Advent and Christmas 2019 - Christ in the Chaos
Last December, my daughter and I set out to cut down our Christmas tree. When we moved from New England to Oakland, CA we thought we’d left this tradition behind, but there’s a tree farm in the hills above our neighborhood, so to her delight we can keep our longstanding family tradition of hot cocoa and tree-hunting.
Adding a little NorCal twist to our adventure, we laced up our boots and went for a hike in the hills before meeting my sister and her 3-year-old at the farm. Alas, when we came back to our car after the hike, someone had smashed in the side window to steal our cheap electric saw. There was a spectacular amount of glass inside the car. We cleaned up as best we could, and drove down the hill to meet our family.
The tree we picked was a little too big for the car (an important aspect of the annual ritual), but we wrestled it into my Prius hatchback amidst the cascade of broken glass, and attempted to toast our mixed morning. Just then, my nephew dropped his full cup of cocoa, splattering himself, the tree, the glass, and the ground.
He looked down. He looked up. He looked us all in the eye, and said: “It’s all right. It’s just a mess.”
Little Owen’s prophetic pronouncement has become my mantra this year. When I read news reports of babies in cages at the border, or attended the Climate Strike with thousands of schoolage activists in downtown San Francisco, when my family life occasionally went off the rails, or I walked with folks from my church through depression, despair, domestic violence and death, all these moments when I was tempted to give in to despair myself, I kept hearing Owen’s voice in my head.
“It’s just a mess” isn’t meant to dismiss the complexity and horror of what is happening in our wounded world. It is not intended to excuse us from acting to alleviate suffering and change evil systems. It’s not an encouragement to hide our heads in the sand and ignore the people and things that need our attention. After all, you can drive around with a missing car window for a few days, but that broken glass is going to hurt someone eventually if you don’t clean it up.
But acknowledging that something is a mess, and it’s all right, can help us stay engaged when we feel overwhelmed and want to check out. It can help us recognize that none of us is perfect--it’s just not how we’re made. It’s an entreaty to keep our hearts soft and open, to avoid assigning blame, to see the mess for what it is: a temporary setback.
The theme for this year’s Advent calendar invites us to be in the middle of all of our messes with a God who isn’t afraid of a little chaos. A God who, in fact, arrived pretty messy Herself, as a human infant, complete with colic and diaper blowouts, which couldn’t have been easy to change in that drafty place of animals and their muck. That baby grew up to be a person who kept messing with our sense of morality and responsibility--and who at every turn made us feel that we were capable of far greater than we knew.
Beloved, let this calendar and its prompts keep your hearts soft, especially if you live in relative privilege and can afford to check out of that which is hardest and most painful. This is the last of the birth-pangs. Breathe through the worst of it. Invite God as a partner in your striving, and let Her point you toward the first/best next step to get out of whatever messes you and those you love find yourselves in.
But first, have that last sweet sip at the bottom of the cocoa cup. Not all is lost. And there’s always time for a breath and a beat before you begin.
Christlove,
Molly