Advent Week One: The Legacy of “Prepare Ye” Week
I followed her around as her human shadow, just in case she was about to do something interesting, have a phone conversation that I might like to listen to, or decide that it was time to taste test her kitchen table wisdom. I was an early student of Advent in the shadow of my Mother’s light.
I always thought that the readings for the first Sunday of Advent were the words of John the Baptist, “Prepare” – because in the Gospel according to my Mother, the first week of Advent was all about preparation. Somehow or another, the yield would be harvested after the pink Advent candle was lit, but the first week was all about getting ready.
She whistled often and well, in melodic tones of joy that often reflected her moods. Only close to her death did she share with me that she started whistling after she lost both parents to cancer in less than a year and found herself alone in Western Nebraska raising young children with a husband whose livelihood meant constant travel. She whistled to keep the tears in check. And, in time, as habits often do, it became a way of being and a sound that still leaves me feeling safe, loved and known.
The Advent whistle was one trained by Perry Como and glistened with tones of magic and mystery. She whistled her way to the basement to bring up the boxes of treasures of Christmas’ past with intermittent trips to the attic. From these two hiding places, she generated her Advent harvest:
- the pan for the Suet Pudding, the tray for the Lucy rolls, the waxed paper box for the refrigerator cookies whose dough somehow fermented by the third week of Advent, the box of recipes written in her mothers’ hand and held in her heart, and always the nativity that would only be unearthed one piece at a time, as Advent unfolded.
Always a lover of stories, I listened to hers like it was a Dickens’ tale as she told me about how the Suet pudding pan had been passed down since our early South Dakota homesteaders. And, like life, it only got better and better over time — the more the pudding remained wrapped tightly in moistened towels until after midnight mass on Christmas eve, the better it got.
She told me about the little glass bulbs my grandfather bought just after the dark days of the bank closing, having lost most everything as most bank presidents did. These little bulbs were much more valuable that the new bright ones, for they were the light of the darkness. These were the lights of the heart. She told stories and I listened. I learned that prophecy requires readiness. “Prepare Ye” was the call of the week.
It’s in my bones and my heart and my head. And, old enough to know now that history helps give meaning to chaos, I am standing in the messiness of “Prepare Ye” week. I might make some refrigerator cookies. I might look at the bulbs a little longer. I might make some Lucy rolls and have them ready for St. Lucy day – and maybe that will help me to prepare the inside story.
Maybe I can get ready to love with a bit more forgiveness, a little more patience, listen a little more deeply, hang another row of lights with a little more care, and remember that even though expectations have been demonized in popular psychology – there is amazing grace in the wonder of expecting the miracle. There is one, you know…if only we believe.
Happy “Prepare Ye” week
