Power of Paradox

 

Another Advent begins. Another cycle, another season, another attempt…at patience and stillness. Each year I pray that in this time all will be different, not ultimately resolved, just differently deep, peaceful, and just.

And each year it seems I am reminded a little more powerfully of kindness and tenderness, stillness and silence. I am reminded of paradox. I am reminded that the greatest paradox among all the little paradoxes is that the mightiest, most powerful, most transforming divinity came and comes and will come to us in humility, poverty and unexpected circumstances.

So by now in my life I might be more aware that Advent is more about anticipation of the countercultural, counter-comfortable, than it is about aligning facts and assembling historical events. By now I am learning that Advent is about letting go, wintering with fear, anxiety and discomfort yet huddled under a blanket of just enough joy and gratitude. At some level we know that in that dark winter cave of our heart a dearness will enter. 

We live in a longing, for peace, for justice, for compassion, for freedom. Advent invites us to make a home in that longing, not to dispel or disperse it, but to reside there. We will be buoyed by the light of hope, and peace, and joy and love to sustain us, to inspire us. We might be inspired by paradox itself and the realization that all is not what we expect it to be or try to make it be.

May we prepare this winter cave of our hearts for a coming which will meet the longing and transform it into belonging to God and to each other.