First Sunday of Advent, 2011

Well, it is the first Sunday of Advent and I am feeling a mixture of excitement, trepidation and all of the other things that tend to come along with beginnings. I have to say I love the sense of new opportunities, a chance to "begin" once again in one's relationship with God and to one's faith even if that beginning is "just" another turn in the spiral of deepening communion. Ordinarily each day gives me the sense of such a new beginning, a sense that there will be fresh experiences, insights, and surprises ahead, but it is wonderful to have beginnings and times of preparation built into the liturgical year.

Each day, each week, and each year we are able to remind ourselves that Jesus needs to be allowed to reveal himself to us on his own terms. He comes as a human being and reveals divinity (and what it means to be human!) exhaustively by entering every moment and mood of human existence. It is a literally incomprehensible mystery and so each day, week, and year the dynamic repeats --- "Let me show you again," Jesus says, "deeper this time, more fully; let me invite you into my story so that you truly make it your own. Listen!! Let's begin at the beginning so that you can bring yourself in new ways, fresh and surprising ways as I call to you in my nativity, my hidden life, my public ministry, my death, resurrection, and my ascension so that in your response you become part of MY story as well --- so that you love with me, minister with and even to me, pray and suffer with me as I do with you."

Any real achievement takes preparation and Advent is such a time for us. The opportunity to begin anew is a gift of God. We rarely get such a chance otherwise, for without the grace (mercy, forgiveness, healing, and offer of new life) of God we are condemned to move ahead dragging our failed broken lives along with us. We might try to repress or forget all of this "stuff" of our lives, but without Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that will be either illusion or delusion. Yet with Christ and in the rhythm of liturgical time we can truly begin again. As I wrote last year, in Christ the future (where God is our absolute future) draws us forward and into itself. Whether that means a totally new beginning or the freshness of new opportunities for deepening and radicalizing our faith and lives, Advent invites us to conversion and so too, to a new chapter in our relationship with God and our deepest, truest selves.

For me, the focus in all of this this year will include growing in my participation in Christ's own life and story in a much more conscious way. My spirituality has most always, I think, focused on allowing him to participate in my story, to be "God with (me)." But, I have become aware that I have not really been open to seeing the truth of things from the other perspective, and I really need to do that!! (Parts of what sometimes pass for "suffering with Jesus" spirituality are not healthy and so I have eschewed them; I am not speaking of those here.) But friendships are really reciprocal and while I have allowed Jesus to be friend to me, it has not always made sense to me to "befriend" Jesus and to really be an integral part of HIS personal story, though it is, in many ways, the essence of discipleship. There is lots for me to think about in all this, and also significant places in my own heart which are touched by this perspective differently than with my more usual point of view. Excitement and trepidation. Trepidation and excitement. To become (more consciously) part of Jesus' own story. What an awesome invitation!! I love new beginnings -- whichever form they take!