How Do I Deal With Enforced Solitude During this Time?

[[Dear Sister, I am one of those people who hates to stay in! I am an extravert and love to spend time with friends. But  now I am having to stay in and it is causing anxiety --- though I am sure part of that is being scared because of the Corona Virus. I wondered if you ever feel these kinds of things when you are alone? Do you have any suggestions on ways to lessen anxiety or spend my time in this enforced solitude?]]

Great questions. Thanks. What is striking to me, and has been striking to those I am in touch with, is what this Lenten season has plunged us into. We begin Lent with stories of Jesus being driven into the desert (wilderness) by the Spirit, and of the fundamental choice we are each called to make again and again, not only during this season -- choose life not death! And we are still in Lent -- a Lent which is being deepened and will be extended beyond what we ever expected. I say this because my first suggestion is to stay in touch with this season; it will help contextualize the situation in which we find ourselves and even normalize it to some extent. Above all it will provide a perspective which is more familiar and can make some sense of the novel and unfamiliar circumstances we are now experiencing. Allow the things we talk about all during Lent to be the categories through which you view what is being asked of you by this pandemic: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.

Fasting will take many forms as your normal routine and the normal ways of making sense of your life are taken away from you. If you are used to thinking of fasting in terms of food, that may still work, but it will be extended to time with friends, social activities, the availability of necessary items, etc. Prayer will also be extended and deepened for many people in light of the circumstances. I would certainly encourage this in your own daily life. It may be difficult to spend time in quiet prayer if you are not used to it (though I encourage you to try this by starting with limited periods (15 minutes) of simply being quiet with God), but you can sit and consider those people you most love, those you would be spending time with, family, etc and simply allow yourself to be with them as a supportive presence. Let whatever feelings you have for these people come up, let yourself love them, feel grateful for them and all they are for you, and ask God to be with them as they also are suffering in various ways. Almsgiving is certainly something we can deepen and extend during this Lenten period (and beyond it). One way is by refusing to become greedy or engage in hoarding or gouging behavior. Another is by doing errands for those who cannot get out or don't have transportation. Another is by giving what we can to those without housing, adequate heat, food, or hygiene. In suggesting these kinds of things I am aware I am really suggesting nothing more than the Church asks from us every Lent. The Pandemic is not the will of God, but at the same time it can be used as an opportunity for the Spirit to work in our lives.

Yes, sometimes I feel anxiety in solitude, though not usually because of the solitude itself. I expect a lot of people are going to be experiencing cabin fever. I would urge you to find indoor activities you can get truly engrossed in. If you are a reader then do more of that, if you like puzzles, set a table aside for this and begin a large puzzle you've been waiting on. If you keep a journal (or if it is time to start one!) consider doing that and write about your experience. How about coloring or painting or some other thing you've been wanting to try? What about an online class in something that interests you? There are many of these available including languages, Scripture, history, DIY projects, etc. And, speaking of DIY projects, I should definitely mention those big time cleaning and culling projects we all put off! Most of us have activities we complain we don't have time for. Well, now is the time. Please don't expect to ease all of your anxiety; if you can allow yourself to feel this is normal, uncomfortable as it is, do that. If you need to distract yourself in some way (taking a solo drive* or walk, or a walk with a single friend, watching TV, etc) then do that. Add these things to the essential Lenten elements mentioned above. Some of these can easily become prayer: simply ask God into whatever activity you are undertaking. Do this in a conscious way and renew the invitation or your thanks to God for being with you in this occasionally throughout.

And of course, find ways to maintain contact with friends, Skype, Zoom, or Facetime conversations, phone calls and texting could be very helpful here. Schedule some of these so you have something to look forward to. Expectations are an important piece of dealing with solitude, especially when one is not used to it. (In prayer it is important not to have expectations re what kind of experience it will be, for instance, but at the same time it can help to build in things you really enjoy at specific times so you can look forward to them as you move through the tedium of the day.) I should add here that it is often mainly the tedium of days in solitude which really gets to folks**; we all experience this. Sometimes we forget that our need for novelty does not satisfy our need for genuine newness. What monastics/hermits know is that our lives with God are filled with genuine (qualitative) newness each day even when there is not a lot of novelty. That requires real patience and trust in God. I have written about this in the past so you might check for articles on this if you are interested. cf., Always Beginners as a start. Getting used to fasting from novelty and opening ourselves to qualitative newness is something this time might allow you (and others) to do -- something that is especially important given the fact that this situation is going to be longer-lasting than we have yet let ourselves realize. As time goes on I may suggest other things to assist with enforced solitude. For now I sincerely hope this is helpful.
_____________________

*Except for necessary trips such drives are not allowed in the SF Bay Area. (I admit I don't understand this limitation if one is alone.)

