Advent calls us to wait with expectation, to notice and attend to the mysterious, to sit in the dark. And maybe this is how it’s supposed to be, but against this call is the rush, the demand, the stress to finish all the things while making them pretty (read: Instagrammable), too. I think I have to live at a slower pace if I’m going to notice what shines, what could shine, what wants to shine, in the dark, but I have a hard time making the choice to live a slow life.
Such was the case on the last day of November, which happened to be a Wednesday. My boss and I were busy with well-meaning yet stressed students who were learning the dreaded word, “adulting” and all the tedium that comes with it. It’s not easy becoming an adult (it’s not easy becoming anything, really), but particularly at semesters’ end, my boss and I wade into those rough and at times treacherous waters with the fledglings, and do our best to show them how to swim.
This is how it went on Wednesday, and we missed Chapel, which is the day the Campus Pastor brings Starbucks for all who show up. I LOVE Coffee Chapel (a term I came up with, and I’m sure is not endorsed by CUAA), and was bummed to miss it, but a few minutes after 11, my boss stepped into my office holding her mug and asked, “Wanna kind of break the rules?”
I am always up for kind of and not so kind of breaking the rules, so I grabbed my mug and left with her.
On the walk over, we discussed being in college, and in particular, taking the famous Bluebook exam – those slim books stapled together with a light blue cover that we used for all our exams.
“I filled them out completely,” she told me. “I even wrote on the blue part.”
“I barely wrote anything,” I confessed, and added that once, a religion prof called me at my dorm to tell me I’d forgotten to take the whole exam, and did I want to come back and finish the test.
“I didn’t forget, I just didn’t know the answers,” I told my boss. “Also, I was so homesick. I just wanted to go home.”
We walked quietly after that, and when we got to the Chapel, she held the door open for me. The sanctuary was dark, and quiet, and the coffee carafes were still there.
“I never wanted to leave anything that I knew out,” my boss explained while coffee dripped into her mug. “Who knew if it was relevant.”
I filled my mug while she continued. “It just takes me a while to get to the point.” She laughed. “You probably know this. You can probably tell.”
I told her I have that problem, too. I told her that in graduate school, my professors would tell me to stop clearing my throat. “Your story starts at the 10th paragraph!” they’d say.
We sipped our coffee, and I made a move to head back, but she said, “Do you mind if we stay a little longer?” I said I didn’t, and she made her way to the front of the sanctuary – an act that always gives me a rush. There’s something a little mischievous about standing at the front of an empty and dark sanctuary.
“I just love this,” she said, extending her hand toward the Advent Wreath.
A series of tangled metal spikes – hundreds of them – were wrapped around the post that the wreath was on. The spikes looked like nails and crosses, signifying the crown of thorns. This spiral didn’t touch the wreath, but it did point to the candles – to the light – alluding not only to the horror that is to come, but that even in a Father’s worst nightmare, nothing escapes His grasp. All of it is cradled in His loving embrace.
“I wish I had time to do stuff like this,” my boss said, waving her arm over the holly and the gold, and the greenery and the candles that had been snuffed out but we could still smell the smoke.
“Me too,” I said.
“Every year I say I’ll be more organized; I’ll get to it.”
I knew she didn’t only mean the decorating part, but I think the tree and the stockings, and maybe even those infamous red cups point to the slowness and the stillness we all desire, just as the spikes point to the candles we light in our attempt to wait expectantly.
Even when we kind of and not so kind of break the rules.
Even when we don’t know the answers, and don’t really care what the answers are.
Even when we just want to go home.
In all the pain and sadness that spirals around us, we want to know we are held, we are loved. We want to believe that the light that shines in the dark that cannot be extinguished is for us and in us.
Amen. May it be so.
- A Year Of Content: A Guided Planning Session $35. January 6, January 7, January 9
- Portfolio Review
- Reading Well + Writing Well Part II. Begins February 6.
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