This Season Without Mom

I am back in the swing of the end of the academic semester, in between the family gatherings of Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  It was our first family gathering since Mom's funeral on February 20.  It's no surprise that grief is unpredictable, and this season has certainly been that way.

I traveled to San Antonio for the annual circus of academic religious and textual studies known as the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting, to which are attached dozens of other related groups focused around faith traditions, studies of a particular scholar's work, topical interests, schools, publishers, and most any kind of individuation of religious studies one might imagine.  I attended Mennonite and Baptist professors' gatherings as well as a research institute focused on trends in talking about God.  I went to a workshop on teaching, a panel on a new book, and an alumni gathering.  I hung out with friends, did lots of walking, and considered doing many more things than I had time to do.

Dad met me in San Antonio on Monday after visiting with his sister Mary McCombs, who also lives there.  My time was so short in town, I was not able to arrange to see friends living in San Antonio, to my disappointment.  Dad and I rested one night at his house in Salado, empty of its familiar central presence of Hugh Delle.  We left on Tuesday morning to make the two-day drive to Black Mountain.  Lydia's new job kept her at work through Wednesday and required her to check in and work on Friday, so she was not able to make the NC trip this year.  She went to be with Everly's family, Marie, Ruth, John, and Kenny, in Austin.  Michael and David would make the drive down from Ann Arbor on Thursday.  Jerene's chaplaincy job had her working at the hospital on Thanksgiving Day, so we all were converging to have our big meal on Friday.

The first long day's drive brought us into Tuscaloosa, AL, pretty late in the evening.  It was a day of plenty of conversations.  Without Hugh Delle, no one led us in a singalong.  No one insisted we play any road games together.  We just kept pressing forward to get the miles behind us.  The second shorter day included more conversations about how we were making it in these days without Mom around.  Dad is doing his best to reactivate some professional work and relationships.  While Mom's health was declining, he had little time between their medical appointments and her need for his support at home.  His focus around her care was a development that came gradually and without any regrets.  Of course, it was sad for him and all of us to see her growing weaker and needing more assistance to get through the days.  Now that she is free from those troubles, Dad has had some time to readjust and think about what he should do with his life.  I'm very impressed with the initiatives he is taking to do good in the world and become more active again.  We also discussed what I might hope to do in the coming years.  Thankful not to face much traffic, we arrived to clouds of smoke in the mountains of NC as the sun was setting.

For at least six or seven years, holiday gatherings have shifted from Mom's frenzied work to make everything happen to Mike and Jerene sharing in the cooking.  It used to be that Everly and Jim would take responsibility for the clean-up, and of course that Everly had us all organized in advance to enjoy our time together.  Now, without Everly and Hugh Delle, it was a more sedate group.  The majority has shifted toward the quieter personalities:  Jim, W.D., Mike, David, Michael, and Naomi.  When I am one of the most gregarious people in a group, then you know it's a pretty calm gathering.

Being a little brother seems to never get out of one's system.  So even at 58 and 61, I constantly find ways to pester or tease my big sister when the family is together.  Sometimes, I have to admit, I've gotten too carried away.  Moreover, with Hugh Delle in the house, it seems like I would feel even more permission to pick at Jerene and wait for Mom's reprimand.  I say this because one of the ways I felt Mom's absence this Thanksgiving was in a need to police myself and try harder to get along.  It struck me as somehow backward--it seems like I should have felt that way in Mom's presence out of respect for her.  Family dynamics are confusing and somehow not very transparent to us who are in the midst of them.

We talked about Mom, and of course Everly, throughout our time together.  There was not any clear moment of focus on Mom's absence.  Maybe it was most like being a collection of beads with no connecting thread.  Mom was a thread that held us together.  Now we were trying to figure out how to be together without her.  Nobody had any fights that I observed.  We all did the kinds of things we usually do, with less of the steering, coordinating, planning talk that Mom would bring. 

Just now it came to mind how whenever we would sit down to eat, within a few minutes Hugh Delle would turn the conversation by asking, "What should we have for dinner?", or lunch, or breakfast, or whatever the next meal would be.  Nobody was really pressing those kinds of questions.  With some effort, we agreed at one point to watch a movie together.  We shared meals.  Some went on walks while others napped.  The younger generation went out to meet friends.  The old fogeys sat around and talked, read, or watched TV.  Dad and I watched a very disappointing Baylor football game.

There were some poignant moments, but mostly these were private to each person.  Having been through such intense grief from Everly's death and absence, I wondered if that was going to repeat itself.  But grief is unpredictable, and it was much lower key for these days.  We made it through.  We loved each other.  We reenacted our family traditions. 

And now we are back to work.  For those of us in academic life, it's the high pressure time of wrapping up a semester.  Naomi will finish her dual masters degrees in social work and public health.  I will grade another batch of student work.  And all of us will think ahead about regathering for Christmas, with Lydia joining us.  It is also Advent, a season of waiting through trials.  We all have our trials.  Dad is shouldering his with courage.  He was raised well, and he learned through many years of marriage, pastoring, and organizational leadership.  He's doing all he can to make the world he touches better for the many souls God loves.  And so, we wait.

While We Wait for God, How Shall We Wait? Stay Woke in Advent

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In looking back through my unfinished blog posts from the past few months, I found this sermon I preached during advent, but failed to post at that time.  It draws on the lectionary texts and the advent theme of waiting to see what God will do, but it also takes inspiration from the rising voices of young people who are no longer waiting for their elders to do the work needed to reverse the tide of injustice sweeping our neighborhoods, transferring of money from the mass of poor and middle classes to the 1%, destroying the lives of minorities through mass incarceration and shoot-first interdiction, and rising up in resentment against a perceived loss of power and privilege in white communities.  The twitter label #StayWokeAdvent got me thinking, and the Prophet Zephaniah provided the inspiration for my reflections.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

3:14 Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!

3:15 The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.

3:16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.

3:17 The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing

3:18 as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.

3:19 I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

3:20 At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the LORD.

Luke 3:7-18

3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

3:8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

3:9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

3:10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"

3:11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."

3:12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"

3:13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."

3:14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,

3:16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

3:18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

While We Wait for God, How Shall We Wait?

       Stay Woke in Advent

       I’m an old dog that sometimes has to learn new tricks.  I had to learn to teach courses online, even though no one ever taught me that way.  I had to get used to carrying a phone around with me and to type out text messages if I wanted to have a chance to communicate with my grown children.  And earlier this year, I had to figure out how to tweet on twitter.  I have to believe I’m not the only one in here today who uses twitter.

