The Presence of What Isn’t Yet

The Christian season of Advent is a month-long meditation on the practice of waiting. As a spiritual practice, waiting is the practice of acknowledging the presence of what isn’t present yet. Can—or should?—we let go of what we imagine is to come to be more present now?

OOS Dec 15, 2024

The Presence of What Isn’t Yet

Rev. Joe Cleveland

December 15, 2024

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Saratoga Springs

 

I usually think of the Christian season of Advent as mostly about developing the virtues of patience and openness.  We are waiting for Jesus, the messiah, the radical revolutionary teacher, and when he gets here, I tell you, it is going to be great! 

When I was a kid, we always had an Advent calendar.  Every day had a door that we would open.  But it wasn’t an Advent calendar with a piece of candy in there for each day.  It wasn’t a chocolate Advent calendar.  I saw an Advent calendar of wines advertised.  And an Advent calendar of cheeses.  Our Advent calendar wasn’t one of those.  It was a simple stiff cardstock sheet.  It had a deep blue background and, as I remember it, a snow-covered little town was depicted on it.  Some of the snow was bedazzled with glitter, so the picture sparkled when you looked at it.  Each day had a little correspondingly-numbered door that you would gently work open, careful not to rip it.  And when it was opened, what I remember is behind the door was the image of a shepherd or a lamb, or an angel, wise men, and eventually, Mary and Joseph.  The images were on tissue paper and if you put a light behind it, it looked like a growing collection of itty-bitty stained-glass windows.  I have no idea where that calendar went to or even if it still exists.  It was pretty delicate.  

Advent candles amid greenery, lit for the 3rd Sunday of AdventWhat the Advent calendar helps you do is to enjoy the time of waiting and preparation as you cope with your eagerness for the day when your Christmas presents would arrive and you could open them!  Er.  As you coped with your eagerness for the Son of God to arrive to inspire in us humility and hope, an eagerness to work for peace and practice love. Right, that’s what I’m waiting for. The waiting and the planning and the getting ready —all of that is important and deserves our attention and our presence.

This year I am having some difficulty accessing this aspect of the Advent season.  I still think patience is a virtue that we should develop, but instead of feeling like I’m waiting in eagerness for a greatly hoped-for day to arrive, there’s a coming there’s a coming event scheduled for a Monday in January that is overshadowing my Advent feelingfulness.  It is injecting a whole ‘nuther color into the season.  There’s waiting in eagerness, and a set of practices and skills we can develop to be able to wait well.  And there is waiting in dread, and that seems to require a completely different set of skills and practices.  

When you are looking forward to something, like a vacation trip or something, waiting isn’t that bad usually.  In fact, some Dutch researchers have conducted a study on the relationship between vacationing and people’s happiness.  Vacations, if they are not stressful, can make people a bit happier.  Actually, after the trip, folks tend to go back to however happy they were before the vacation.  What reliably makes people happier is planning a trip.  The study’s lead author, Jeroen Nawijn of Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, said that

The practical lesson for an individual is that you derive most of your happiness from anticipating the holiday trip.

He then goes on to speculate about some ways you might get to spend more time anticipating, like instead of one long trip, do two or three shorter ones because then you get to do planning for each one.

But again, what if what is coming up isn’t something you’re looking forward to? What if it is the apocalypse?  

As irony would have it, the season of Advent that we’re in? If you went to a Christian church the first Sunday in Advent, you would have heard about the coming apocalypse.  Here’s Luke 21.25-27

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.

One of the things that the season of Advent celebrates anticipating and preparing for is the apocalypse. 

The idea of apocalypse conjures up all sorts of nasty images in my head.  I’ve read a lot of post-apocalyptic science fiction. I see climate collapse. nuclear war. disease. What the Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber teaches about apocalypse is this:

If, when you think of an apocalypse, you picture a scary, doom-filled, punishment-from-above type of thing, you are not alone. Originally, though, apocalyptic literature — the kind that was popular around the time of Jesus — existed not to scare the bejeezus out of children so they would be good boys and girls, but to proclaim a big, hope-filled idea: that dominant powers are not ultimate powers. Empires fall. Tyrants fade. Systems die. God is still around.

Yes, apocalypses are disasters. But something always survives. I note that the genre of science fiction is post-apocalyptic. The apocalypse isn’t the end. 

