Adv(L)ent

Sometimes in my meditations, I find myself thinking that this is Lent, not Advent.

Advent is supposed to be about waiting in the darkness for a coming light. That's why I love Christmas lights on a tree. Throughout December, you can often find me in a dark room letting the bright tree lights make my eyes do strange things—white neon lines cutting through the shadows, making wild scrawling graffiti in thin air, as if trying to cryptically communicate with me.

And yet I have to keep reminding myself that this is Advent and not Lent. My life has been destroyed over the past several years, nearly burned to the ground. And so I have a whole new life to create out of nothing. It's overwhelming. It's terrifying. And the light that Advent should bring feels eclipsed by the desert-darkness of Lent.

Lent is about waiting too. Waiting for Jesus to be crucified. And when he dies on the cross, every year we nail up with him our own expectations for what life should be. What dies on the cross with the Christ is everything we think of as order in the world. Because Jesus upends all of our expectations. When the baby came, they hoped he would reign on a throne, not hang dead on a tree. Yes, there is still hope because he is risen. But that hope looks nothing like what we imagined it would. And death always comes first.

And so this Advent, I feel torn between these two seasons. I feel like I'm in the desert, waiting for someone else to betray me and hand me over. And yet in the distance I also feel that maybe there is light. Far away. Liminally.

I am absolutely waiting this Advent. It's puzzling to me how present Lent is with Christmas this year. With each episode of hope I unexpectedly experience—from friends and family meeting my needs without complaint, to happy coincidences and new relationships—I want to believe these are divine signs encouraging my belief. It's as if some voice is saying it's okay for me to have faith in goodness, in the future. But then I remember the kind of suffering that's in the world. And hope feels like the most dangerous choice I could make. I carry both the hope and the pain around with me, like a beautiful gift that will break your back to bear.

I'm starting to think that Advent and Lent are not so far apart. At Christmas, a child is born, and in Lent, he dies—the baby comes, and the Messiah departs. Both events, though, mysteriously produce the same outcome: new life. The child brings hope to a waiting people, and the risen Christ brings new life to those who believe. Throughout both seasons, something is always already being reborn. And this Advent, I'm waiting to see if that something could be me.

-by Laura Baker