** Though I have not written about this before, I should mention that another issue in solitude is finding that one simply doesn't like oneself very much. I can't address that here of course, but it is something folks should be aware of since it raises all kinds of feelings, irritation, fear, anxiety, anger, etc. For those who simply don't trust themselves or their own inner resources in such a situation as this pandemic, solitude can also be quite difficult. Again, these folks can use this period as a Lenten period of growth and new experience calling for patience and trust. Whether we like ourselves well or not, we will need to trust that our own inner capacities and resources are greater than we might have imagined otherwise. Above all we trust in the love of a God who accompanies us in everything.

What do you Like Best About Eremitical Life?

 [[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered if you could explain what you like best about the eremitical life? Since you don't do a lot of active minis-try that would provide variety, I am assuming that is not a favorite part, so what is? Maybe this is not the best way to ask the question. I guess I am really wondering what part of your life is most enriching or what part you look forward to every day especially if every day is the same because of your schedule. I hope you can understand what I am asking here. Thank you.]]

Now that is a challenging question! It is not challenging because I don't know what I look forward to each day or really like, but because there is no one thing I like best. I guess saying that out loud gives me the key to answering your question then.  What I like best about eremitical life is the way I can relate to God and grow in, with, and through him in this vocation. This is also a way of saying I like the way this vocation allows me to serve the Church and world despite or even through the limitations I also experience. Each of the elements of my life helps in this and some days I like one thing more than another but still, that is because each one contributes to my encounter with God --- usually in the depths of my own heart --- in different ways, to different degrees, on different days.

So, on most days I love the silence and solitude and especially I love quiet prayer periods or more spontaneous times of contemplative prayer which intensify these and transform them into the silence of solitude --- where I simply rest in God's presence or, in the image I have used most recently, rest in God's gaze. It is here that I come to know myself as God knows me and thus am allowed to transcend the world's categories, questions, or judgments. Sometimes these periods are like the one prayer experience I have described here in the past. But whether or not this is true, these periods are ordinarily surprising, or at least never the same; they are transformative and re-creative even when it takes reflective time to realize that this has been happening.

Another thing that I do each day which is usually something I really love is Scripture, whether I do that as part of lectio or as a resource for study or writing. Engagement with Scripture is one of the "wildest rides" I can point to in my life. It is demanding, challenging, and often exhilarating. Sometimes it doesn't speak to me in any immediately dramatic way. But it works on my heart like water on something relatively impervious --- gradually, insistently, and inevitably. Other times, for instance when reading Jesus' parables or other's stories about Jesus, or even the theological reflection of John and Paul, I have the sense that I am being touched by a "living word" and brought into a different world or Kingdom in this way. It always draws me in more deeply and even when I have heard a story or passage thousands of times before something speaks to me on some level in a new way, leads to a new way of understanding reality, or shows me something I had never seen before.

A third piece of this life I love and look forward to is the writing I do. Some of this is specifically theological and there is no doubt that my grappling with Scripture is important for driving at least some of my writing. Whether the writing is the journaling I do for personal growth work, the blogging I do which, in its better moments is an exploration of canon 603 and its importance, a reflection on Scriptures I have been spending time with, or the pieces which can be labeled "spirituality," they tend to be articulations of what happens in prayer and in my own engagement with Christ. One topic I spend time on, of course, is reflection on the place of eremitical life under canon 603 in the life of the Church herself. Since I am especially interested in the possibility of treating chronic illness as a vocation to proclaim with one's life the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a special vividness, and since I have come to understand eremitical solitude as a communal or dialogical reality which is especially suited to the transfiguration of the isolation associated with chronic illness, etc, I write a lot about canon 603 and the solitary eremitical vocation.