       I might still not be a twitter user had it not been for a push from my dean at Shaw University Divinity School.  I don’t mean that he said, “Mike, go forth and tweet!”  But he did urge me to find a way to quickly publish a sermon that I had preached in chapel.  Not sure where to turn, I decided to check out twitter.  I already have a place online for writing.  That’s called a “blog,” and you all have heard of that.  Around a hundred people in various parts of the U.S., and a few in Europe and China read the things I post there.  And then there is facebook, something David told me about when he was a first-year student up at Oberlin College in Ohio, back in 2004.  Some people follow what I post there, too.  So I thought maybe I could expand my reach in twitter.  It’s not such a fast process to add new followers on twitter.  After several months, I have only a few more than 50 people checking out what I say there.  But all in all, it did give me another audience, if not exactly as many as Dean Forbes was intending.

       Part of twitter communication is something called “hashtags.”  That means you put one of those “pound” or “tic-tac-toe” looking symbols in front of a word or phrase.  Then if other people use the same phrase or word, twitter organizes all of those similar comments together.  This week, a popular hashtag has been #StayMadAbby.  It refers to a college applicant from Texas named Abigail, who got upset when some minority students got admitted to the University of Texas and she did not.  Her complaint became a lawsuit, and the lawsuit went before the Supreme Court this week.  Many minority college graduates have been posting pictures of themselves in graduation robes, posting lists of their degrees and schools.  Then they add #StayMadAbby to emphasize that nothing is going to stand in the way of African Americans, Latinos, and others who are striving to get an education and make something of their lives.  If it makes her mad to see minority students getting opportunities, she is just going to have to stay mad.

       Another hashtag you are familiar with is the slogan #BlackLivesMatter.  This phrase got started through the organizing work of three young women who responded to the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by organizing people to call for police accountability.  These young women, some of whom were seminary students at the time, used twitter to help build connections with like-minded people around their region and around the country.  Those relationships and the expanding network have become very important as we have become more and more aware of the widespread violence done against young black men and women, treating them as if their lives don’t matter at all.

       One more hashtag I need to mention appeared as the Christian year began a couple of weeks ago.  It says #StayWokeAdvent.  This phrase calls on church people who are journeying through the season of advent to keep our eyes open, to keep our hearts sensitive, to keep our priorities straight, in short, to Stay Woke, as we live our faith in this season of longing for the fullness of God revealed in the teen mother Mary, in the refugee family moving from temporary Bethlehem home to temporary Egyptian home, in the vulnerable baby Jesus born among straw and dung in the barn, in the sojourning community of God’s people never quite at home in this world.

       The examples I’ve given from hashtag phrases on twitter are each reminders of the way that powers and structures of domination are always nearby, waiting around the corner, plotting in back rooms and board rooms, in order to continue to keep power and prosperity in the hands of a few at the expense of the many.  One spotlights the elite class attacking systems designed to provide educational opportunity to those who have historically faced barriers and deprivation.  Another cries out against the disturbingly callous act of leaving an unarmed young man in the middle of the road to bleed and die after a well-trained officer of the law, claiming to fear the face of a demon on an 18-year-old scared kid, took away that life.  And #StayWokeAdvent holds up for all to see that in the season in which we live, there is a collision between the Christian tradition of hope and love and a world seemingly controlled by fear, hatred, prejudice, bigotry, and violence.  Losing ourselves in a seasonal binge of overconsumption and overspending, of empty platitudes and shallow optimism, is the opposite of living in faith and hope.  Pretending for a few weeks that we can buy whatever we want, that we will all magically get along, that we can make reality out of nostalgia for a time when we were oblivious to the pain and struggle of life—these get us nowhere but farther from the God on whom we must depend.  Losing our focus, pretending—we can’t afford these ways.  We must be awake, alert, ready for what may strike.  Stay Woke in Advent!

       The lectionary takes us to the Prophet Zephaniah this week.  I have to say that I don’t think I’ve preached from Zephaniah ever.  With some of the better known prophets, I can remember when and where they did their work and what their primary message is.  I could not remember anything about Zephaniah.  Put that kind of obscure text in front of an ornery professor, and you know I’m going to take the challenge to preach on Prophet Zephaniah.  So I had to dig out some reference works.

       It seems that Zephaniah probably came along after Isaiah and Amos, and maybe a little before Jeremiah.  We recognize all their names, and some of us remember when and where they prophesied.  In that time frame, Zephaniah would have come along some time after King Hezekiah’s reign when Assyria had besieged the city of Jerusalem, causing much adversity to the people.  But God delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians through the mighty arm and outstretched hand, and not by the military power of the armies of Judah. 

       King Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, reigned many years, gaining the reputation as one of the most evil kings of Judah.  After Hezekiah’s death, it seems that Manasseh aligned Judah with the imperial power of Assyria, cooperating with the empire in exchange for creating trading relationships.  Olive oil and other products of Judah’s agriculture became cash commodities and brought wealth into the land.  That might sound like an era of prosperity that would benefit everyone, but more likely King Manasseh cut special deals with his cronies, and a rich aristocracy became richer while the masses of the people lost their land, sold themselves into servitude, and struggled to meet daily needs. 

All the while, Manasseh supported those who wanted to bring the worship of Ba’al and many other gods back to the Temple, and set up altars on hillsides all over the land.  The Bible even accuses him of practicing human sacrifice in the ways of the nations.  When supporters of Manasseh’s father’s views tried to stand up to the king, he persecuted them.  He got the reputation as the king that killed the prophets.  Some believe he even killed the persistent and outspoken Prophet Isaiah.

       Zephaniah was probably directly aware of this history.  The book places him also during the reign of Josiah, during a time when Josiah’s sons were already becoming young men.  King Josiah is probably the most virtuous and most praised of the Kings after David, and he is not known for the same kinds of great moral failures we know from David’s reign.  Then again, much less is written about any king besides David.  Josiah restored the study and observance of the Torah, the gift of law and life that God had given to the children of Israel.  He restored pure and holy worship of the one true God of Moses and Zipporah, of Abraham and Sarah, the God who had called their ancestors and had brought them out of the land of Egypt. 

