Season of Awe and Wonder: Welcome to Advent 2021
Happy Advent
Thank you to you — family and friends and faithful readers of “Faith Not Fear” — for traveling the road with me, towards the little cave in Bethlehem where the most outrageous miracle of all keeps me believing in what is possible and not seen.
This Advent, I’ll tell a few stories that give reason to the season for me — some personal, some musings and some pieces of wonder that I have collected along the path.
Like the Drummer Boy — the only thing I have to share is the experience, strength and hope that has landed in my heart. So, I give it to you — with the same humble desire of a child with a drum…that the music created with words and images might connect hearts and open us to caring for one another, our planet and the children born this day.
So — look for a few emails — not daily, but often, during this Advent season.
With heart — from mine to yours…
Welcome to Advent 2021
Influenced by the writing of Rachel Held Evans, and the recent posthumous publication of her last writing, Wholehearted Faith, I have been thinking about the women whose “yes” is the foundation of my own faith. I am the lucky recipient of the “yes brigade.” Generations of a matriarchal kinship of family, friends, colleagues and unnamed sages — some by DNA and all by relationship — who said “yes” to the unknown as immigrants, homesteaders, wise-livers and real people who were both prophetic and imperfect. They said “yes” to writing the definition of resilience, tough intertwined with tender, and living witnesses to the power of giving and receiving forgiveness.
I’ve been thinking a good deal of Mary of Nazareth lately — not the pristine version on cards, but the tough reality of her “yes” and the path unknown that she freely accepted. Rarely understood, often judged and still moving into the next day, she gives witness to the power of “showing up” and being present and trusting that there will be enough grace to see you through the next 24 hours. That’s the kind of yes that I relate to. She didn’t run from watching her child bullied, misunderstood, assaulted and ultimately killed. She remained when others “ran for the hills.” That is the kind of yes that I relate to…the kind of yes on whose shoulders I stand.
Which has led me to think about the other “yes” women of generations — around the globe on whose shoulders, hearts and experience my faith rests — that give me the courage to step into Advent with a willingness to do “yes” today — to the unanswered questions, the unrealized dreams, the need to remain present to the suffering of others, to the desire to do more and the reality of simply making “the next right choice.”
I think this is the season of awe and wonder — both at what has led us to this moment of celebratory Advent and Christmas — and to the place we are in history. Rather than propelled into the vortex of despair, I am thrilled to be living at this moment in human history. To have the chance to say “yes” today — just for today — to being a “hope-bringer and a joy-deliverer and a peace-contributor” in the face of obstacles far too overwhelming for me to fully comprehend.
Instead, I say “yes” to the invitation to live Advent today…and to light a candle for all those whose “yeses” left me with a flicker of faith enough to take one more step on the path of unknowing — because both our individual and collective Bethlehem is a journey, not simply a destination.
Light a candle — let short days invite twinkling light — and remember a “yes” that made your difference and then “pay it forward”
It’s Advent…”YES!”
See you on the journey!
Bridget