A second area of theology I return to again and again is the theology of the Cross. I remember that when I first met with Archbishop (then Bishop) Allen Vigneron he asked me a conversation-starter kind of question about my favorite saint. I spoke about Saint Paul (wondering if perhaps I shouldn't have chosen someone who was not also an Apostle --- someone like St Benedict or St Romuald or St John of the Cross) and began to talk about his theology of the cross.  I explained that if I could spend the rest of my life trying to or coming to understand his theology of the cross I would be a happy camper. (I have always wondered what Archbishop Vigneron made of this unexpected answer!)

I saw incredible paradoxes and amazing beauty in the symmetries and strangely compelling asymmetries of the cross and I still discover dimensions I had not seen. Most recently one of these was the honor/shame dialectic and the paradox of the glory of God revealed in the deepest shame imaginable. I have written previously about God being found in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. This paradox is a deepening of that insight. The Cross is the Event which reveals the source even as it functions as the criterion of all the theology we have that is truly capable of redeeming people's lives. It is the ultimate source of the recent theology I did on humility as being lifted up to be seen as God sees us beyond any notions of worthiness or unworthiness. My life as a hermit allows me to stay focused on the cross in innumerable ways, not only intellectually (reading and thinking about this theology), but personally, spiritually, and emotionally. That is an incredible gift which the Church --- via the person of Archbishop Vigneron and the Diocese of Oakland --- has given me in professing and consecrating me as a diocesan hermit.

There are other things I love about eremitical life (not least the limited but still significant (meaningful) presence and ministry in my parish it makes possible or my spiritual direction ministry); these are also related in one way and another to the person I am in light of living contemplatively within the Divine dialogue I know as the silence of solitude. One of the things which is especially important to me is the freedom I have to live my life as I discern God wills.

Whether I am sick or well, able to keep strictly to a schedule or not, I have the sense that I live this life by the grace of God and that God is present with me in all of the day's moments and moods. It doesn't matter so much if writing goes well or ill, if prayer seems profound or not, if the day is tedious or exciting, all of it is inspired, all of it is what I am called to and I am not alone in it. This means that it is meaningful and even that it glorifies God. I try to live it well, of course, and I both fail and succeed in that, but I suppose what I love best is that it is indeed what I am called to live in and through Christ. It is the way of life that allows me to most be myself in spite of the things that militate against that; moreover it is the thing which allows me to speak of my life in terms of a sense of mission.  The difficulty in pointing to any one thing I most like about eremitical life is that, even if in the short term they cause difficulty, struggle, tedium, etc., all of the things that constitute it make me profoundly happy and at peace. I think God is genuinely praised and glorified when this is true.

I hope this gives you something of an answer to your question. I have kind of worked my way through to an actual answer --- from the individual pieces of the life that are most life giving to me to the reasons this life as a whole is something I love. One thing I hope I have managed to convey is that even when the schedule is the same day to day, the content is never really the same because at the heart of it is a relationship with the living and inexhaustible God. Your question focuses on the absence of variety and in some ways, the absence of novelty (neos). But really there is always newness rooted in the deeper newness (kainotes) of God.

Imagine plunging into the ocean at different points within a large circle. The surface looks the same from point to point but the world one enters in each dive is vastly different and differently compelling from place to place. So, following the same daily horarium, I sit in the same chair (or use the same prayer bench) to pray; I work at the same desk day in and day out. I open the same book of Scriptures and often read the same stories again and again or pray the same psalms, and so forth. I rise at the same hour each day, pray at the same times, eat the same meals at the same hours, wear the same habit and prayer garment, make the same gestures and generally do the same things day after day. There is variation when I am ill or need to leave the hermitage, but in the main it is a life of routine and sometimes even tedium. But the eremitical life is really about what happens below the surface as one opens oneself to God. It is the reason the classic admonition of the Desert Fathers, "Dwell (remain) in your cell and your cell will teach you everything" can be true, the only reason "custody of the cell" is such a high value in eremitical life or stability of place such a similarly high value in monasticism.