       Zephaniah knew how this had happened, how Judah’s leaders had by ebb and flow showed loyalty to the Lord and had turned away from the ways of the Lord.  His prophecies give the impression that he sees that even with Josiah’s reforms, not every part of society, not everyone in power, has embraced Josiah’s agenda.  Even Josiah’s sons seem drawn away from their father’s strong commitment to faith in the Lord.  The Kingdom of Judah had not yet faced its final destruction at the hands of Babylon.  But Zephaniah was clearly able to see the possibility that judgment might not be far away.  In a time when social divisions, class unrest, and cultural conflict remained ever-present and potential flash points, Zephaniah had a message to deliver.

       Zephaniah did not beat around the bush.  He did not sugar coat his words.  Zeph didn’t warm up slowly.  He did not tell a long story about twitter and hashtags to set things up.  He cut to the chase.  He went straight to the heart of it.  He left no prisoners.  How did Zephaniah’s prophecy begin?  He speaks the message of the Lord in these words,

“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth.”

Well, there’s not much left to say after that.  God is so sick of the corrupt, unjust, violent ways of the nations of the world, it’s going to be like the story of Noah.  Everything will be swept away.  Words like that will wake you up.  #StayWokeAdvent.

       Probably too often we find ourselves listening to preaching or Bible study with some expectation that what is going to be said is what we already know and have heard time and time again.  We think we have a pretty good idea of anything God might want to tell us.  We could just about doze off and not miss it since we’ve heard it all before.  God loves us.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Repent of sins.  Don’t kill.  Praise God.  Share your stuff.  Yada yada yada.  But then, just before dozing, along comes Zephaniah saying, “All of it is going away.  Everything.  The cities, the palaces, the temple, the houses, the jobs, the fields, the trees, the roads, the streams, the dogs, the cattle—everything.

       That will wake you up.  “Wait a minute, Zephaniah.  What did you say?  Did you say what I think you said?  That’s not what Brother Teacher told us last week.  That’s not what the Rev preached about on Sunday.  Can you run that by me again?”

       In the season of advent, do we expect to hear a word from God?  Do we expect that we are having the same advent observance we have every year and that all of it will be identical to last time?  Do we ever think that God might plan to overthrow everything we thought we knew in order to shed new light on the Scriptures for such a time as this?  Could it be we keep giving the same answers when the questions have changed?  Do new times bring new questions for our faith?  Does the Holy Spirit bring new life even in our time?  Are the mercies of the Lord really new every morning? 

Yet when young people come to us with their honest questions, how often are we tempted to tell them not to question what they have been told?  Do we discount their questions because we have become comfortable with our own faith and don’t want the Holy Spirit to rock the boat in our lives?  I can’t count how many seminary students who arrived at school dealing with years of guilt from being rebuked about the questions that rise up within them.  Too often, their elders and fellow-church members treated the Spirit’s stirring in them as a sign of unfaithfulness.  They are amazed to be told that God is bigger than their questions and can handle any question they have.  Is this the message of hope we are prepared to give young people in our church?

       I was blessed to hear Rev. William Barber recently, discussing the story of Jesus’ going into the temple and shutting down the shopping mall that had come to dominate the temple court.  He called it a den of thieves.  If it had been an honest and proper market giving people fair value for their money, then he probably would have called it something besides a den of thieves.  Commerce and consumption had taken over the center of worship, and it was commerce of the worst kind that took advantage of poor and weary travelers, overcharging and otherwise practicing injustice.  If merchants kept animals for sale in the temple, the house of worship had become a public dung heap.  Jesus saw it all for what it really was—abusive, corrupt, unjust economic exploitation that was perpetrated by the powerful, the religious leaders, the high council.  Those who should look out for the good of the people were using their positions to victimize the people.

       So Jesus shut it all down.  He turned over tables.  He twisted some cords and chased the animals out.  He disrupted and overthrew the systems of corruption and abuse and stepped into that space to reorder it around justice.  This was no respectability politics.  Jesus did not pull aside the head man in charge for a private and discreet conversation.  He did not set up a series of meetings to discuss possible best practices for the use of the temple court.  No, that’s not what he did.  He swept it all way.  He cleaned up the place and straightened out the right use of that space for anyone listening or watching him.  He blessed the poor and marginalized, healing blind and lame people, freeing them to see, to walk, and to run.  Jesus was sweeping away the old and bringing in the new.

       What Rev. Barber points out is a detail of the story that appears only in the Gospel of Matthew.  All the accounts of the story note that when Jesus did these and other things, the crowds in Jerusalem were amazed and astounded and mesmerized.  Mark’s and Luke’s gospels say the people were spellbound.  As you might imagine, the chief priests and scribes, the people in charge of the temple and of life in Jerusalem generally, were angry.  Their constant stream of revenue had been interrupted.  Their mechanism to take money from the poor and give it to the rich was being threatened.  They got especially mad about one thing that happened.

       Barber points out that after Jesus challenged corruption and took on injustice, and only after, did the young people start to pay attention.  Young people had likely been going along with the festivities.  They were used to seeing the religion of their parents and neighbors.  They also knew their parents and their neighbors well enough to have doubts about whether all this religious talk was real.  Their eyes and ears were pretty good hypocrisy detectors, and they were hanging off to the side, waiting to decide whether they should jump in the flow of things or maybe just toss it all out.

       But when these young people saw Jesus align his preaching directly with his actions, they joined in.  When they saw him actually challenge and battle injustice and corruption and not just give speeches and strike a pose as a defender of justice, their personal faith was activated.  They started crying out, “Hosannah, to the Son of David.”  They may even have been singing a familiar psalm of worship.  This integrity of talk and walk was what they had been waiting for.  Now they had hope that he could save their lives and their world from the evil so deeply embedded in them.

       Some people fear that our children have left the faith.  They think the young people have given up on God.  But more careful study is showing us that young people are drifting out of our churches not because they are losing faith in God, but because they are losing faith in existing churches’ ability to stand up to injustices in the world.  Churches have become bastions of respectability.  They are fortresses to keep out the riffraff while those inside congratulate ourselves for being such upstanding citizens.  Young people “ain’t got time for that.”  Ain’t nobody got time for that.  It’s time to be awake to the world in which God is active and powerful.  We need to stay woke, because Jesus is steadily standing at the doors of the churches, knocking, asking to be let in, while we continue in our same old way, never realizing Jesus is outside trying to get in and we are inside ignoring the people outside the door. 

Out in the streets, young people are challenging injustices with all the vigor and passion of youth.  And Jesus is also in the streets.  Don’t you think Jesus would have us join him in the streets?  Don’t you think the struggle to end police killing of unarmed black men and women could use the experience of elders alongside the energy of young people?  Isn’t there a way for the bold words of youth to and the wisdom of age to teach one another a thing or two?  Or will we stay inside because we think we don’t need what those outside have to offer us?

