Put a candle in the window
‘Cause I feel I’ve got to move
I’m gone, gone…but I’ll be comin’ home soon
As long as I can see the light.

Today’s Advent playlist suggestion is one of my favorites from one of my favorite bands. Creedence Clearwater Revivals’ “Long As I Can See the Light” is an Advent tune if there ever was one.

If I were still a parish pastor, I’d probably cue this up to be sung, this Advent especially. The lyrics are evocative of that story of the wise maidens who keep their “lamps trimmed and burning” as the spiritual goes. Those maidens aren’t just waiting in a general way; they’re waiting with expectation.

Waiting with expectation means, I think, knowing that something is going to happen…even if you don’t know what it is. You’re prepped to receive whatever comes your way. It harkens back to yesterday’s post about a kind of hope that doesn’t cling to a specific outcome, and yet knows that good can be made of whatever outcome produces itself.

As I walk through my neighborhood on these darkening days I’m seeing so many houses with candles in every window. It’s an ancient practice, you know. It comes from those days when travelers would journey deep into the night, and a light in the window meant the house was safe to stop in for food or a bed.

The candle in the window was a signal of safe harbor, even if you didn’t know who might need it, when they might show up, or what was on the other side of the door.

I guess what I mean is that the candle in the window is a symbol of expectant waiting.

For Christians it’s a symbol of waiting for Christ to show up (though, if you trust the idea of the incarnation then Christ shows up in many and various ways again and again…we just miss it more often than not).

But even for those who don’t find themselves in a faith community, this kind of symbol of expectant waiting has some meaning, I think. After all, we’ve all been in the position of searching in the dark night of the soul, longing for some sort of harbor. The trick in such a circumstance is to keep going, of course. The metaphor of a night traveler is appropriate. If they stop, no candle will appear, so stepping one foot in front of the other until it does appear is necessary.

It’s necessary to keep going.

Advent is the time of the year where we practice this plodding gait. Where we practice both putting candles in our windows and keeping a look out for them, learning to see where the safe harbors are in the world, preparing our own beings to become safe harbors for those who need one.

Like maidens who know the bridal party can arrive at any moment, we become wise when we do this.

T. J. O’Gorman’s poem is appropriate for this day, and this song:

Face to face with our limits,
Blinking before the frightful
Stare of our frailty,
Promise rises
Like a posse of clever maids
Who do not fear the dark
Because their readiness
Lights the search.
Their oil
Becomes the measure of their love,
Their ability to wait–
An indication of their
Capacity to trust and take a chance.
Without the caution or predictability
Of knowing day or hour,
They fall back on that only
Of which they can be sure:
Love precedes them,
Before it
No door will ever close.

Oh, and give CCR’s “Long As I Can See the Light” a spot on your Advent playlist…

Yesterday’s ponderings may have left you a bit…curious. Particularly that part about “hope” and the way I dissected it.

When I first heard of that Buddhist notion to let go of the particularities we often ascribe to “hope,” I was pretty flustered, too. The Buddhist teacher I learned it from, Pema Chodron, had been helping me (through her writings, not in any personal way) get through a tough transition period in my life.

Her discourse on hope deflated me a bit, if I’m quite honest.

But that was until I realized that I have, indeed, been basing much of my notion of “hope” on very specific hopes, which I’ve come to see goes against the great promise in the idea of hope.

Hope, like the Gospel, cannot just be a good thing for me. It must be universal. And so many of my hopes and dreams were (are?) me-centered.

Advent, this season of hope, is not the season where we believe “anything is possible.” Reserve that notion for the Hallmark Channel, Beloved.

Advent is rather an invitation to sit and wait patiently at the footstep of the unknown to pray, tell stories, sing with “joy and wonder” as the hymn goes, light a candle, and become ever-growingly confident that what will emerge from that shadow will be a tool for good.

I am certainly not saying that you can’t hope, wish, and dream for particular goods for you and your family. I am saying, though, that Advent is not a season that invites you to do that particular thing. Rather, Advent is the season where we trust that the spinning cosmos are barreling toward beauty and not chaos, and we invite ourselves to imagine how that can happen, is happening, will happen, by God.

Today’s song to add to your Advent playlist is actually a hymn to the tune St. Helena, “Unexpected and Mysterious.” I’ve linked a choir singing it (a lovely, if a bit slow for my taste, performance). But the words, oh the words, they’re what invite your attention today, Beloved…especially that last verse:

We are called to ponder myst’ry
And await the coming Christ
to embody God’s compassion
for each fragile human life.
God is with us in our longing
to bring healing to the earth,
while we watch with joy and wonder
for the promised Savior’s birth.

As a final bit of beauty, check out the story behind the writing of this hymn.

The Advent song for your playlist today starts like this:

When my blood runs warm with the warm red wine
I miss the life that I left behind
But when I hear the sound of the blackbirds cry
I know I left in the nick of time

Peter Bradley Adams has a beautiful way with words, I’m finding. They do what I think good lyrics should do: they invite you into something more, if for just a moment.

Advent, like good lyrics, invites us into something more, a “time overlaid on time” if you will. It’s why congregations around the world offer an additional moment of worship, usually midweek, in these dusk-early days. This addition notes that this time is special, unique, something different.

The problem with most of our Advent-Christmas time, though, is that it usually invites most people backward, not forward. Holidays and holy-days have a way of cementing themselves in our nostalgia receptors, and so if we grew up with a wonderful Christmas (as I did!) we can sometimes dabble a little too much in what we theologians call “repristination.”