Hermit Life as Prophetic

[[Hi Sister O'Neal, given that Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter does not even mention canonical hermits and exhorts religious to think of the distinctive characteristic of religious life as prophecy, how does this fit in with your own vocation? I admit I have a very hard time thinking of hermit life as prophetic! It seems selfish and very old-fashioned to me. Prophets always seemed more exciting and into a freshness and newness that challenged those they came to. But hermits sit in their cells and pray. How can that be considered prophetic?]]

This is truly a great set of questions! I am not sure I can do them justice, in fact, but I also look forward to trying. First, though Francis did not mention diocesan hermits explicitly, they are included in the category of consecrated persons to whom the letter is mainly directed. Also, Francis did speak specifically to contemplatives and made suggestions to them regarding ways they could be a prophetic presence in our world. Even so, I believe that my own vocation is profoundly prophetic and I have felt this way for at least the past 25 years or so, and most especially over the past 10 years or so. The key for me is that this vocation is a way of proclaiming the truth, challenge, and promise of the Gospel in and for a world which, at every point, stands for something else entirely.

For instance, my vocation says that we are never truly alone and that God is a constitutive part of our very being. (Consider what a complete absurdity the above picture symbolizing the life of the hermit would represent if neither part of this assertion were true!) We are dialogical events at our very heart and this means that our basic gift and task is our humanity. No matter what else goes on in our lives, no matter what other successes and failures touch or characterize us, this basic charism and challenge is still ours and always something we can, with the grace of God, fulfill. Isn't that the real success of Jesus on the Cross? Namely, that in the midst of abject failure and absolute degradation Jesus remained true to the dialogical reality he was, continued to depend totally on God to make his life (and his failure) meaningful, and remained wholly open to the power of Love-in-Act to transform the world --- even (or especially) the godless realms of sin and death which so condition it at every point. This is indeed a prophetic word our world needs to hear and it is one, I think, hermits can proclaim with their lives precisely because in most every way our world measures success, personal significance, or meaningfulness, the hermit fails to measure up.

Similarly then, the eremitical vocation therefore says that solitude is not the same as isolation. In a world characterized by isolation and, to a tremendous degree, the fear that life is essentially meaningless, especially when we find ourselves alone (Merton used to speak about the terror of boredom and futility), my vocation speaks directly to that and says, "Not so!" In a world where folks seem to feel like exiles and be in search of relationships which allow them to be loved and to feel as though they belong, the hermit reminds us that ultimately speaking, that is beyond any limit or conditioning element, God loves us, holds us to be infinitely precious, and transforms us into persons who CAN love others as well as ourselves. We say with our lives of eremitical solitude that belonging begins with this fundamental relationship and from there extends to family, Church, world at large, and even cosmos. Because we are at home with God and with ourselves, we know that we can be at and make our home anywhere; we can recognize and empathize with others who may feel or be alienated and call them brother or sister precisely because we are in communion with God. One of the reasons I stress the ecclesial nature of the consecrated eremitical vocation in the church is precisely because this stands in such stark and prophetic contrast to more worldly versions of eremitical life which are essentially individualistic and estranged.

Exile is a central category for understanding the eremitical life. In fact, hermits voluntarily embrace exile, a life of distinct alienness and marginality precisely so they can witness to the more profound belonging that characterizes every life in union with God. This dynamic of exile and more profound belonging seems to me to be quintessentially typical of the prophetic life. And of course this is important because life as we know it is a pilgrimage in which we are each exiles to greater and lesser degrees. Whether it is through experiences of acute or chronic illness, betrayal or bereavement, failures in work or studies, loss of friendships or any of the 1000's of things which set us apart from others every day of our lives including, sometimes, our prayer and yearning for God, we know deep down that we are not truly at home and that we are made for something else, something more, something which completes us and gives us (and the rest of creation) rest. Through her voluntary exile and all that characterizes it the hermit witnesses to this something more and to the completion and rest that is ours in God alone. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a prophetic word the world needs to hear.