       Too often we think we have everything we need already.  Zephaniah spoke about people like that.  He said that among the comfortable and the powerful there are many who are self-satisfied.  They are sure they can thank themselves for all the good things they have in their lives.  He says that they sit on top of their piles of stuff and say, “God is not going to do anything good for us, and God is not going to do us any harm.”  In other words, they count on themselves, not on God.  They don’t look for God to be in their world.  They take God to be irrelevant.  Everything comes back to their own actions. 

But Zephaniah says they have it all wrong.  They may build fancy houses for themselves, but they will not get to live in them.  Instead, the Day of the Lord is coming.  In the tradition of Amos, Zephaniah says that we ought not expect that the coming of the Lord will leave things as they are.  The Day of the Lord will shake us up; it will shake things up.  So we had better stay woke.  We had better be ready rather than ruling God out of our lives. 

The New Testament lesson for this third Sunday in Advent tells about the work of John the Baptist, whose preaching woke many from their sleep.  He told them that “the axe is at the root.”  God was ready to dig up the whole plant, all the way down to the root, to cut it off below ground and leave no evidence on the surface that anything had been there at all.  Like Zephaniah, John discerned that God means to go to any length to get the world right.

Zephaniah said that after God swept away everything, there would be a new beginning.  After wild animals and birds had become the only occupants left where once great cities and civilizations had stood, then God would send in a remnant of the people.  Where devastation has brought down the wealthy, the powerful, and the haughty, God would send in the lame, the outcast, the ones who had been shamed by the world. 

Zephaniah said that all the leaders had failed their purpose.  The officials and rulers had failed to establish and maintain a just, peaceful world for people to live in.  They must be swept away.  The judges had failed to uphold the law and make sure that everyone is treated according to justice.  They must be swept away.  The prophets had spun tales and preached sermons to support the status quo and gain favor with the wealthy and powerful.  They must be swept away.  The priests had sustained religious practices built on injustice and oppression, offering only empty hope to the masses.  They must be swept away.

Yet Zephaniah could see that the same God who swept away oppression would reposition the weak and powerless into a place of praise and renown.  God will gather them.  They will not make it all happen.  They who had lost all hope were not sure whether they should hope at all.  But Zephaniah proclaims above all the despair and uncertainty that God will do it.  Won’t God do it?  God will do it.  All that we have dared to dream or hope for, all the justice and peacefulness and joy that we have waited for—God will do it.

That’s something to stay woke for.  In this advent season of awaiting the birth of Jesus, how shall we wait?  Mary waited through an unexpected pregnancy, through all the bodily struggles of pregnancy, all its uncertainties, all its dangers, for what she could only hope against hope to be true.  Joseph waited in his confusion and shame that he had been the greatest fool in the world to marry this pregnant girl.  The shepherds waited out in the fields, doing the dirty work of the world, wondering if and when their time would ever come. 

And in our day we wait for the time when the love of learning and longing of every soul to achieve matters as much as the anger of the privileged, a time when everyone can gain access to education at any level.  We wait for the time when people in authority won’t shoot first and tell lies later, when black lives matter equally.  We wait for the time when violence toward any is understood as violence against all.  We wait for a time when politicians cannot build a following through stoking the fires of fear and hatred toward people whose skin or religion is different from our own.   We wait for the time that a preacher cannot get cheers and applause for telling his congregation to get a gun and be ready to kill the enemy of the moment.  We wait for a time when the refugee, the homeless, the jobless, the orphan, the hungry, the weak, when every one of God’s children has a place of honor, love, and safety in this world. 

If we wait carelessly, sleepily, and without expectation, we may miss it when God shows up.  While we wait, we must wait as awake people.  We need our eyes wide open.  We need to stay woke.  God is moving here and now.  If I don’t receive the refugee while I wait, how will I recognize God’s showing up in the life of a refugee family trying to save the life of their baby?  If I don’t get into the streets with young people crying out for justice, how will I know when the King of Heaven goes walking down those streets and alleys to lift up the lowly and outcast.  If I am not where Jesus is walking, how will I hear the call to follow him? 

I must be awake, ready, anticipating the mighty work of God.  When John preached, people from all walks of life came out to hear and listen.  They were shaken by his message.  Awakened, they asked him what they should do.  In all cases, he pointed them toward a life of justice.  He told them to wake up to justice in living with their neighbors.  He told them to stay ready to do the right thing.  He told them to trust in God and not in the ways they could game the system in their own favor.  And the Gospel of Luke says that even though he told them they had to change their ways, they heard the good news in that message. 

God has a better way for you and for me.  We are waiting for it, and we can’t afford to sleep through it’s coming.  We don’t know just when God will sweep away the structures of injustice, but God will do it.  We don’t know what the means will be, but God will do it.  We want to be about the right work when it happens.  When a new heaven and a new earth start to appear, we need to be in God’s vicinity.  We need to be awake doing the work God has given us.  While we wait, we need to stay woke.  Let’s do this together.  Let’s stay woke in advent.  Let’s stay woke, because God will do it.  Amen.

Maybe you are here today and realize you have never awakened to God’s call to unite your life to God’s way.  You have not taken your first step to follow Jesus.  God is present here in this place, with us, ready to embrace you will the deep love that only can come from the one who made you for love.  If you need to wake up to God’s calling and purpose for your life today, the doors of the church are open.  We join with God ready to receive you into the reconciling power of God in Jesus Christ.  Come today and profess your desire and commitment to stay woke to God in your life.

Maybe someone here today finds yourself drifting along half asleep as the world passes by.  Maybe your hope and trust in God have faded over time because of the cares of the world.  Just as Israel waited through oppression in Egypt and through exile in Babylon, we wait this season for the God who liberates the oppressed and feeds the hungry.  If you are in Durham but not part of a congregation, know that God has called this gathering of pilgrims together in this corner of our city to be a people of love and care for one another and for our neighborhood.  If the Holy Spirit is prodding you to be part of our striving for faithfulness, there is no better time than now to unite your life to ours as we try to stay woke for what God will do.

As we stand together, as the musicians lead, let this be the day we commit to stay woke in advent and walk in readiness for what God will do.