A couple Sundays ago, the Reverend Fred Small was in this pulpit. I didn’t hear him use the word ‘apocalypse,’ but I think he easily could have. He did use the word catastrophe. The way he describes our current situation regarding climate change, he was basically saying that the apocalypse is now.  And then he shared this with us:

The realization that it’s too late to prevent significant global warming, too late even to prevent vast suffering, has had a surprising effect on me.  Instead of making me more anxious and agitated, somehow it has calmed and steadied me. […] I vow to do all I can to reduce the suffering, tend to the wounded, and to build a more just world. But since I believe it is too late to head off catastrophe, I am resolved to do these things mindfully with love and compassion and tenderness and generosity of spirit. Because given the certainty of suffering, the how of what we do is as important as the what, or even the when.

In all those post-apocalyptic stories I’ve read, or movies I’ve seen, there is some awe-inspiring spectacle in what happens. But where those stories really live is in the exploration of how the survivors keep surviving and often how, even in the struggle of surviving, they find a thriving of spirit and even joy.  

The point of that little card-stock and tissue-paper Advent calendar is to celebrate the joy in the journey. An Advent calendar is no fun when the month is over. The point is to approach the next day with the recognition: Today, there will be a door I can open. And tomorrow, there will be a door to open, too. 

And perhaps that is kind of a mindfulness approach. Breathe and be now. Look for the door to open today. As in poems by author Kate Coombs in her book Breathe and Be.

When days crash thunder
and throw lightning around
I am still, watching.
I am a calm umbrella
inside the blue and gray storm.

If what you’re having to deal with is the coming apocalypse, I am thinking of three ways to address that situation. The first is to practice the skills of mindfulness. We can, mindfully, recognize the reality of what is here and what is not. 

Tomorrow’s an egg
that hasn’t hatched. Yesterday
is a bird that has flown.
But today is real. Here now,
this minute, the true wings.

The second way is recognize that the waiting could be planning and collaborating. Even if it was something you were looking forward to, the greater part of the joy can be in the planning for it. Realize what allies you have — everyone in this room and on this zoom is one of your allies. Get together with people, and enjoy the getting together with people. Enjoy getting to know one another, and enjoy doing some plotting and scheming for love and justice together. Enjoy.   

The third way is simply to say, yes the apocalypse is coming, and the apocalypse is now. What we have is a journey that we are on. On the one hand it is a journey that we have to be on. And yet, there are still choices to make. We could choose to consider that the journeying and how we journey together as just as important, and probably more so, than any time or place where we might in one moment arrive. After the vacation, for the happiness to stick around, imagine the next. Keep on planning and plotting. We could choose to see that, as Nikki Giovanni says, on this journey, “We must provide our own guide-posts.” And as we journey together and lean into how we want to be, when we act now as we’d like to go on, the journey becomes one that we choose. 

 

It’s a journey . . . that I propose . . . I am not the guide . . . nor technical assistant . . . I will be your fellow passenger . . .

Though the rail has been ridden . . . winter clouds cover . . . autumn’s exuberant quilt . . . we must provide our own guide-posts . . .

I have heard . . . from previous visitors . . . the road washes out sometimes . . . and passengers are compelled . . . to continue groping . . . or turn back . . . I am not afraid . . .

I am not afraid . . . of rough spots . . . or lonely times . . . I don’t fear . . . the success of this endeavor . . . I am Ra . . . in a space . . . not to be discovered . . . but invented . . .

I promise you nothing . . . I accept your promise . . . of the same we are simply riding . . . a wave . . . that may carry . . . or crash . . .

It’s a journey . . . and I want . . . to go . . .

 

What door does today offer? (Photo by TopSphere Media on Unsplash)

May we be at ease. The apocalypse is not to come. It is now. And we are right now living through it. We are living. We are living through it. 

May we revel and joy, laugh and love in the face of apocalypse.

May we be free of dread, may we be liberated from any control of us, mind, body or soul, dread might attempt.

May we each day find ourselves in the company of a companion of one sort or other. A friend. A pet. A poem. A song.

May we today look for the door that is there for us to open. May we pass through. May we know eagerness and the enjoyment of curiosity as we then consider again: What door does today offer?

May we be at ease. Rested. Hydrated. Ready for joy.

Amen.

 

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