Advent. Gather

I just put down my aunt’s annual Christmas letter. She is my mom’s younger sister, so reading her note naturally has me thinking about my mom. Gathering was my mom’s favorite thing in the world. Getting her kids, her grandkids, and assorted friends together brought her more joy than anything else in life.

Mom, with a sweater that includes handprints
of my three kids from many years ago.

There did not need to be any occasion, because the simple fact of gathering was occasion enough. Of course, occasions provide good excuses, and the holidays are an occasion often marked by gatherings.

That cuts many ways. Deaths, disagreements, and simple contingencies of life change the nature of the gathering. We’re gathering our closest dear ones later today to mark my 60^th, and illness will keep us from being whole. We’ll get together again in a couple of weeks when Christmas comes, and I’m sure that the losses we’ve experienced during the year will be felt more closely. Gathering does that, too, when it reminds you of who’s not present.

Such gathering, though, should also remind us to focus on the ones who are present. Love those near to you right now because the next gathering is never promised.

Advent. Water

Water is life. The water protectors at Standing Rock reminded us of that fundamental truth. Advent invites us to watch for another truth: there is living water that quenches parched places in our souls.

You don’t have to be a follower of Jesus to understand the parched places in human souls. Moreover, contrary to the guardians of orthodoxy, Jesus is not the only bearer of living water to quench that thirst.

As Norman McLean wrote at the end of his short masterpiece, A River Runs Through It, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.”

The world’s great religious traditions bear water like the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Nile, the Yangtze. Eventually the water from those great rivers runs into great oceans and the tides carry the water, the silt, the detritus, the ships, and all the rest across ever line the cartographers of orthodoxy imagine.

The water we drink, as David LaMotte sings it (beneath a younger head of hair in the video below), has “quenched the thirst of seven others beneath a younger sun.” The prayers we pray, the living water we swallow with our hearts and souls and bodies, have quenched the thirst of many others, too. Advent promises us that the well will never run dry.

Advent. Harmony

I ran across an app the other day that is supposed to help users learn vocal harmony lines more easily. It’s not free, so I didn’t check it out. I want harmony to be free … and easy.

Alas, harmony is often challenging and sometimes costly, even if we’re still talking about music. Back-up singers don’t sing for free!

The harmony that Advent heralds is, of course, more complicated than even complex musical harmonies. Rather than two-, or three-, or even five-part harmonies, the harmony Advent heralds is that between the human and the divine. Oh, Advent posits a God-in-three-part-harmony as well.

Perhaps that’s why Christmas comes to us in song. This one comes from my friend Matt Black.