Waiting for Something and Not Writing About It

Over the past two months I have sketched out many blog posts.  I have put down some notes about things I'd like to write.  I've even started writing what I thought would be one post, but later decided I needed to divide into about four different posts.  That one was really convoluted and complicated (I know, that's my style sometimes).  I thought of many things while driving to Texas and back at the end of October and beginning of November.  I have done a good bit of thinking about the current public outcry about the treatment of blacks by police and society, and wondered how much I should say and how much I should listen.  And I've been busy with teaching, reading papers, grading, and completing reports at work.

But I have come to see this week that one big barrier to writing here on this blog has been a kind of fearfulness about what is happening in my life.  It started to hit me when I read one of Denise Levertov's poems over a month ago.  So I've decided this is where I need to start.

The poem that I keep coming back to is called "Terror."

Face down; odor
of dusty carpet.  The grip
of anguished stillness.

Then your naked voice, your
head knocking the wall, sideways,
the beating of trapped thoughts against iron.

If I remember, how is it
my face shows
barely a line?  Am I
a monster, to sing
in the wind on this sunny hill

and not taste the dust always,
and not hear
that rending, that retching?
How did morning come, and the days
that followed, and quiet nights?

I bought the book of poems, having read lines from her in a post from The Plough, the publishing ministry of the Bruderhof communities.   Specifically, it was The Daily Dig, a daily email with a reflective quotation and a simple bit of photographic art that comes to me each day.  I looked for further information on the poet, and found that she had written poems about her own process of grief, so I rounded up copies of some of her books from used booksellers.  I've just finished reading the first one, which has the title of one of the poems about which I have posted before, With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads.  The poetic imagination and profound grief work have not disappointed.

About halfway through the book, I came to this poem.  The title put me off, and at first I could not see the link between the title and the poem.  But as the words rested on me for a while, I started to recognize that potential for terror.  The crux is in the first sentence of the third stanza:  "If I remember, how is it my face shows barely a line?"

The poem flows from an experience of utter desolation, face down in a carpet, engulfed in anguish.  The particularities of what is heard, what is smelled and tasted, the reaction of feeling the rending and retching, are not very specific.  But they portray the totality of the pain that the narrator has in memory.  It's not so far away.  The sensory remainder is conjurable.

But it is also not immediate.  The poem ends describing morning and the passing of days and quiet nights.  It expresses shock or dismay at singing out in the wide world.  And thus the "terror" at stake is the narrator's wondering if her ability to live on after such wrenching grief means that she has lost her humanity.  "Am I a monster?"  That is the terrorizing question.  It is stated in the extreme.  Maybe others might find ourselves asking more urbane questions such as, "Have I gotten off track?", or the common adolescent query, "Is something wrong with me?"  Still the heart of the question is the same.

The poet understands that going through something so terrible tears one apart, and the intense grief and pain are the human responses to the loss, the injury.  And so much of what I have written in the past two years has been in the midst of that intense pain.  I've reached out for solace, for understanding, for companions, for salve.  I've dug deep into the history of living a life with Everly.  I've marveled at her complex and expansive goodness.  I've imbibed the faith and faithfulness of my formation as a follower of Jesus, a child of God, a participant in the life of the Spirit.  And the smell of those hard days stayed ever present in my nostrils, the sounds, the images ever in mind.

I turned to everyone who would lend an ear and a kind word, trying to think of how I could go on.  I made pilgrimage to places where Everly and I had gone, to people whom Everly and I had known together.  I thought about what she and I had cared for and how we hoped to live our lives in the world.  I remembered the ways it had gone right and the ways it had not.  I sought to care for our children as she would do, always knowing I could offer my best, and at the same time never be what she was for them.  And I tried to discern what my life should be on the path that continues forward from her death and her absence.

As you know, I concluded that I should continue to teach at Shaw where I have now completed twenty-one years.  To do so, I determined it would be best to relocate back to North Carolina.  Because so much of our lives and view of the world have been shaped by Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, I bought a house just down the road from there.  In August, I moved to Durham and started setting up household, with the added blessing of having Naomi with me while she is attending graduate school down the road.  And having gotten back to being in town and on campus every week, rather than just a few weeks each semester as during the Texas sojourn, I started trying to become a more complete member of the faculty and participant in the work of the Divinity School.

Those efforts met with many successes, and some struggles.  I began to see emerging some of the characteristics that I remembered in myself from earlier days, and I believe they are also characteristics that Everly admired in me.  My life was taking new shape, and I was finding myself investing in my work and academic life in ways that I have not for many years.  A number of close friends and colleagues invested the time in me to engage my thinking and encourage my efforts, awakening a confidence I did not remember feeling for some time.

And thus, I arrived by increments to the place and time Levertov's poem describes.  Everly is on my mind daily.  I speak of her whenever I get an opportunity.  I have pictures of her in all the places I go.  But no longer does each day bring wrenching sobs.  I don't mean they never happen, but they are not so frequent as they were.  I am more likely to think and speak of her in pleasant memory and timely insight, without it always shifting into sharp pangs of grief.  So when this poem sank in, I thought to myself that I was somewhere along a path of change that put me in the midst of one of the grief tropes--that of the person who is noticing the change of intensity or even wondering if he "will forget her face" as the time passes.

I tend to resist almost any sort of classification system for human personality and behavior, including the so-called "stages of grief."  Yet there is little denying that over time the human mind and emotions can find a path of adaptation to the new circumstances of loss.  As I have mentioned before, fellow widower David Forbes calls it "renorming."  I'm adapting to the new normal.  And the new normal now includes my trying to make something of my life without Everly walking with me.  I've written this many times now, yet it can be a troubling thought.  Am I being unfaithful to her love and her importance if I am no longer so intensively feeling the pain?  This is the question the poem asks so harshly, "Am I a monster?"  It is the question asked in the Psalm of terror, "How can we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land?"

And so the poet faces the very same dilemma.  How can I sing?  And I think even further, how can I sing out in the world where people can see me?  I remember many times in the past year, and it still happens, when I seek to sing in church or I play music that I love, tears begin to flow and the words get choked up in my throat.  But sometimes I can sing.  And I might even feel like cutting loose a tune in front of people now and then.  Yet it contradicts a way of being that had become my standard.  It had become my characteristic way for some time to be the grieving widower, the pitiful, sad man.  Somewhere along the way, I have become less comfortable in those clothes.  I notice myself carrying on work and participating in groups without bringing all things back to my loss of Everly.  I wonder how this is possible, knowing how rough it has been during this season of life.  I find myself telling people, as I get to know them, about Everly's death without getting choked up.  I wonder if that makes me seem cold, even though my inward gaze still sees the time of weeping as present.