At the foundation of all of this is the hermit's prayer and penance which she undertakes for God's own sake. God wills to be the answer to the question we are, the completion of a love which seeks fulfillment in another, the rest which comes of truly being heard --- and therefore, truly being precious to and part of God's very life. God seeks through us to transform and bring to completion the creation we are and in which we now live. He seeks to make of it a new creation where heaven and earth entirely interpenetrate one another; He seeks, in other words, to be all in all. If we are aware of the pain, isolation, desperate search for meaning, and struggle of those around us, we must also be aware that our God has revealed himself to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us, but is prevented from realizing this goal at every turn. While Christ was God's unique counterpart, God also seeks in each of us a counterpart to receive and return his love so that he might be Emmanuel more extensively. A hermit gives her life so that she might truly be there for God in at least this small way. She does so so in union with Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit so that one day, there will be a new heaven and new earth whose heart is life in communion-with-God. It seems to me this is and has always been the very essence of the prophet's work and commission.

By the way, your comments on prophets and the freshness, newness, and excitement of the prophet's life deserve some comment too but, unfortunately, I have to stop here. For now let me say that so long as God --- who is always new (God could not be eternal otherwise) --- is at the center of our lives, the freshness, newness and excitement you mentioned will be there too. While we might not commonly associate these words with contemplative lives of prayer and penance, this is the reason such persons are so essentially happy and sort of "unstoppable" if you know what I mean. Contemplative life and (I am bound to say) eremitical life in particular is an adventure --- no doubt about it! I suspect that people are in search of just such an adventure and, as I have already written in Always Beginners, the reason we almost compulsively seek the newest gadget, car, computer, smart phone, or become shopaholics and the like is because most often we have substituted the quest for the novel (Gk. neos or nova, new in time) for that which is always qualitatively new in our lives (Gk. kainotes, kainos), namely a relationship with the creator God in whom all newness is rooted, a communion with that Love-in-Act who makes all things new. In this too hermits (and anyone who makes a vow or embraces the value of evangelical poverty) serve as a prophetic presence and speak a prophetic word to our world.

Please note that I have written about all of these things in the past so I am aware that much of this post is repetitive; I have simply not tended to link them to the word prophetic so, thank you (along with Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter) for providing the opportunity to do that.

Hermit Life as Prophetic

[[Hi Sister O'Neal, given that Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter does not even mention canonical hermits and exhorts religious to think of the distinctive characteristic of religious life as prophecy, how does this fit in with your own vocation? I admit I have a very hard time thinking of hermit life as prophetic! It seems selfish and very old-fashioned to me. Prophets always seemed more exciting and into a freshness and newness that challenged those they came to. But hermits sit in their cells and pray. How can that be considered prophetic?]]

This is truly a great set of questions! I am not sure I can do them justice, in fact, but I also look forward to trying. First, though Francis did not mention diocesan hermits explicitly, they are included in the category of consecrated persons to whom the letter is mainly directed. Also, Francis did speak specifically to contemplatives and made suggestions to them regarding ways they could be a prophetic presence in our world. Even so, I believe that my own vocation is profoundly prophetic and I have felt this way for at least the past 25 years or so, and most especially over the past 10 years or so. The key for me is that this vocation is a way of proclaiming the truth, challenge, and promise of the Gospel in and for a world which, at every point, stands for something else entirely.

For instance, my vocation says that we are never truly alone and that God is a constitutive part of our very being. We are dialogical events at our very heart and this means that our basic gift and task is our humanity. No matter what else goes on in our lives, no matter what other successes and failures touch or characterize us, this basic charism and challenge is still ours and always something we can, with the grace of God, fulfill. Isn't that the real success of Jesus on the Cross? Namely, that in the midst of abject failure and absolute degradation Jesus remained true to the dialogical reality he was, continued to depend totally on God to make his life (and his failure) meaningful, and remained wholly open to the power of Love-in-Act to transform the world --- even the godless realms of sin and death. This is indeed a prophetic word our world needs to hear and it is one, I think, hermits can proclaim with their lives precisely because in most every way our world measures success, personal significance, or meaningfulness, the hermit fails to measure up.

