not be overconfident of our ability to predict the future. God may know
what lies ahead. But we don’t. I sometimes hear “I’ve seen it all before. This
will be just like when . . . “ It
probably won’t. The future does repeat the past a bit but mostly it is new.
Even when it echoes the past to some degree, there are always interesting
variations on the theme.
Often
new things happen, but people whose minds are stuck in the past are simply
unable to see them. They keep seeing and hearing the same old thing, though
something new is really happening. That is why God was shaking Israel by the shoulders
and shouting:
Behold I am doing a new thing!
Even now it springs up!
Do you not perceive it?
Isaiah 43: 19
When
something new is happening and we cannot see it because our minds are mired in
the past, we become unhinged from reality and ineffective at dealing with it.
The spiritual discipline here is to watch
and wait.
As for me I watch
for the God of my salvation.
Micah 7: 7
Psalm
5: 3; Habakkuk 2: 1; Matthew 26: 38; Isaiah 40: 31. It is a practice of sitting
still and keeping alert, waiting to see what comes instead of rushing in to
fill the mysterious void with our own predictions.
In
summary, I recommend a three part spiritual discipline for dealing with change
(which is another way of saying “dealing with life.”)
1.
Acknowledge the grief.
2.
Acknowledge the longing
3.
Wait and see
If
we practice these attitudes in the Church – what a place to practice a
spiritual discipline! – that discipline can become a habit that permeates the
rest of our life in a gracious wise way. Such an Advent spirituality will get
us to the stable so that we show up for the birth of Christ in our lives and in
our souls.
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