Christmas letters from the heart

Isn't it ironic that the metaphorical setting of Advent is the wilderness -- that place where there is very little to "do" physically; it is, rather, the place to "be." It is the place for spirit work -- for listening and watching and, of course, waiting. It is in the wilderness places of life where the words of the prophet Isaiah become poignant: that "those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength..." (40:31).

But if we are not very good at waiting, we are even more challenged when it comes to spirit work. I think of all this as we both receive and struggle to write Christmas letters. What do we say? How is that we characterize and reflect upon a year in a life? Most of our efforts suggest a conclusion that "life is doing" -- measuring our months by the pace we keep, the trips we take, the activities on which we expend ourselves. It is almost to suggest that if it has been a busy year it has been a good year. In our letters we recount to loved ones the report of our outer lives. And to some extent we are interested.

But wouldn't it be more interesting if, instead, we could somehow share in our Christmas communiques some representation of what has occurred in our inner lives this year?

Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly greeted old friends with the question, "What has become clear to you since last we met?"

Now that would be a Christmas letter: reflecting on and sharing with family and friends what we have learned this year, what insights we have gained, what big or little thing has become clear to us since last we met or corresponded -- our internal living as well as our external -- and inviting them to do the same.

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The Chill Surrounding the Flame

Advent. Happy time. Cookies, lights, carols and friends; crackling fires and cider and cards; warm memories and promising hopes. It is a time to shiver with delight and burst with the good will toward the "all" that scripture directs. With all this focus on light it hardly seems the time to call attention to the chilly darkness that is so much a part of our reality.



But advent, which literally means "coming", is precisely the time to take full stock of the bleakness within our view -- the brokenness and the grief, the cruelty and malignant manipulation of resources and opportunities toward the benefit of the few, the aching need of the impoverished and the violent hatreds of those at war -- to have any appreciation for the grace that God has in mind and in store. Advent is the season of hope, but what use is "hope" if what currently exists is everything you can ever desire? Hope is only relevant in the context of absence. If life already contains everything desirable, anything "coming" can only be bad news.



We needn't concern ourselves with such speculation. The life that surrounds us, while certainly full of blessing and good, is anything but perfect. The gap between the way life is and the way God intends it to be is not only broad, but deepening. The level of American incredulity at the revelation of how much certain peoples of the world hate and resent our "way of life" following the attacks of 9/11; the gasping disbelief over what we could no longer help but see when hurricane Katrina ripped the roof off the poverty of New Orleans are some measure of the denial and ignorance within which we have insulated ourselves from painfully cold reality. Yes, there are good people. Yes, there are helpful deeds genuinely and generously enacted. There is joy around and abroad, and sacrificial efforts to make life better. But...



...we can celebrate and cheer the "Good Samaritans" we see making noble contributions, and we do what we can to lighten the burden and soothe the misery of those we encounter along the roadside. But as Martin Luther King, Jr. once noted, "One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life."



So let us commend the good works of the many, but in this Advent season let us not allow our appreciation for such episodic nobilities blind us to the dangerous roads that still criss-cross this life so far, far east of Eden, and so painfully remote from the New Jerusalem...



...for which we hope.

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