Love

"The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end"" (Luke 1:30-33).

I was reminded this past Sunday that love can be incredibly inconvenient. Our Nativity pageant was told from the perspective of the innkeeper and his wife: imagine their ire when all these people kept showing up at their inn! They'd had a hard day's work, but here they all came, insistent, untimely, demanding. No wonder the innkeeper was perturbed! 

Love can be inconvenient. It comes -- and is demanded of us -- at times we weren't expecting. It is messy. It is entangled. It can be brutally heartbreaking. Love makes great demands on us. Nowhere are we reminded of this more than in the reality of God becoming flesh.

God chooses a confused virgin as the dwelling place for the Son as He grows within her. It's more than a little inconvenient.

Our God is born in a stable to a mother accompanied by no midwife to help her give birth. It's more than a little messy.

Jesus has a human mother, married to a husband who raises the child as his own, and a Father in heaven, which prompts him to disappear for a few days in the Jerusalem temple, leaving everyone else terrified. It's more than a little entangled.

Jesus' dedication in the temple is accompanied by Simeon's prophesy to Mary that "a sword will pierce your own soul also" (Lk 2:35). Her son, whom she loves, will leave his family to travel around preaching the good news. He will be both wildly popular and popularly reviled. He will die, horribly, on the Cross. It's more than a little heartbreaking.

Yet Mary "treasured all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:51).

For love of their son, Mary and Joseph became a refugee family as they fled to Egypt to save his life. Mary meets her son carrying his own cross, and watches him fall. She receives his body, and sees it lying in the tomb.

Sorrow and love and mystery, all bound up together. Most of us won't have to face the staggering loss that came with Mary's love. But we all know, from our own lives, that saying yes to love is bound up with messiness, with pain, and with inconvenience alongside the joy. Love fulfills our deepest human needs, but no one ever said it was easy.

Our longing for God is bound up with inconvenience. We are called upon to say yes to God in ways that aren't always easy. God comes into our lives in unexpected ways, sometimes in ways we don't enjoy. We are asked to step out of our comfort zone, to do things we don't want to do. This is what loving God entails.

God's love for us comes in the glorious manifestation of His promise, the Incarnation and final coming of Christ. Christ the King, Christ the infant. They are the same. Love in all its messiness is tied to love in its glory. We are preparing to celebrate God's coming into the world. Through it all, the thing that matters most is our own willingness to love and be loved, to embrace love in all its fullness and complexity. 

"And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing [...] And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:2-3, 13).

 

Joy

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 16-21).

Gaudate Sunday is all about joy. But this time of year, with the holiday approaching, isn't necessarily a joyful time for everyone. People are worried about money, about family, about all the things in their lives that haven't turned out the way they'd like. Hopelessness, darkness, and despair plague many. And we, as Christians, have the audacity to talk to them about joy.

It can be a bitter pill to swallow, this thing about joy. Why am I not feeling it? Is there something wrong with me? Am I missing the point in all my anxiety? People can be shocked, and even angry, when they realize they aren't feeling the happiness everyone around them is preaching. Why can't my holiday be like the one on the television?

Many people have said this before, but it bears repeating: happiness and joy aren't the same thing. Happiness is a feeling, an emotion, a sensation that comes about often due to an experience. Of course it can also be a person's disposition, true enough, but happiness fluctuates easily depending on how much sleep we've had or what we overheard our coworker saying behind our back. Happiness is like a bubble that expands, contracts, and can even be popped.

Joy isn't like that.

Joy is a thing that we can't always feel the way we feel an emotion. Joy is planted inside us by God and it's there all the time, but we don't necessarily feel it. Joy is something deeper, something more lasting, quietly guiding our lives.

Imagine the joy in Mary's heart when she saw the angel, when she said 'yes' to God and carried Jesus within her. Sure she felt happiness: she was carrying a child for whom she was full of love. But I bet she was also full of anxiety, of fear, maybe even panic. She didn't fully know what she was getting herself into. But she knew it could be bad. There would definitely be some kind of consequence. After all, you can't hide a pregnancy forever, not even a supernatural one.

Joy is like that: it hides underneath other emotions. It gives us strength. Other people can see it in us even when we can't see it ourselves. It brings us happiness, but it also leads us through pain and doubt.

