Author: matt

When I was six years old, my mom and I stopped at one of those self-serve car washes. You know the ones with the big octo-arm vacuum stations and the bank of carports rigged with power-washers? They’re a dying breed.

We’d begun at the vacuums, and my mom had removed all the floor mats and sundries. With coins loaded, she yanked and stretched the noisy hose into the interior coves of our Honda Civic. I was waiting next to the cylindrical vacuum housing when I saw something curious resting on its concrete base.

It was a small, oddly-shaped nail. I picked it up and examined it; fiddling with it in my small hands. We had just been in the mountains hiking (ergo, the carwash), and I had brought home an interesting rock. Flecked with shimmering quartz and pyrite; it was about the size of a large avocado.

I decided to use it to pound the nail into the concrete. I grasped the peculiar nail between my left thumb and middle finger, positioned it up and down, then took the rock in my right hand and commenced hammering.

Tink!

Tink!

BANG!

The object exploded between my fingers. It had not been a nail at all. It was a bullet. My hand was covered in blood. I began screaming.

My mom set me quickly in the car and we zoomed away, leaving behind much jetsam. Off we rushed to the nearest emergency room, which happened to be at the hospital where I was born.

By the time we arrived, I had gone into shock. Though crying, I was no longer hysterical. We were ushered quickly into the emergency bay. Surrounded by scrub-blue curtains, doctors and nurses began attending my hand. One doctor had a brief consultation with my mom, then turned to me and he said he was going to have to start cleaning it out.

He began daubing away the blood, then rinsing around the wound. Finally, he retrieved a liquid and looked at me. “This is going to sting.” The moment the antiseptic made contact with the wound, there was a jolt of pain – far exceeding that of the explosion itself.

Advent hits the wounds of our world like lightning. At least it should. The jolt tells you it’s working.

So the magi arrived with their strange gift of myrrh. Myrrh? An embalming ointment, for an infant? What dark humor is this?

Monty Python’s Life of Brian may be the most irreverent movie ever made. It traces the life events of the hapless and reprobate title character, as his biography parallels that of Jesus; from Bethlehem to a Roman cross, upon which he is found whistling and singing, “Always look on the bright side of life.” It is surreal. But, like most surrealism, the creative ploy is juxtaposition.

We may think Life of Brian a crass and unnecessary piece of sacrilege, yet it merely juxtaposes human folly against the divine folly of the incarnation itself. Only by emphasis does it offer anything more ludicrousness than Advent. Even then.

In his darting little book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner insists laughter must accompany the Gospel:

Where does the laughter come from? It comes from as deep a place as tears come from, and in a way from the same place. As much as tears do, it comes out of the darkness of the world where God is of all missing persons the most missed.

Advent is as sublime as it is ridiculous; a juxtaposition breaching fountainheads of all manner of tears. It is indeed a sort of comedy. But what sort? I would argue it is improv, whose governing tenet is “yes, and.” Improv is built from games and scenes and forms, yet the magic steals in through the doorway of availability.

There’s an improv game called, “What’s in the box?” One player approaches another and holds out an invisible box. The other player then asks, “What’s in the box?” Regardless of the answer, the response must conclude the phrase, “That’s great, because…”

If it isn’t quite obvious, all the players of Advent are improvising.

When the magi arrive during the opening sequence of Life of Brian, his mom Mandy begins shooing them away, before discovering they’ve come bearing gifts. Yet the myrrh leaves her nonplussed. Upon collecting the gifts, she unceremoniously bids them depart saying, “If you’re dropping by again, do pop in. Thanks a lot for the gold and frankincense, but . . . don’t worry too much about the myrrh next time.” How cheeky.

Yet Advent demands something more brash: “yes, and.” Life of Brian, ridiculous though it be, is still sketch comedy; scripted from the outrageous instincts of a surrealist troupe. The improv of Advent permits no rejected offerings. The proper term for this is accepting – or overaccepting – in contrast to blocking or rejecting.

The Anglican ethicist, Sam Wells writes,

There’s this notion of overaccepting, where you fit the smaller story that has come your way – which often you didn’t invite or go looking for – into the larger story of what God’s doing with the world.

