I am continuing to linger in Advent. I am finding it counter-cultural. Since I mainly listen to sacred music of the season, and since I was ordained forty years ago, I was startled by the cacophony of secular Christmas music that assaulted my ears yesterday at Lowe's (Laurie and I are in the midst of a move, down the street from where we are now). I am unfamiliar with a generation of such music, though I will confess I have come to have a grudging appreciation for Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (maybe I can give it a spiritual interpretation, like the monks who professed ardent devotion to Jesus, the Bridegroom of the Soul). 

I like the time of preparation, recalling the words of the prophet in Isaiah 40 and of John the Baptist, "Prepare the way of the Lord." I like purple paraments and the sense that Advent, like Lent, is a penitential season. In the Orthodox tradition - I'm not buying into this! - they fast from November 28 to January 6 (imagine!), but I do know there are things in my life that need to change, that I need to change, and I think others may feel the same. 

We step carefully into making such observations on a larger scale, about the lives of our churches and the life of our nation. But as we prepare to go to Bethlehem and greet that baby lying in a manger, I have trouble as I remember - though I manage to evade the thought much of the time - babies separated from their parents by our government and parceled out to others with no accounting. As we read the Christmas stories, we see stronger connections than we would like between the time into which Jesus was born and our own. 

Kyrie eleison . Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Come, Lord Jesus!

In Advent hope,