We all have a calling in this life -- to follow Jesus, to discern the ways in which he leads us, to follow Him with all of our strength. That is joy: joy planted in us, joy growing stronger, joy leading us onward into the light. Joy is the thing that helps us transform our pain through prayer so that it becomes something else. Joy is the thing that finds strength in our weakness and brings light into dark places. Joy is saying 'yes' to God.

In joy, our pain and sorrow becomes something deeper, something more meaningful; hidden in joy -- or with joy hidden within it -- we discover that God does not leave us alone, that our lives have a bigger meaning than ourselves, and that nothing bad can go on forever because it is never the end. Only a step on our larger path.

That doesn't mean that joy obliterates sorrow and sadness. It shouldn't, and it can't. But in it we find our darkest moments are being transformed. In it, we find the place inside us where God dwells, filling us with His love.

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name" (Luke 1:46-49).

Peace

"A voice cries out: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all the people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken'" (Isaiah 40:3-5).

Advent is a time of peace -- a time to find it, or make it, inside ourselves as well as in the world. It seems somehow less daunting to try and impose peace on the spaces around us: streamlining our possessions, reducing the clutter of our things, turning down the noise. Outer conditions of calm, quiet and austerity do help foster inner peace, as any Christian religious order in history could tell you. The kind of exterior life we live has an effect on the inner life of the soul. So the monastery is free from clutter and full of silence. It is structured by obedience and simplicity, allowing the mind to be freed for the discipline of inner silence.

One does not have to go to a monastery to find these conditions. But it's always necessary to carve that space out for ourselves somehow, or our souls will forever be turbulent and disquieted, caught up in the things and excesses of this world. Self-discipline is an important part of Advent as we foster a sense of quiet waiting in our lives. We are called to patience, to endure the wait with an anticipation that does not make itself busy standing still or trying to rush through it all.

But this type of outer silence is not the most challenging facet of finding peace. Music can easily be turned off, and solitude can almost always be found. It isn't enough just to manipulate the word around us by refusing to buy anything or put up the Christmas tree. Peace is fundamentally nurtured from within.

Peace comes from opening up the mind to let God in. Like a ray of light, God cannot inflame our minds if they're tangled up with all sorts of branches: the light gets stuck and lost in the dense forest, never reaching out to warm our skin.

Maybe God can't come in because we're so preoccupied with worry. Maybe God can't come in because we don't have time to listen. Whatever the reason we give for why the light doesn't shine, in the end God cannot come in where the soul does not want to receive Him.

We find many reasons within ourselves for our unworthiness, and to cover it up with excuses. We're afraid of what it would mean to truly encounter God. We're afraid it will burn. We're afraid of the truth of our own sin and the reality of Who God is, and what that could mean for us. The encounter with God is not an easy one, though He is Goodness. Even though Advent is not a penitential season, we do have to make room in our hearts by repenting of our sins and letting go the burdens they place upon us. The heaviness of it, the fear of God because of it, keeps us from experiencing the peace this season is all about -- the peace that only God can give.

We are called by the same voice as Isaiah to make our paths straight, and in the wilderness of our souls to prepare the way of the Lord. Then we shall see the glory of God and find peace as He remakes our lives, changing everything.

"Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts" (Psalm 85:8).

All The Single Ladies

How many of you have gone to a church service or event by yourself? How many of you have felt awkward about it?

Be honest now...

Having switched denominations out of religious conviction, rather than because of marriage or some kind of family feud with another congregation, I've gone to a lot of churches by myself, not to mention a good number of events at my own parish. I can't remember whether or not I've written about this before; if I have, I apologize for the broken-record phenomenon. That's the kind of thing that happens when you don't bother to update your lame blog for a few months.

Sometimes going to church services on your own isn't so bad -- or maybe even expected. When I was still Roman Catholic, I used to go to the weekday noon services at a downtown cathedral. Going alone wasn't bad: practically everyone else was there by themselves, too. And now, of course, I've gotten used to going to church alone because I do it every Sunday. I have a group of people that I sit with instead of hanging out in the pews all by myself, so that helps. I even have friends now who help me out by driving me home.

But let me tell you, going to a new congregation was really, really hard at first. The fact that it was in my hometown helped a little, and so did actually knowing one or two people who worshipped there. But it wasn't easy, sitting by myself, going home right away because there was no one to talk to at coffee hour, being new and not having any role in the new congregation.

