advent

Tomorrow morning I will running around my church with about twenty five bouncy choir children. We have rehearsal for our Christmas performance, and they have actually learned the verses to How Great Our Joy, and will be performing it a week from Sunday evening. If anyone wants to come see the spectacle, come! What could be better than kids dressed as shepherds and angels?

It is Advent now. Christmas time. Tonight I saw the Nativity Story, and it brought home the stark difference between what we celebrate, and how we celebrate it. The rocky desert of Isreal looks vastly different than any other Christmas image that I can think of. Snowmen. Christmas trees. Egg nog. None of that. And somehow we celebrate because of a mother giving birth to God as a child, in the most dirty, dark corner of a tiny ramshackle town, two thousand years ago. I sat watching the movie thinking that either we are all crazy or that this was the most profound, unpredictable, complete and powerful plan that a God could have made.

At work I have been feverishly and excitedly creating our first e-newsletter. Does not sound exciting, I know, but it has become my baby. It is possibly the one thing that I am most proud of producing since I began this job, and it is going to have flipping pages and animation and a contest for logic students to enter, and it is also supposed to have a Latin Christmas Carol. I am supposed to be helping to sing said carol and it was supposed to be done already, several times, and today was the day that I was hoping to send out the newsletter. But instead I am waiting, and I have become very familiar with the Latin words to O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

Veni, Veni Emmanuel
captivum salve Isreal,
qui gemit in exsilio.
privatus Dei Filio.
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel.

The Nativity Story opened with these words and this song. Deep voices, fortelling the future of a Savior coming. And heaven knows, after seeing this movie, Israel needed a savior. I also find it interesting that these words, in Latin, are in the language of their greatest oppressors.

Now though, the carol, O Come O Come Emmanuel is one of the most important anchor points of Advent for me. I always knew we sang it during Advent at church, and knew it is about Emmanuel coming, but it is based on very specific prayers, called Antiphons, each focusing on a different attribute of the Messiah. Each verse gives Emmanuel a new name...

Key of David, Dayspring or Morning Star, Rod of Jesse, Wisdom from on high.

And I don't know all of the details, but each of these verses are prayed separately through Advent. Each name considered and desired.

I love that Advent is about waiting. I don't like waiting, but I love the reminder that I am not alone. We are all waiting for something. Our culture looks down it's nose at waiting. It says to get what you want right now. But the striving doesn't seem to work, or never for very long.

Last sunday, in the sermon, our pastor gave the best example of waiting on God that I have ever heard. It was a quote from Henri Nowen, and I will only paraphrase it here as I remember it. He used the example of a trapeze team. The person on the team who lets go of their bar and flys up in an arc high in the air, must simply hold very still. They must not ever try to catch the catcher. It is the catcher's job to find their arms and grasp them, and the one in the air must simply trust that their catcher will be there.

I'm not sure why this resonates so well. Perhaps because I can feel it in my muscles and bones and can imagine the suspended stillness. Suspended stillness. That is where God calls us to be during Advent. That is where he meets us. In dry, barren, places. That is where he comes to live.

There will however, be no stillness tomorrow morning, and there will be no floating little cherubs, so no suspension either. But I must admit, I can hardly wait. And I really can't wait to send the newsletter!