And so we find Mary and Joseph overaccepting again and again and again – these strange offerings within God’s staggering story. When offered myrrh, they eclipse the surrealism even of “the Pythons” through acceptance. And so too must we. Myrrh may be unbidden, but let us accept this gift as members of the holy family.

The word for myrrh is a derivative of the Arabic murr – bitter. Like frankincense, myrrh is a resin; extracted from a tree’s protective bark through “repeated wounding.” Its fragrance is rich and plumb-like yet also etheric and medicinal – even disturbing. It can be burned as incense however, more traditionally, it is distilled to an antiseptic balm. If gold signaled royalty and frankincense worship, myrrh imported a mood of mortality.

Thus we sing,

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume
    Breathes a life of gathering gloom

What can it mean to accept this gift? Mary had already heard tell something of a sword that was to pierce her soul. Any soul found pilgriming through this world is bound to endure many a sword’s plunge.

“Myrrh? That’s great, because…”

As I type, periodically I stop to rub my left thumb against its adjacent middle finger; still creased across its print from the bullet’s rupture. In a sense, they embalmed my hand; wrapped it in gauze like the hand of a mummy. I spent the next week at school with a mummified hand. As I type, other scars prick my notice: loss and betrayal, failure and fear alike zig-zagging my own soul. I know you have them also. They are inevitable.

To accept myrrh must mean accepting its ongoing necessity; the bitter strike our wounds require. To overaccept it means something more macabre and more mysterious.

In TS Elliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi,” he imagines an aged magi “setting down” Advent recollections.

This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

The myrrh alerts us that Advent is as much about birth as death. “Had thought they were different,” but now aren’t so sure. Elliot’s magi continue,

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

The death rate remains 100% among our race. Eventually something overtakes us all. No amount of myrrh will will heal or preserve your body indefinitely, let alone your soul. And here comes Advent’s jolt.

Buechner puts it this way, “The tragic is the inevitable. The comic is the unforeseeable.” The gathering gloom of Advent’s myrrh holds a precipitous stroke. Something deeper than death’s deep, dark, and hoary hex.

God’s own availability has begat something unforeseeable!

Who can forget Aslan’s words to Susan and Lucy upon return from his death by the Witch’s blade?

Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.

Advent beckons us gaze further into the stillness and the darkness – “the darkness of the world where God is of all missing persons the most missed” – and to behold the arrival of One who would make good on the words of Hosea:

Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?

This birth, like all others, was to include a death. But, unlike any other, it was to become the death of Death itself. Elliot’s magi were right, though they couldn’t quite put their finger on it.

After what was thought to be the bitterest end, more myrrh was brought by those who loved Jesus most, yet they truly needn’t have worried about it. The only things to be found were a stone rolled away, grave clothes, and a few strips of linen gauze – oh, and an angel with a very wry question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

It was the equivalent of an improv player saying “scene” – the Advent form in brilliant denouement .

The myrrh was returned to its place that day; an ornament of Advent fulfilled.

In AD 1324, the West African Mansa (king) Musa began his legendary hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca. His journey would reconfigure the imaginations and economies of the region for centuries. At that point, the kingdom of Mali was the wealthiest center of civilization on earth.

In addition to the unimaginable gold deposits being extracted from mines of Mali, Musa had established trade to North Africa and the Middle East. Mansa Musa was indisputably the most wealthy person in the history of the world – so opulent that scholars cannot begin to estimate his riches.

Musa’s Arabia-bound entourage was composed of over 60,000 fellow pilgrims and dozens of camels each burdened with 300 pounds of gold. As they made their way north through the Bedouin trade routes then eastward toward Mecca they dispensed with such vast quantities of gold via commerce and largess that the currencies of the entire region were decimated; such sums of wealth were disgorged during their sojourn in Cairo that Egyptian markets required over a decade to fully recover.

Never before and never since has such worldly wealth been conflated in sacred enterprise. The medieval world was left bedazzled.

The grandiosity with which we populate our rhetoric of worship is so often belied by the miserliness of our own pilgrimage through this world. Can Advent birth in us an extravagant generosity? I must believe so. But it does something more. Advent conceives in us extravagant wealth. This is Advent’s miracle.