I don't think I'm an expert at how to be 'the new guy' in a church. But I do know that it's harder to be new if you also happen to show up alone.  If you have kids, they'll make friends in Sunday school and you have an automatic 'in' with the parents of their new little friends. If you have a spouse or partner, then you have at least one person to talk to. But show up by yourself and, wow, there's no easy group for you to break into. Unless of course you go to one of those hip city churches that have large groups of young people who came by themselves. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure those places really exist. I may have made them up in my imagination.

At any rate, it's not so hard to blend in to a new congregation if you show up every week. People get used to you pretty quick, and eventually someone might ask you to sit with them. Say yes. Stay for coffee hour and try to get to know a few people: if you're lucky (which I was), most will be overly welcoming of the new person because they want you to keep coming back. Someone will usually talk to you so you don't end up standing around by yourself feeling like a loser. After the newness factor wears off, it may temporarily get harder to find people to talk with at coffee hour, but if you stick it out you'll probably end up with a few solid groups that will permanently welcome you into their conversation.

I've discovered the most difficult church events to go to alone are the ones that are themselves temporary, and made up of temporary new groups. Like ecumenical worship events where no one else from your congregation bothers to show up (has never personally happened to me), or events that bring together a scattered group of people for a specific purpose. I've been to a few of this type of event, one just this past week. These are the hardest events to go to because they aren't sparsely populated enough for everyone to gravitate together but also don't tend to reach a critical mass of attendance where people can legitimately get lost in the crowd. When everyone comes with a ready-made group, or knows a lot of other people, it can really suck to come on your own, especially if they're all relatively used to hanging out with each other and you aren't.

I thought it wouldn't be so bad because I did know some people pretty well. Unfortunately they were running the event, which effectively means that for mingling purposes I showed up alone and barely knew anyone.

The worst is when you know some people but haven't seen them in a really long time, so they say hello, and you have a little conversation, but then it's time to move on and you don't have another social group to go to but they do. Yeppers, awkward.

No wait: the worst is when you know one person talking with a small group and you try to join their conversation but they won't let you. Double-awkward for everyone.

No, no wait: the worst is when you say hello to someone you know and haven't seen in a really long time, and they're obviously and manifestly not interested in talking to you. Yep, they don't care. And then, of course, you're standing there and no one says anything, and you're thinking 'coming over here was a tactical error, how the hell can I get away.' And then you just walk away because the fact that they're not talking to you, and don't want to, is really really embarrassing. Triple awkward!!

Of course, quadruple-awkward is the moment when you realize you've exhausted all possible mini-conversations and have to either leave or stand alone at the cheeseplate feeling sorry for yourself because you couldn't convince anyone to come with you to this thing in the first place.

It's also awkward when people ask what you've been doing and you have to answer, "writing a food blog and pretending to work on my thesis that will never be finished because, frankly, I just don't have it in me." That's awkward, but not for church-related reasons.

Having experienced this, from now on I will seek out the random alone people at church events and talk to them, maybe try to suck them into my own conversational groups. I know what it's like to be that person. I think it's hard to notice them if you haven't been through it a few times yourself. If Jesus can touch the unclean and eat with sinners and save the child of the Samaritan woman, I guess I can suck it up and hang out with the loners if it ever turns out I'm in the popular group.

One really sweet woman invited me to come to another event the night after at a community I used worship with. But really, I couldn't do this to myself two days in a row: girl, alone, surrounded by people she doesn't really know but who know each other, without having drafted some poor sucker to come with her. For us single ladies, sometimes church can really suck.

Having said all that, here's my list of tips on how to deal with showing up to a medium-size mixed-group church event by yourself:

-find a nice corner chair and surround it with all the other nicest chairs in the room. When people's feet get tired and they want to sit down, they'll end up sitting around you and will have to include you in their conversation.

-own a smartphone or a phone with a full numeric keypad. If worst comes to worst you can text people, or pretend you're texting people, every time you end up standing all by yourself.

-convince a friend to call you at a certain time so that you have an out for leaving early (I'm sorry I have to go, my best friend's goldfish just asphyxiated and she needs me to come over. But I had a really lovely time, thanks for inviting me).

-bring a sock-puppet or treasured stuffed animal. That way, you'll always have someone to talk to.

-keep going back to the cheeseplatter. If you don't manage to strike up a conversation, at least you'll get to eat lots of cheese.

-fall on the floor filled with the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues. I guarantee they'll pay attention to you after that.