Once in a while, not every day and not even every week, I may find myself overwhelmed.  It may be at home, in the office, on a drive, or just about anywhere.  I've borrowed a term from Kate Campbell for those times:  "fade to blue."  It's from one of her songs, and it describes well the sort of drift into a sorrowful place that seems to have to happen now and then.  But those times have become rarer, if not less intense when they do come.

So this week I realized that my frustration over not having written for this blog in so long had somewhat to do with this poem.  Upon first reading it, I thought that it would make an excellent jumping off point for describing part of my journey of grief.  But perhaps subconsciously that nagging question was pressing in the other direction.  I was not sure I wanted to put a public face on how things have changed.  Is something wrong, that I don't feel the same pain the same way?  I don't believe that to be true.  It is not wrong.  It is next.  It is different.  It is walking another step.  It is living.

The change came from a whole lot of intentional work, of striving to keep on living, of discerning the particulars of a life I hope will be well lived.  Yet with all the effort, it also "snuck up" on me, as we say in these parts.  It came as something waited for without waiting.  It makes sense, but it was not itself the goal.  The goal was to live an honorable life that holds on to all that I have received from knowing Everly.  One outcome was to begin to find meaning and purpose in that life that offers its own rewards, even without her to share it.  I don't call it moving on.  Thank you to bob and mj patterson-watt for teaching me that we don't "move on."  That implies leaving Everly behind to go do something else.  So all of you friends of those who are grieving, there is another cliché to drop from your vocabulary.

If it's not moving on, and it's not monstrous, what is it?  You won't surprised if I say that it is a form of grace.  It is grace to live on in the face of unbearable loss.  It is the superabundant possibility of the grace in which we stand, wherein waiting (suffering) produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.  It is an unexpected life, partly undesired, yet bursting with grandeur, with "the dearest freshness deep down things."  Therefore, it may be moving, but without the connotation of being finished with something past.  It is a continuation of walking with a changed presence of my beloved.  And as I let myself think of what might come of the life we have thus far shared, I'll agree with the Indigo Girls, "When you're learning to face the path at your pace, every choice is worth your while." 

Out of this comes my Advent meditation.  Waiting for the little child who will lead--God the baby entering our world, and now each year waiting again.  In this season, I wait to see what this new life will be.  I wait to write, partly because I fear what it might mean.  Yet as Everly would assure me, I don't need to fear.  Her message, like that of the angel on that blessed night, "Don't be afraid, for there is good news of great joy."  Don't postpone it.

Advent, Christmas, and Everly

Yesterday, December 18, was one week until Christmas Day, and five months since Everly breathed her last, calm breath.  David started the day by getting on the road to NC.  His wonderful friend Lila will be married this week in NC.  I am praying she can have even more than the 33 years of partnership that Everly and I shared. 

Hugh Delle woke up yesterday with discomfort and swelling in her toe.  She contacted her doctors, and before mid-afternoon she had been in two clinics. By noon one doctor had her taking antibiotics, and by 4 pm she had had another surgery to remove the tips of two toes, hoping to head off another long bout of struggling with infection.  Many of you remember her battles in the first part of 2013 fighting infection in her foot.  The prescribed antibiotics ultimately put her into severe danger and hospitalization in June and July, delaying her return from NC at the time of Everly's death.  So with close medical supervision, we are reevaluating our Broadway family Christmas plans, hoping there will be a turnaround that could let her travel to see Jerene and Jim after Christmas Day.

Lydia and I drove to Waco for the Baylor Basketball doubleheader yesterday.  Everly got our family going to Baylor women's basketball games, buying season tickets last year, that she and I mostly used.  Lydia, of course, attended with her student ID.  This year, without Brittney Griner, the playing style is different, and the attendance is down.  The kids have not been as enthusiastic about attending.  David, Naomi, Lydia, and I all attended one game together early in the season, but the prominent of absence of Everly made it hard for all of us. 

Most games have been on weeknights, so the Austin to Waco drive is a bit much before work or classes.  And Lydia's work load was so intense this semester, with all kinds of group projects and lab activities plus business and social enterprise work that she often could not get away. They also are probably a bit tentative because of missing their mom.  By the way, both Baylor teams won yesterday, in two close games.

As people keep telling me, we all grieve differently. I've attended all the games I could so far, in part because it keeps me doing something that I used to do with Everly.  She loved going to Baylor and watching the women's team play, as do I.  With attendance so low this year, I have not actually sat in my assigned seats yet.  I usually find friends like Katie Cook, Sharon Rollins, or Barry Harvey to sit with.  The drive, through the perpetual I-35 NAFTA Highway construction zone, is tedious, but it keeps me close to her.

That was yesterday.  As Christmas draws closer, we are feeling our way forward, wondering how things will be.  We have planned to spend time on Christmas Day with the Estes family in Austin.  David, who has Lila's wedding and another wedding in Philadelphia later, has to miss that family gathering.  But we all agreed he needs to be with Lila on this special day. 

After Christmas, we will drive together to Black Mountain, NC, to see Jerene and Jim.  David will join us there.  WD and HD are expecting to go, although I have my doubts at this point.  She will have several doctor visits between now and Christmas, so I hope we can make the best decision.  I know Mom will be very sad if she has to stay in Texas, but no one wants hospitalization in Asheville again.

After some time with the Broadways in Black Mountain, our four Broadways will take a couple days retreat to a mountain cabin for some family time.  Several people said we should plan something completely different as part of this first Christmas season, so that is what we came up with.  We'll take some board games, swimsuits for getting in the hot tub, books for reading, maybe a couple of movies, and boots to hike if it's not too cold.  It should be a good time for just comfortably moving into and out of conversations about Everly while being able to support one another.  That's what we are hoping. 

Naomi helped us get the Christmas season started by buying a Groupon to take the four of us to dinner at a fancy fondue restaurant called The Melting Pot.  Without the 50% discount, probably none of us would ever have gone there.  Fondue during the holidays has been a Broadway family tradition, but we've always done it at home. 

The thing about fondue is that it takes time for cooking each bite, so there is plenty of time for visiting, as compared to the usual rushed meal times of day to day.  We had a great time just talking and laughing and thinking about our lives together.  After it was over, I had to agree with Lydia's comment as the two of us walked toward the restaurant, "Naomi's doing the Mommy job and getting us organized to be together."  Each of the kids has wonderful characteristics passed to them by their mother.