Similarly then, the eremitical vocation therefore says that solitude is not the same as isolation. In a world characterized by isolation and, to a tremendous degree, the fear that life is essentially meaningless, especially when we find ourselves alone (Merton used to speak about the terror of boredom and futility), my vocation speaks directly to that and says, "Not so!" In a world where folks seem to feel like exiles and be in search of relationships which allow them to be loved and to feel as though they belong, the hermit reminds us that God loves us, holds us to be infinitely precious, and transforms us into persons who CAN love others as well as ourselves. We say with our lives of eremitical solitude that belonging begins with this fundamental relationship and from there extends to family, Church, world at large, and even cosmos. Because we are at home with God and with ourselves, we know that we can be at and make our home anywhere; we can recognize and empathize with others who may feel or be alienated and call them brother or sister precisely because we are in communion with God. One of the reasons I stress the ecclesial nature of the consecrated eremitical vocation in the church is precisely because this stands in such stark and prophetic contrast to more worldly versions of eremitical life which are essentially individualistic and estranged.

Exile is a central category for understanding the eremitical life. In fact, hermits voluntarily embrace exile, a life of distinct alienness and marginality precisely so they can witness to the more profound belonging that characterizes every life in union with God. This dynamic of exile and more profound belonging seems to me to be quintessentially typical of the prophetic life. And of course this is important because life as we know it is a pilgrimage in which we are each exiles to greater and lesser degrees. Whether it is through experiences of acute or chronic illness, betrayal or bereavement, failures in work or studies, loss of friendships or any of the 1000's of things which set us apart from others every day of our lives including, sometimes, our prayer and yearning for God, we know deep down that we are not truly at home and that we are made for something else, something more, something which completes us and gives us rest. Through her voluntary exile and all that characterizes it the hermit witnesses to this something more and to the completion and rest that is ours in God alone. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a prophetic word the world needs to hear.

At the foundation of all of this is the hermit's prayer and penance which she undertakes for God's own sake. God wills to be the answer to the question we are, the completion of a love which seeks fulfillment in another, the rest which comes of truly being heard --- and therefore, truly being precious to and part of God's very life. God seeks through us to transform and bring to completion the creation we are and in which we now live. He seeks to make of it a new creation where heaven and earth entirely interpenetrate one another; He seeks, in other words, to be all in all. If we are aware of the pain, isolation, desperate search for meaning, and struggle of those around us, we must also be aware that our God has revealed himself to us as Emmanuel, God-with-us, but is prevented from realizing this goal at every turn. While Christ was God's unique counterpart, God also seeks in each of us a counterpart to receive and return his love so that he might be Emmanuel more extensively. A hermit gives her life so that she might truly be there for God in at least this small way. She does so so in union with Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit so that one day, there will be a new heaven and new earth whose heart is life in communion-with-God. It seems to me this is and has always been the very essence of the prophet's work and commission.

By the way, your comments on prophets and the freshness, newness, and excitement of the prophet's life deserve some comment too but, unfortunately, I have to leave this here. For now let me say that so long as God --- who is always new (God could not be eternal otherwise) --- is at the center of our lives, the freshness, newness and excitement you mentioned will be there too. While we might not commonly associate these words with contemplative lives of prayer and penance, this is the reason such persons are so essentially happy and sort of "unstoppable" if you know what I mean. Contemplative life and (I am bound to say) eremitical life in particular is an adventure --- no doubt about it! I suspect that people are in search of just such an adventure and, as I have already written in Always Beginners, the reason we almost compulsively seek the newest gadget, car, computer, smart phone, or become shopaholics and the like is because most often we have substituted the quest for the novel (Gk. nova, new in time) for that which is always qualitatively new in our lives (Gk. kainotes, kainos), namely a relationship with the creator God in whom all newness is rooted, a communion with that Love-in-Act who makes all things new. In this too hermits (and anyone who makes a vow or embraces the value of evangelical poverty) serve as a prophetic presence and speak a prophetic word to our world.

Please note that I have written about all of these things in the past so I am aware that much of this post is repetitive; I have simply not tended to link them to the word prophetic so, thank you (along with Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter) for providing the opportunity to do that.

A New Heaven and a New Earth: God With Us

In Friday's reading from Revelation we heard John's vision for the future, a vision that might be really different than that which many of us have entertained over the years of our faith, and yet it is a profoundly Christian vision and one which is meant to carry us into and through Advent.