Repristination is a fancy word for “play it again” or “replay.”

In fact, lots of religion unfortunately peddles repristination as some sort of ideal to strive for, a rewind of progress to times where beliefs were simple and widely held and widely regulated by religious and civic authorities.

In the universe of our heads, though, repristination will take us back to the times of our childhood, or “that one Christmas” that felt so perfect, and every subsequent year has been some sort of valiant effort to replay that memory, now. It’s a fool’s errand.

Advent is not an invitation to the past, but an invitation to ponder the present and the future in light of the past. What does it mean to wait faithfully for a future that’s not yet realized? In my mind, I’m also wondering what present beauties we miss as we pine for the past…there are certainly some, yes?

Buddhists have this idea that “hope” is actually a bad thing. Now, before you write it off, let me explain a bit. In the Buddhist sense of “hope” what is meant is “an attachment to a particular outcome.” So, it doesn’t mean a generalized “hope” in a better tomorrow, but rather those very specific hopes that we harbor in our souls, usually born out of advantage or particular proclivities.

That attachment does, indeed, create pain…which is rough.

Our attachments to the past, and our possible attachments to very particular futures, all distract us from being rooted in the uniqueness of this “time overlaid by time.” Are you attached to either?

I know I am.

But, as Peter Bradley Adams notes, we left those pasts in “the nick of time.” By that, I mean, it’s gone, and that’s ok, and we can remember it fondly but certainly cannot replay it.

Change happens. Shift happens. Advent invites us to ponder what that shift might be…but don’t become too attached, Beloved. Dream a bit. Imagine the steps to make a wonderful world emerge from this one, but know that there is always a path, always a way, always plans B, C, and D.

That is hope.

I mean, Christians honor this time to ponder how God stole across the cosmos to be born in a no-name place to no-name people, which would certainly not be any of our plan A’s, right?

Good thing we’re not ultimately running this joint…if it’s being “run” at all.

Take a listen to Peter Bradley Adams’ “The Longer I Run.” In it you might just finding something new this Advent: a reflection of your own running, whether to the past or too far into the future, and an invitation to simply sit in the present for a bit.

In some traditions the color for Advent is purple. This is generally thought to be an older-version of the liturgical color wheel. When it was first formally instituted, Advent was a mirror to the liturgical season of Lent, and therefore that color purple (standing for “royalty” and “penitence”) made sense.

But things change. All things change. And as our conception of the season adjusted (more rightly so, I’d say) our practices changed, too. Whereas Lent is more of a “house cleaning,” Advent is a “house warming.” To reflect this theological and rhythmic shift, many shifted the color from purple to a deep blue, symbolizing expectation and preparation.

But I like this alternative coloring for another reason, too, and that is because, well, for some Advent is “blue.” It can be a tough time, especially in the wake of tragedy or heartache.

If it’s your first Christmas without a loved one, and in this pandemic that possibility is quite real, it’s a tough season. Hell, it’s tough even if it’s your tenth Christmas without that loved one.

If you struggle with fertility, the stories that weave their way through Advent can be a bit painful. Why does Elizabeth, in her old age, get pregnant while so many couples can’t? Why does Mary, who doesn’t even seem to want to be pregnant, miraculously conceive when so many people have trouble conceiving?

And can we talk about miscarriage? This wide-spread but secretive topic sits in so many hearts, compounding the trouble of the season.

It’s important at the outset here to be honest about the fact that, for many, Advent is blue.

And here’s the interesting truth: acknowledging that fact, whether you find yourself blue in this season or not, helps everyone. It’s amazing how, when we hug the cactus of grief, it doesn’t hurt as bad anymore.

For your Advent playlist, try on this blues song by one of my favorite bands, Over the Rhine, “All I Ever Get for Christmas is Blue.” It’s not a sad song per se, but it sings a deep truth in that old blues tradition that carries reality for so many.

“Weatherman says it’s miserable
But the snow is so beautiful
All I ever get for Christmas is blue

It would take a miracle
To get me out to a shopping mall
All I really want for Christmas is you…”

The wisdom of the mystics Christian’s call Desert Mothers and Desert Fathers is continually relevant, I’m finding. These sages lived often extreme lives, but their solitude and piety produced acute wisdom.

There is a saying that I’m taking to heart today, early on in this Advent season. It reads, “Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior that every single day he made a fresh beginning.”

Beloved, would anyone write that about you and your life? That every day you “made a fresh beginning?”

I do not think it would be said about mine…at least, not yet.

Day to day I carry too much baggage with me: the things I left undone, or the things I did that I should not have done. Worries that chase me in my dreams. Concerns that dog my footsteps.

And yet, I love the idea of making every day a fresh beginning. I’d love to try it on, you know, just to see how it feels.

Perhaps I will.

Advent is a season of waiting; this is true. But sometimes something so good can’t wait. Sometimes Advent can be a season where we put off waiting and live into a new reality, just to see.

Just to see.

Try to make a fresh beginning each morning, Beloved, and wait for that “old you” with the cares and concerns to get the picture and stop showing up in the mirror at sunrise.

For your Advent playlist today, add “Wonderful World” to the rotation…but not the Armstrong version (though, it is amazing). Instead, try on this arrangement by Kina Grannis…you know, for something fresh.