For the prophet Isaiah announces a mystery that eludes us even still,

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
 Of the greatness of his government and peace
    there will be no end.

Can it be that this royal child would be born unto us? Might Mary’s joyful awe be ours as well? Should we too come to bear something holy, sovereign, and everlasting within our very selves? Could we, with Mary, each be theotokos; “bearers of God”?

Let us listen along with the faith-filled Virgin to the words of the archangel, “Do not be afraid! You have found favor with God.” What a pregnant phrase! Found favor with God. Favor is the same word for generosity. Like an unwary prospector, she had struck unfathomable riches.

We’re told of Mary, that she “treasured up these things in her heart,” therefore we find her exulting,

My soul praises the Lord’s greatness!
My spirit finds its joy in God, my Savior,
because he has looked favorably on me, his humble servant.
From now on, all people will call me blessed

Her soul praises because her spirit had found its joy. Her joy was in God her Savior. And where was her Savior found? Gestating within her. Many will call her blessed for many will be swept into her blessedness. To quote Tiny Tim, “God bless us! Every one!”

Let us hear with Joseph also, “Do not be afraid!

We are forced to ponder, “Is not fear the centerpiece of my stinginess?” For myself, I must answer yes. I am so often a “bearer” of Scrooge.

Dickens’ Scrooge was meant to embody of a generation made stingy. Of course, his character is introduced amidst prosperity, yet without the capacity for generosity. In Dickens’ imagination, Scrooge had grown up in squalor, beset by the austerity of the Napoleonic wars, the uncertainty of civil unrest, the brutal inequalities of an industrialized England, and, yes, epidemics. Scrooge had emerged with wealth, yet remained shackled to the terrors of scarcity.

Having read the latest parliamentary report detailing the heart-wrenching conditions of the poor, Dickens set forth “to write something that would strike a sledgehammer blow twenty thousand times the force of a government pamphlet” on their behalf. His publishers thought it an uncouth Christmas work and rejected it. Dickens was forced to publish it himself, which he did on December 19, 1843. Copies sold faster than could be printed.

A friend described the success,

It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness.

Advent arrives impolitely to address our stinginess for, in actuality, it addresses our neatly concealed dread.

As magi we journey to find. We journey to find a Child of royal estate. We, “the people walking in darkness,” journey toward a dim light in the fainting hope that this royal Child be also born even unto us!

It isn’t impossible to think that these magi journeyed with fragments of Isaiah’s prophecy clutched to their breasts; studying them by firelight each night.

Like Mansa Musa they brought gifts of gold, though not in economy-unraveling quantities. And as we travel with them, we bring with us our gold; our wealth, our privilege, and also our dread. Can these all be laid down at once? This is Advent’s query.

When, later in his life, this Child of Advent encountered the wealthy, it was with mixed results. During one of his journeys, a rich man chased him down, knelt before him, and asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” It began with such promise, until they arrived at the topic of his wealth.

“Jesus looked at him and loved him,” we read, “then said, ‘Sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'” The man became “deeply dismayed by these words and went away grieving for he had great wealth.” Or did he?

Jesus had invited this man out of a life of dread and scarcity. The invitation had issued from love. Yet this man’s material riches occasioned a pilgrimage away from Jesus; a pilgrimage back to earth-drawn wealth and to scarcity and dread.

As the magi made their way through the Jerusalem of Herod the Great, there was much vexation. And we recall the words playwright Dorothy Sayers put in Herod’s mouth for these magi,

You cannot rule men by love. When you find your king, tell him so. Only three things will govern a people – fear and greed and the promise of security.

There can be no mistaking that this is nearly always the case. Nearly, but not always.

So we find Napoleon on the island of Saint Helena, exiled and debased, marveling at Advent’s Child,

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force.
Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.

The gold of the magi must pose for us a simple question: what shall govern you? Will it be scarcity and fear expressing themselves through Scroogelikeness, or a superabundance of love expressing itself through generosity?

For the pilgrimage of Advent must be seen for what I really is; not a pilgrimage whereby our wealth is dispersed in dazzling display. It is a pilgrimage whereby God’s wealth bedazzles by the gift of his very Son.