Now, there is no doubt that Revelation is a difficult book, and not one most Catholics (nor many mainline Protestants for that matter) have sat down to read. It is filled with imagery that needs to be decoded for us; the theology has been connected to cultic movements, some of them quite destructive, books about rapture and the antiChrist (despite the fact that neither word appears in Revelation), and generally associated with something very far from that of the other canonical books of the Bible. Critics have referred to its author as a drug addict, characterized its theology as that of a slaughtering Christ, spoken of its inclusion in the canon as an evil, and in less critical moments pointed out that at the very least it requires a revelation to decode it.

But if we think of the Bible as a library of books we might be surprised to find that Genesis and Revelation begin and end a great deal of history with very similar visions. Genesis begins with a view of God and human beings dwelling together in a garden. They walk together and it is only human sin that alienates human beings from this state. Today we read this text in two ways: 1) synchronically as a narrative about the original nature of the human/divine relationship and vision of the nature of earthly existence, and 2) diachronically as a vision of what human beings are therefore made for and what a renewed heaven and earth will one day look like. In Revelation, difficult and confusing details aside, John (et al) gives us a vision of an ultimate new creation, a "new heaven and a new earth" where "God is all in all" and death and sin are destroyed. God and human beings exist in communion with one another and God is revealed as God with us in the fullest sense.

The theme of "God with us" and the idea that this is truly the will of God occurs again and again throughout the Old and New Testament Scriptures. In Exodus God writes his law on the hearts of his people and gives them the Law -- a sign of the covenant between them, the covenant where God's faithfulness always means God is with his People in ways limited only by human sinfulness. God gives them explicit and detailed instructions on constructing the Tabernacle ("mishkan") a symbol of his dwelling (tabernacle or mishkan means dwelling) with his people in a way which allows his Shekinah or glory be revealed.

Similar instructions are given for the construction of the Temple in which heaven and earth meet and heaven (wherever God's sovereign presence is shared with and by others) interpenetrates our world. In his definitive revelation in Christ, Jesus, the new Temple of God, the One who penetrates the realms of sin and death and breaks down  the boundaries between sacred and profane, is explicitly named Emmanuel or God With Us. In the sending of the Spirit we are given a consoler so that God may be with us in a new and pervasive way while in the Church, her Eucharist and other Sacraments God reveals himself again and again as the One who would be God-With-Us. The Incarnation is not God's bandaid solution to the problem of human sin (though it does effectively deal with sin) but the definitive act in which God is revealed (made known and made real) in space and time as Emmanuel.

John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth in which God and human beings dwell in union with one another, where God is all in all, is not a vision we are used to imagining. We are more used to thinking in terms of dying, going to heaven and eventually being re-embodied in a resurrection there in heaven. But throughout our Scriptures the theme of creation and recreation, the remaking of heaven and earth into a single reality and a God whose will is to dwell with us, "walking side by side" with us (as is celebrated in Genesis' poetic imagery) recurs again and again.

Our own move into Advent invites us to open ourselves and our imaginations to God doing something new (kaine or qualitatively new!!) --- something beyond the historical Jesus we look back to, or even the risen Christ we know now. It is an invitation to share John's vision in Revelation and imagine the complete destruction of sin and death that was begun in Nazareth so long ago as well as our world's ultimate fulfillment in God's final act of new creation in Christ. Imagine a Kingdom in which human beings have a dwelling place in God's own heart while God as Love-in-Act is entirely at home in our own transfigured and glorified world. This, after all is John's great vision in Revelation and the image the Church gives us the day before we begin our Advent period of waiting and preparation. It is the vision Israel placed at the beginning of the OT as they characterized God as present and walking hand in hand with Adam and Even in the Garden. With this in mind, I would encourage folks to open themselves throughout Advent more and more to a new way of seeing reality, a new vision that is not only genuinely sacramental and sees reality as it is now, but, because God reveals his very nature and will as Emmanuel, also imagines reality's promised future which culminates in a new heaven and a new earth, a future in which God will be God-with-us in an exhaustive way.

Recommendations for Advent reading:

Elizabeth Johnson CSJ's Ask the Beasts, Darwin and the God of Love (The second part of the book is especially recommended but the whole is wonderful)

Ilia Delio, OSF, From Teilhard to Omega, Co-creating an Unfinished Universe