Sitting on the patio early this morning I was thinking how upside-down life has become these last few days before Christmas. My room is messy with bags of unwrapped gifts, the chair in the dining room is piled with wrapping materials, my to-do list is very different than normal and the grocery list has stuff on it that only appears during the holiday season. My tasks are not normal: shopping (I rarely shop), post office, cleaning the kitchen four times as frequently each day because I've been baking and now the dining room table is cluttered with containers of cookies.
The normalcy of routine is thrown out the window if you actively participate in the holiday season - which is the primary reason a lot of people I know do not like Christmas: they don't like how messy life becomes.
Hopefully this outer messiness of the holiday season is mirroring your spiritual life: Advent calls us to relinquish our ideas and expectations of God and allow all kinds of messy interruptions to turn even our 'good' routines upside-down.
Advent calls us to remember that God is not especially tidy and orderly: God is the Life Force of Love and love and loving are not tidy. New life - love and babies, spiritual or human, are anything but tidy. The God who sent Jesus - Emmanuel: God with us - born as a human baby is not a predictable God either in human history nor in personal experience.
As I prayed this morning about what to share today, I was reminded of a poem I wrote during another Advent journey:
This morning trees swayed and danced while
storm clouds streamed through the sky playing
peek-a-boo with a crescent moon.
As the storm gathered energy, I heard an unbound God
in rushing, roaring wind humming wild music of untamed Love.
I felt a boldly adventurous God in the storminess of weather:
A God so audacious in bestowing love
that we imperfect humans are chosen to be vessels
for birthing wildly creative love into the world.
Stormy music played about me and in my mind's eye
I stood in a dark wintry field with shepherds,
struck dumb in terror hearing a chorus of Angels singing:
"Do not be afraid! For behold, I bring you
Good News of Great Joy which shall be for all the people."
As the storm tore branches off the tree,
the message of Angels crumbled walls in my heart:
streaming rain battered windows as grace
flowed freely in a newly unbound heart.
Storms, singing angels, newly born babies, love, stars shining brightly and beckoning us away from comfort are all untidy and messy interruptions to preconceived ideas of how things should be. Advent reminds us that our God is wildly untamed love flowing freely, unconditionally and asking: will you accept what I give.
Oh, and the reason for the decidedly non-spiritual picture today? Well, I just wanted my expectations, and yours, to be turned upside-down. Besides, the painting is titled Mark Twain as Santa Claus and personally, I believe Mark Twain was an unrecognized saint: he lived his gifts passionately and fully and thus bestowed new life into our world.
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