St. Paul summarized it’s message respledently,

For you know the generosity of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

Napoleon alludes to this, and Advent makes it plain: an empire founded upon love – a perfect love, which drives out fear and scarcity. The largess of Advent does not deflate the currencies of the world but annuls them altogether by ravaging their very standards. God has given us nothing less than Himself.

In the company of the magi, as we open up our treasuries and lay their contents before the royal Child, we are, as it were, unburdening ourselves from their cruel reign of terror.

“Do not be afraid!” Advent announces. You have found the mother lode of God. “Unto us a Child is born!”

O Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air

While walking through the campus near our house a few months ago, a breeze wafted a scent across my path that positively transported me. Without warning, I found myself riding a bike along a dirt road in the foothills of my boyhood home of Colorado Springs. The smell was stinging and nutty. As I passed through more such wind-borne parcels, I was transported again to a homeward walk down the ridge above my neighborhood of Pleasant Valley on a hot, dry Colorado afternoon.

Weaving my way through the planters and gardens, I discovered the source: a berm running along a neo-Gothic hall planted thick with Prairie dropseed. The sun’s warmth had released its sharp bouquet upon the winds and had removed me from time and place; evoking memories and emotions without consent!

The anatomy of the brain endows our sense of smell with with a set of keys; each unlocking treasuries of memory. This has been called involuntary memory or a Proustian moment. “I quivered,” we read in Proust’s In Search of a Lost Time, “attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me.”

Life is aromatic this way. Not only cartoon characters are lifted from their feet by its sensory provocations. Advent is nothing if not provocative.

Thus we find ourselves among travelers: journeymen and journeywomen, traversing toward a musty manger. Magi all, panniers stuffed with frankincense. Try as one might, there is no keeping its woody citric aroma confined. Clothing and sundries and provisions alike, all fogged through with the scent. Why carry such cargo?

In a word: worship.

The temples and shrines and alters of the ancient world billowed with the smoke of frankincense. A resin that bleeds from the sides of the rare Boswellia Sacra tree, it was both familiar and mysterious. Mysterious, in that lore and legend attended its origins. Familiar, in that its scent was synonymous with veneration.

Frankincense was also to be offered daily within the Hebrew Tabernacle; its furnishings festooned with censers and bowls and acacia wood altars for the burning. It was mingled with all grain offerings and was a perfuming ingredient in the Aaronic anointing oil, which was forbidden in common use.

As the magi traveled west, it could never have been far from their olfaction that theirs was an errand of worship. The resin’s pervasive scent eliciting involuntary reminiscence of manifold venerations while, simultaneously, piquing holy anticipation for One long awaited.

Thus we sing,

Frankincense to offer have I,
    Incense owns a Deity nigh:

and thus Isaiah foretold,

Nations shall come to your light,
    and kings to the brightness of your rising.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
    and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.

The journey of Advent ought to be a redolent affair, with transportation upon each gust of wind.

In such fashion, the magi made their odiferous descent into Jerusalem as a worshipful plume, occasioning much vexation upon their arrival. Are we not aware of the unseemliness of worship in our world? I’m not referring to the performance of religious activities, but of the fervor and sincerity which lingers on the lives of the converted. I’ll be frank (pun inevitable), such earnestness can be quite disturbing to me. I am so often playing games. Is this the case for you also? It is the problem Advent arrives to address!

We’re told the magi made their earnestness immediately plain,

Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?
For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.

What of their reception?

When Herod the king heard this, he was disturbed,
and all Jerusalem with him.

Let us pause to remember that this was no “Holiday Season” in Jerusalem; only another day. They were eating and drinking, working and playing, going through their mundane motions. The verisimilitude and vocabulary of worship was no doubt littered through their lives like resinous tears, yet kept mostly apart from any heat by which otherworldly fumes might awake. (Even as I write, I admit there are always exceptions.)

In his lecture, “A Slip of the Tongue,” CS Lewis recounts a misspoken prayer,

I had meant to pray that I might so pass through things temporal that I finally lost not the things eternal;
I found I had prayed so to pass through things eternal that I finally lost not the things temporal.