Everly was our big-time Christmas planner.  She arranged everyone's schedules.  She went out with the kids to help them shop and to find the things they needed or wanted for Christmas.  She unpacked and repacked the ornaments for the tree.  She made sure all the gifts were in place with bows on them.  She enjoyed and promoted the big events of gift-giving and opening.  She instructed me on what to cook.  She took care of lots of the cleanup.

This year Hugh Delle was not feeling up to setting up a Christmas tree, especially since we will be gone during the Christmas season.  Lydia put one up in her apartment in Waco.  Hugh Delle had me help her get out wreaths and some other Christmas decorations which she has put around the house. 

It's a different sort of Christmas without Everly in charge.  We decided to tone down the Christmas gift buying this year.  But that turned out to be harder for me than I expected.  I felt an inner drive to try to live up to, at least in some way, Everly's caring gift-giving to our children.  My gifts will probably seem less personal, more practical, and more oddball than hers.  But at last count I had hit double digits in the number of packages I had for each of the kids.  Oh, well, I thought I would cut back.  Naomi has been loving the chance, with her first job providing a real paycheck, to buy gifts this year.  Overall, we're feeling our way into a new era.

Advent, as a season of waiting, is different from last year for us.  Last year we were waiting to see how progress was coming with a new chemotherapy plan.  It turned out, by February, that it had not worked well for Everly.  But we had been very hopeful in December, when reports said that one last persistent tumor might be reduced to the point of clearing out all of the visible cancer from her liver.

This year we wait in part for the celebratory season to pass.  We wait to see if we can make it through.  We wait to share some very painful joys of enacting our traditions with Everly's absence. 

I think it might be like what some have said about the long silent periods in the history of Israel.  The trajectory of life and nationhood they had anticipated was interrupted and took a very different turn.  So they waited to see what might come next.  Sometimes they held onto the faith that God's mercies would continue to be new every morning and that springs might come forth in the desert.  Other times they felt that God had lost interest in them and cared little whether they were righteous or unrighteous.  I suspect other times they just went through motions and felt numb, only to be surprised by pains on some days and joys on others.  I think that's how we are waiting this year.  What will the coming of the Christ Child mean?

Everly had a certificate describing the meaning of her name, a gift that someone had given her.  "Everly" as a first name was a kind of "coined" name.  But its first three letters, Eve, is a very ancient name.  The certificate said it means "full of life."  It can also mean "mother of life," or simply "living one."  Whether or not her parents had ever thought through those historical meanings for her name, it certainly came to be true of her.  She was the life of the party.  She was the life in our partnership.  And she was the mother of life in our family.  So this Advent, we wait for that life to rise in us, the seeds she planted and nurtured.

I planted more wildflowers today, in 72 degree weather at our Chisholm Trail home:  purple shamrock oxalis, Tahoka daisies, and three types of coreopsis--dwarf red plains, golden wave, and plains.  Lydia helped me plant 100 tall Dutch iris bulbs, mostly purple with a few yellows mixed in.  A couple of days ago I put out Red Drummond Phlox. 

On our honeymoon, on a couple of days we drove out around Caddo Lake and Lake o' the Pines in northeast Texas to look at wildflowers.  I had a new guidebook on wildflowers of Texas, so we stopped now and then for me to get out and try to identify something.  I remember wearing an orange shirt that summery day.  I must have looked like the Great Wildflower of Destiny to the bees, and they decided to gather around me to get a taste.  So we had to quit getting out of the car. 

Our two temperaments were obvious on that day.  Everly enjoys flowers and fresh air, but she quickly draws the line when she starts feeling uncomfortable, hot, sweaty, itchy, etc.  My single-tracked mind was pulling me toward exhaustive knowledge of wildflowers on that day.  Everly lost enthusiasm for the project sooner than I did, with the pollen, the hot sun, and the bugs.  Thanks to the bees, we got on the same page pretty quickly.  That would be one of the earliest memories of our marriage.

Here we are today waiting. Hugh Delle is struggling with pain and medications, waiting to get better.  David is driving the long trek to Durham, waiting to reunite with friends.  Lila is awaiting a ceremony to mark off a new path and new hopes.  Lydia has gone to stay with Naomi as they wait for the intensity of the season to begin.  I could not post this journal entry for four hours while we waited for a power outage to end and restore our online access. 

And now bulbs and seeds are in the ground, both at the cemetery and in our yard on Chisholm Trail.  The irises and wildflowers are another sign of waiting, seeds waiting to grow, bulbs waiting to shoot forth, colors and life that will emerge in spring and summer to remind us of our very own Mother of Life who will never leave us.

Rachel Weeping

Another day, another massacre.  This is where we have arrived.  Psychologists have studied the pattern by which people become desensitized to violence.  Although there are plenty of arguments about what such desensitization might mean for future human actions, there seems to be an agreement that exposure to acts of violence over time has the effect of reducing emotional responses, sensitivity, to subsequent exposure to violent acts.

Once, television viewers had little experience of the grotesque images of death in war.  Then reporters from Vietnam began to dispatch film of the horrors of that war.  Eventually, the dinnertime news viewing included a daily dose of explosions and war.  Now, the instantaneous images of weapons, explosions, dismemberment, and death, are round-the-clock backdrops for ads to shop at Target or take Cialis, but avoid four-hour erections.

The regularity of mass shootings in the US is making them blend into the background.  I sadly admit that I read the headline about Newtown, CT, on my screen, clicked to get a few details, and went back to whatever I was doing.  It was barely a blip on my daily rounds.  The facts of a young man killing his own mother and also killing kindergartners, continued to work on me, so I can say with some relief that I am not utterly desensitized.

What became obvious to me, as I seek to be formed by the Christian calendar and live these days in the Season of Advent, was that church people would need to turn to Matthew's text on the slaughter of the innocents.

A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more (NRSV).

I was not alone in this judgment, and various fellow-travelers began to write about these words.  I was even blessed to hear a sermon on this text on Sunday morning.  I posted on facebook that I was glad not to have to preach today because of the danger of sounding smug:  Christians sometimes sound like they can pretend bad stuff is not so bad since they know how everything is going to turn out in the end.  But that is a little bit of a cop-out.  Lots of other preachers had to step into the pulpit whether they felt ready, capable, or not.

I think what speaks most loudly to the church in this moment is that the so-called best country in the world is no less marked by the radicality of evil than was the land of God's chosen people twenty centuries ago.  In Bethlehem's case, it was a powerful ruler exercising ruthless power to try to cut off any challenges to his dynasty, even if it meant killing babies.  In Newtown, we only can begin to imagine the tortured mind of a killer who plans and executes the murder of little children.

