In the Advent Dark

Written by Derek Koehl.

We approach Advent, the time of midwinter, when the world grows dark, quiet, still—counterpoint to the bright, active days of our summer-time lives. A time that through history we as a race have surrounded with stories of death and fate but also, just as powerfully, stories of the mystery and magic of birth. Stories of Frigga at her spinning wheel weaving the destiny of man and gods alike; her distaff pictured in the belt of Orion as it aligns with Sirius, the brightest star in the eastern sky, on midwinter's night to show where the sun will rise, giving birth to hope to the world once more. Stories of our coming Christ—both promised babe and pledged redeemer.

I approach Advent, and I feel the lengthening nights draw me into a stillness and melancholy of life going down into the dark. I see then that in pushing through, by embracing the dark to myself not as a tomb but as the covering and the closeness of the womb, that it in turn embraces me. In the quiet I open my thoughts to the promise of birth in my life and in the world that surrounds me. I wonder at the tension that the same darkness of this womb that allows me to contemplate and shape that which can be birthed new into my world at the same time conceals from me the fullness of that coming reality.

So during this season of reflection I consider what I wish to see birthed in me and through me. I consider carefully words of promise I hear spoken in the silence. I consider my girls. I consider those close to me—family and friends, distant and near at hand. I consider how that which is to be born in me needs be shaped by them and how it may shape them. I consider all this knowing that in God's birthing there is at all times hope.