FROM THE BOUNDARY

Advent hope; Advent fire

Two curious things have happened on successive days, curious because the one impacts on the other. Yesterday, and despite many resolutions not to do it again, I bought yet another piece of bric-a-brac. It was a four inch high stone figurine of a naked man crouching foetal, seemingly in despair, beneath a protective rock. Despite my determination to self-denial, I simply couldn’t resist it. It’s powerful and, in its way, very moving. For me, it seemed to summarise what, for so many, is the human condition, the emptiness, the bleakness, of existence, the total want of hope and joy. Think of the beggars on the street. What life have they? What of the terminally ill, the persecuted, the incarcerated, at times the bereaved – all the conditions which deprive us of the fullness of life and seem to confirm that God’s gone, or was never here, that we live in darkness? Well, it was a perfect Advent gift to myself.

The second odd thing, today’s, was at church. I sat beneath a stained glass window I’d never noticed before. Now get this. The window was Jesus, Jesus standing over a young man kneeling before him. You remember last week’s Column? There I discussed this very thing, a young man kneeling before Jesus. But here Jesus’ arms weren’t outstretched. They rested on the shoulders of the young man. And the young man’s head wasn’t bent over to the ground. He looked up radiantly into Jesus’ face, adoringly, full of hope and love. What a wonderful coincidence – as coincidences so often are. It summarised, you understand, what I was trying to say last week, that there is only oneness between those who love.

You see, these two odd things, taken together, for me seem to capture the Advent season. The first speaks to that sense of hopelessness we all experience at times. We wait, and wait, but nothing seems to come right. In the end, we’re apt to give up and hide away. The second expresses the hope and longing of the young man as he fastens his eyes to Jesus’, to something so beautiful that his life, as also ours, will resurrect and learn once more to love. The broken and lost beneath the rock. The reaching out to the Lord of Life and the blessing of his hands upon us. And before it the waiting, the watching, the anticipation that, despite everything, our lives may heal and all will be well. O Come, Lord Jesus.

Advent calls us to find the light in the darkness. That light flickers as hope, and darkness, night, is its natural resting place. In the night, despite the turmoil of our lives, we find our rest as the angels watch over us and we become as children. In that sleep, hope is born. With Advent “the night is far gone and the day is at hand”. With the morning, “the Lord is very near” and we wait and watch once more for hopes fulfilled for ourselves and those whose lives somehow touch ours. There are many lonely souls like us, you know, whose hopes burgeon in the stilly night, who learn too that “joy comes in the morning”, that the desert will yet “sing and rejoice”, that the “blind will be able to see”, that the deaf will hear, and the lame “will leap and dance”. Dear Blessed Advent, where the darkness is transformed into the light of hope, and my naked figurine beneath the rock waits, rested, and finally understands that change will come through the touch of Love itself.

He will come to us as a flame of fire. It won’t consume us, this fire, for it comes as baptism for the weary, as the Spirit of Life. It comes as redemption through repentance – the realisation at last that we really do have it in us to become whole, not half, people, the power to BECOME and not just BE. The fire will be a devouring fire which consumes all the deadness in us, moulding, transforming us into Life despite the ghosts and shadows inhabiting our darknesses, the broken hopes, dreams, loves and dust trails of the past.
But we must be ready, ready for the twin fires of destruction and resurrection, our coming into being as we pass away. In losing one life, banishing our fears, we’ll find another. The Advent hope casts fear to the sewers of yesterday. The divine fire will burn Life into us, consuming all our prejudices, our silly attitudes, our hardness of heart, the ghosts which haunt us, laugh at us and hold us back.

So yes. Let the fire burn and burn in the bush of our lives. And let my foetal, naked figurine – which in so many ways is you and me – rise from the darkness of the rock and dare to hope. Let him stretch out his arms for the fire of the Eternal Word to consume those darknesses.

‘Listen fella, you’ve crouched there long enough. You’re not a cripple. Get up and reach out, will you. Kick your fears into next week. Look up and know the hands of Love upon your shoulders. Choose LIFE.’ Dear blessed Advent.

Go safely, then – until the next time.

Saintly wisdom from the boundary: “Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flame” (Mevlana Rumi).

Barbados Advocate

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