Advent is a time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves. The necessary condition for the fulfillment of Advent is the renunciation of the presumptuos attitudes and alluring dreams in which and by means of which we always build ourselves imaginary worlds. In this way we force reality to take us to itself by force - by force, in much pain and suffering...
The horror of these times would be unendurable unless we kept being cheered and set upright again by the promises that are spoken. The angels of annunciation, speaking their message of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night, call us to hope. These are not yet the loud angels of rejoicing and fulfillment that come out into the open, the angels of Advent. Quiet, inconspicuous, they come into rooms and before hearts as they did then. Quietly they bring God's questions and proclaim to us the wonders of God, for whom nothing is impossible.
- Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest condemned as a traitor for his opposition to Hitler, written inn a Nazi prison shortly before he was hanged in 1945.
I have been slowly reading through a book of small essays, that began a week before Advent and continue on into the New Year, called Watch For The Light: Readings For Advent and Christmas, published by those fine folks at Mary Knoll. These excerpts have made me pause this last month to ponder not only all that is not well in our world, but to consider how the angels of annunciation may be speaking to us in quiet rooms and empty hearts in times of confusion, despair or crisis.
My thoughts are with a friend and former housemate, Alison, who is in Kenya right now, forty minutes from downtown Nairobi, in what little I've heard from her, a strange, tense and fearful time there. Please keep her and Kenya in your prayers. She asked me at the beginning of December for my thoughts on waiting, so I thought I would write a bit of a response here:
Waiting has been a large piece of the spiritual puzzle for me for a long time now. I have been reminded, mostly by Henri Nouwen's writings, that waiting is done with patience, with expectation and with hope - but is not passive... rather, our spiritual waiting is an active paying attention to the here and now, to the seeds in ground, or perhaps the soil, or perhaps even that preparation which comes before the soil - and living the present moment to the full. There may be suffering and questions, but hope does not diminish, because of the promise we carry that God has come and will come again, that God is at work and with us even when nothing good seems to be happening and we feel alone.
So, as this year begins, I am hopeful, because although the world around us rings with violence and unrest, we can hold onto the hope and promise of another reality and truth, which is being woven into our everyday lives if we work and allow it to work out in the world around us.
An album I picked up this past month is Over The Rhine's Trumpet Child, and I enjoyed reading the liner notes and lyrics, especially as to the question of what that trumpet sound will be like when all is put right again:
...a theme that recurred in a lot of the old hymns was the idea that the world would be reborn with the sound of a trumpet, and we've all heard those great American trumpet (and horn) players - Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz - and we've been wondering about the sound of that trumpet in the old hymns, Is it real, Is it a metaphor, What, exactly, is on God's iPod?
- Linford Detweiler, June 2007 from the liner notes of Over The Rhine's album The Trumpet Child
The Trumpet Child
Words & Music: DetweilerThe trumpet child will blow his horn
Will blast the sky till it's reborn
With Gabriel's power and Satchmo's grace
He will surprise the human race
The trumpet he will use to blow
Is being fashioned out of fire
The mouthpiece is a glowing coal
The bell a burst of wild desireThe trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He'll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drumThe trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found
A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how longThe rich forget about their gold
The meek and mild are strangely bold
A lion lies beside a lamb
And licks a murderer's outstretched handThe trumpet child will lift a glass
His bride now leaning in at last
His final aim to fill with joy
The earth that man all but destroyed
