Monday, December 17, 2012

The arc of this advent...

The arc of this Advent - like most of this past year - has been totally unexpected.  I had hoped for a time of quiet introspection bathed in poetry and music.  Instead, my time has been filled with grief and anguish and more busyness than I can comprehend.  Obviously this is what I've needed a la Meister Eckhart's adage that reality is the will of God (it can always be better but you must start with what is real.)

That is what the contemplatives teach at their best:  contemplation involves taking a long, loving look at what is real.  And when I do that I see more and more suffering.  In this, the massacre in Sandy Hook is a terrifying and tragic mirror reflecting back to us the sickness of our self-absorbed and violence-addicted culture.  I am not one who hates America - I am a patriot - but I hate what America has become and is becoming.  Is the best solution to violence giving school administrators more weapons?  Are we to live like Mad Max in a constant fortress that barely holds back the tide of destruction beyond our barriers?  Are we to go back to an eye for an eye rather than forward into a love that includes even our enemies?

Nothing is automatic - we can become the change we ache for - if we are ready to repent and let an open heart be our guide.





4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heard and witnessed. I have been sitting up here with "O Come, Emmanuel" haunting me this week - and with my patchwork theology I have never been particularly conscious of Advent.

But we heathens know a bit about waiting in the cold darkness and hoping the light will come back.

RJ said...

Amen to that, my friend.

Peter said...

We wait in the darkness together. I have found Advent to be too busy for contemplation, and will wait not only for the light, but for the peace.

RJ said...

That has certainly been my experience this year, not always, but in 2012 in spades.

an oblique sense of gratitude...

This year's journey into and through Lent has simultaneously been simple and complex: simple in that I haven't given much time or ...