Happy New Year

Probably you have noticed that, like it or not, people are getting ready for Christmas. However, unless you are a certain kind of Church nerd, as I am, you might not know that Advent only really started today. There's no reason why you should know that just by looking around. I mean, Walmart put out their Christmas trees in October. Even my Advent calendar started on December 1. But real, true Advent technically begins four Sundays before Christmas, and as we all know, technically correct is the best kind.

Advent kicks off a new liturgical year in some parts of the Church. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's related to the preparations for the birth of Jesus. Maybe it's somehow tied to the more pagan roots of Christmas traditions. If I were making the Church calendar, I would have put the new year on Easter, but nobody asked me. Whatever the reason, we are here at the beginning of something, and so it seemed like a good time to blog again.

 I think part of why it feels so strange to begin the liturgical year with Advent is that Advent is about waiting. Imagine if, on December 31, we got together with our friends and counted down along with (sigh) Ryan Seacrest, but then at midnight, we didn't cheer or toast or kiss anyone, but we just--waited? Maybe Ron Swanson would like that party, but I think most of us would prefer a celebration that's got a little more celebrating in it.

Then again, though it may seem counterintuitive to start with waiting, that's how life begins. I've got a lot of pregnant and newly-babied friends right now, and so I've been doing a lot of waiting alongside them for the past several months. This kind of waiting is (usually) fun. Painting the baby's room, buying all the onesies in Target, counting down until the due date. This is Advent waiting, in joyful expectation. But sometimes the waiting is painful. Sometimes you lose a pregnancy, or two, or three. Sometimes you realize you're another year older with no partner in your life and a rapidly fading chance of having the kind of family you want. You wonder if your whole life will be spent waiting for something that is never going to happen. This, too, is Advent waiting, walking in darkness, hoping against hope to see the great light.

Maybe the point of beginning with waiting is so that I don't try to shortcut it or skip over it. I am not a super patient person. I've fooled myself in my later years into thinking I'm good at waiting because I have a smartphone now that I can whip out at the first moment of non-activity. That's not real waiting, though; that's just distraction. I have yet to learn how to truly wait, to be still and know that God is God and to be filled by nothing else. Maybe by putting my impatience in the spotlight, on the first day of the year, I can learn to stop fighting it. I can learn how to wait as someone who has been given a promise that has already been fulfilled, as yet unseen but not unknown. Christ is coming soon. Wait for it.