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.

Hope

"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory [...] Therefore, keep awake -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake." (Mark 13:24-26, 35-37)

Advent is profoundly mysterious: the time that is coming, that we are waiting for, will come like a thief in the night, at a time we know not when. Who can know for sure what that day will hold? The angels will gather the elect, but will we be among them? After the Son of Man has come on the clouds and gathered the elect unto Himself, what will our existence in glory be?

Mystery, mystery: all the things we anticipate but do not understand. All the certainties we are uncertain of.

We know that Jesus has come. We know that He is coming again. But about that day and hour no one knows. It's unsettling, this time that pulls together the past and the future into an uncertain present, looking backward and forward into a veil beyond which we cannot see.

We are called to prepare a path for the Lord -- like Elijah, to make a straight path in the desert. Wait, and be watchful, always making ready, for we do not know when our Saviour will come. Advent calls us to prepare ourselves for God's coming, to make ready for the final day by immersing ourselves in a period of watching and waiting.

We do not watch by looking resolutely forward, by focusing ourselves on that which we cannot see. That is not really hope: that's an obsession with trying to predict or catch the very moment we cannot grasp upon the instant of its awakening. Nor do we watch by turning backward to what has already past, what we know and understand, because hope cannot live looking behind itself. We watch by preparing within ourselves a silent space, a place within which we immerse ourselves in the present moment, the time in-between.

What we know to have been is part of our hope: the Incarnation we prepare to celebrate fills us with certainty about who God is. We know that Jesus has come. What we know is coming is also part of our hope: our longing for the future fills us with direction and a yearning to be with God. But hope is primarily about the present, because it can only be experienced now.

Our hope and longing for God's coming is like watching a sunrise. We know that the sun has risen a thousand times before. And we know that if we wait long enough the sun will come up above the horizon. But it is by immersing ourselves in the blackness, by watching each moment pass without hurriedly imagining a future where the sun is risen, that we open up a space inside our hearts to see the light seep in.  

Dawn is gradual and sudden, a crack opening up to the light in myriad ways. It illuminates us with longing and sweetness for each moment as we experience it. The past and future never really fall away. But only by really being in the moment can we experience the awe and mystery of what is taking place. We prepare ourselves by being fully immersed.

So, too, the mystery of Advent springs upon us suddenly and is quickly gone. Through patient hope -- a hope that longs by a willingness to see each moment as one in which God is coming -- we abide in the coming of the Lord. 

The Lord has come and the Lord will come. In hope, we live in the conviction that the Lord is coming always, and everywhere.  

"for in every way you have been enriched in him [...] He will also strengthen you to the  end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." (1 Corinthians 1: 5, 8-9)