In both cases, we find ourselves living in a world armed and capable of massive, unexpected, unspeakable violence.  Someone within reach of all of us could carry it out, whether it be under orders in an electronically furnished bunker controlling unmanned Predator drones, or it be an unknown, largely unnoticed average guy picking up a gun here, some bullets there, planning, plotting, stirring up the impulse borne of rage, recklessness, anomie, or whatever drives such methodical, industrial, technical, prolific, cold, steely murder.

In everyday places--theaters, malls, classrooms, sidewalks, office towers--unspeakable violence can and does erupt.  In Nigeria and Pakistan it can happen in church, or on a train.  In Iraq it may be in a mosque or in a crowd on pilgrimage.  In Gaza and Israel it's on a bus or in the workplace.  In Wazyristan it's at a wedding.  In Afghanistan its among a group of girls learning to read.  In Congo it's in a village that got in the way of a war.  In all these places, even in our own hometowns, evil organizes, buys and sells its wares, seduces and steals hearts, corrupts intellect, breeds violence.

Rachel weeps and continues weeping for her children.  On that day long ago, Mary escaped with the little one, Jesus, and fled to another country where he continued his childhood as an undocumented immigrant, a refugee, a boy on the run.  So many other mothers were not so fortunate.  They were not consoled, because their babies were no more.  They would not see them play again.  They would not get to feed them again.  They would not see them grow, make them new clothes when they outgrew the old ones.  They had left only a long emptiness.

The kind of love that endures, relives, cherishes the moments, longs for one more shared embrace, is itself a sign of the depth of love we might find in God.  The mothers who weep in Gaza and Israel, in Columbine and Newtown, are themselves the image of a God who weeps.

It's not a day to say something sweet and neat about God's ultimate victory.  The boy in Bethlehem whose parents helped him flee infanticide, as a grown man eventually had to run away to Galilee after the next king in the dynasty beheaded his cousin and was looking for him.  The mother who was blessed to see her son live to adulthood had to witness his murder at the hands of another ruler from another land.  Rachel is weeping and is not consoled.  It is not the will of God that any should perish.  Today we try not to sink into the abyss by gingerly letting our feet and our tears fall on the breadth of God's sorrow at the way humanity dispatches our brothers and sisters without regret.  Today we hope against hope that such a God may one day deliver us.

Advent Aspect

When I was growing up, I did not know about Advent.  It had been swept away centuries before in the iconoclastic fury of the late reformation, bundled together with an inchoate bundle of artifacts and traditions under the category "Popery."  Any so-called Protestant still willing to hold on to such things fell into the class of "false churches," most notably because they continued the practice of infant baptism.

As a seminarian in my younger twenties, Advent came as a breath of fresh air.  It was a way of getting ready for Christmas that departed from the cultural liturgy of Santa praise, affluenzic consumption, and trumped up cheeriness.  It gave us more ways to be drawn back to the scriptures and the stories.  We learned that it was a time of waiting, a pre-celebratory season, a time to remember the difference between certitude and hope.  There were centuries in which tropes of Messianic promise took form in polyphonic harmony and dissonance (thanks Barry Harvey for this language).  The bluesmen and blueswomen that were prophets played and replayed these riffs as improvisational jazz (Jon Michael Spencer, Cornel West, and many others here).  It was music and language for meditation and imagination of God's presence and plan.

During the thirty or so years since that time, many Advents have come and gone.  In the intensity of graduate school, new jobs, and grading papers, the shine wore off for me and I just wanted to get the season over with.  Moments of interruption, when the Spirit would break into the monotony and stress would sometimes remind me what a gift the season of Advent could be.  Of course, other parents will remember with me, that in those years when Everly was pregnant with our three children, Advent took on a certain aspect, a recognition of the struggle of Mary who had fled her hometown embarrassed yet hoping for the word of Gabriel to be fulfilled.  And in the subsequent years when our three little infant children had their first Christmas, the wonderment of an infant child full of promise and blessing brought another aspect to Advent.

In this fifty-fourth Advent of my time in this world, there is a new aspect.  We have been doing lots of waiting this year.  We wait for the report on medical imaging scans.  We wait for the drugs to trickle into Everly's bloodstream.  We wait for the symptoms to start after each treatment.  We wait for the symptoms to subside again.  We wait to hear what the next step will be.  And we wait for a possible respite from this harsh mercy known as chemotherapy.  Shadows lurk in our going out and coming in.

Everly's work as an educator, a leader, and a world-changer has been intense, with long hours.  Now she waits to feel good enough to put in a couple of hours of activity during the day.  She waits for doctors and pharmacies to return her calls.  She waits for me to have the focus and drive to be her partner in all she is facing.  Whatever the future holds, she waits with confidence that she can share it with her loved ones.  Her siblings, her parents, our children, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law--we all stay close, treasuring the gift she is for each one of us.

Some of the triumphal theology of Americanism has eroded:  good riddance.  The idea that everything will always be the same as it has been sank into the sea.  It makes a little more existential sense why someone would ask, "How can we sing the songs of Zion now that all this has happened?"

So it is a good time to start anew in the Broadway household.  It is a good time to remember the stories of others who longed for redemption's song.  And it is a good time to remember that after waiting, the Word became flesh and moved in next door.

Buy Nothing Day

There's nothing like an economic crisis to get us thinking about our spending. Reports on retail sales indicate many people are cutting back on spending. Wal-Mart and Costco are still making good profits, so it seems that the people who are shopping are inclined to hunt for bargains. The advertisements are getting thicker and rowdier in my newspaper and my mailbox. SALE! SALE! SALE! A Target commercial on TV has little children acting in a school Christmas pageant about going shopping.


As we approach the end of this Christian year and the beginning of the next with Advent, we find ourselves living in conflicting times. The standard calendar, the Christian calendar, the school calendar, and the shopping calendar are out of sync. Advent tells us to pause and reflect, awaiting what God will do. School tells us to burrow in and study, finish projects, and pull all-nighters. Shopping tells us that Christmas is the high festival of consumption, and we must offer sacrifices at the malls and department stores for a month in advance, especially on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving Day.

In an effort to recover some sanity about this time of year, a variety of groups have renamed Black Friday as "Buy Nothing Day." Rather than get caught up in a feeding frenzy of shopping, they say to use this day for family time, doing things together, playing games, telling stories, serving others. An entry in the God's Politics Blog suggests using the day to make things rather than buy things. Give some thought to making a different use of the Friday after Thanksgiving.