“What I had inadvertently said,” Lewis confesses, “very nearly expressed something I had really wished.” And so we find Jerusalem. And so we often find ourselves as well. Passing through Advent’s eternal fragrances so as not to lose the temporal.

The worshipful perfume of the magi’s procession became in Jerusalem and in the house of Herod a stench; portending divine disruption. He assembled together an otherwise lackadaisical collection of priests and teachers, who confirmed that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. The client king then began imagining a decidedly darker delegation fit for the occasion.

Decades later, St. Paul would discuss this stark disparity regarding the “aroma of Christ,” which is the selfsame aroma of Advent:

To one a fragrance from death to death, 
to the other a fragrance from life to life.

To the earth-bound, Advent reeks of decay – disgruntling them over the transience of their terrestrial horizons. “Vanity! Vanity!” it nags. “A chasing after the wind!” It is in this spirit that our contemporary consumerist holiday has been realized, which commodifies sacred melodies of Christ’s mass, relegating them to background murmur within an excited consumptive mode.

Yet, among the pilgrim-hearted, Advent is a fragrance from life to life; rousing us from misdirected sleepwalks; reminding us that these consumptive lands can never be our final satisfaction. Lewis infers, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

The beleaguered hymnodist Edmund Sears penned “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” In a later work titled Foregleams and Foreshadows of Immortality, he wrote,

Let the instinct of home be destroyed, and man would be utterly demoralized, or hopelessly insane. His life becomes aimless, and he wanters in spiritual vagabondism, he knows not whither or for what.

In mysterious affect, the aroma of Advent awakes homing instincts for a place we’ve never yet been, and we must, in the words of Proust, “attend to the extraordinary things happening within.”

“Descend into your heart,” Sears admonished, “and you will find there a deep and unquenchable instinct which belongs to the spiritual nature. It is the instinct for home.”

Frederick Buechner concluded his essay “The Longing for Home” with these words,

I cannot claim that I have found the home I long for every day of my life, not by a long shot, but I believe that in my heart I have found, and have maybe always known, the way that leads to it. The home we long for and belong to is finally where Christ is.

Jerusalem was, for the magi, a mistaken way-station; the wrong city of David. Not the bustling city of David’s complicated kingship, but the quieter hamlet of David’s pastoral childhood.

They’d been guided by the star but were briefly misguided by suppositions. During one of his customary conversational sermons, the Nicaraguan priest Ernesto Cardenal discussed this with his parishioners. A young man named Adán speculated,

The Gospel says later when they left they saw the star again. That means that when they reached Jerusalem the star wasn’t guiding them. They’d lost it.

The path of Advent is notoriously easy to lose. It doesn’t always lead where we expect. There are times when our sense of smell must compensate for our failing sight.

We know by now that one loses one’s sense of smell at great peril. This is true in more ways than one. We carry the frankincense with us on the journey of Advent in the same way one ties a string around one’s finger; to remind ourselves that this is about finding a place of worship.

As mentioned previously, the magi were an unnumbered band; not likely the fabled “three kings.” Nevertheless, these portrayals have become means by which rich meditations have emerged.

Dorothy Sayers notably wrote a gospel play for a 1941 BBC broadcast, in which the characters of the “three kings” appear. Upon their departure, Herod mocks their claim that this king will reign through love. “You cannot rule men through love,” he scoffs. “When you find your king, tell him so. Only three things will govern a people – fear and greed and the promise of security.”

The Jerusalem of Herod did not pass the smell test, and onward they traversed.

Sayers places the gift of frankincense in the possession of Caspar, whom she portrays as a wizened old noble preoccupied with worship and wisdom. Upon entering their low-slung abode, he remarks,

No place is too lowly to kneel in.
There is more holiness here than in King Herod’s Temple.

The Scriptures tell us the magi proceeded “overjoyed” into Bethlehem and, upon entering the house, “bowed down and worshipped him.” It was an Advent consummation!

They then “opened their treasuries” and presented the holy Child with three gifts, frankincense among them. May the frankincense be for us an aromatic atlas; an interior treasury transporting us to Emmanuel, which not only means “God with us” but also “us with God.”

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Mt. 6:21)

On the morning of February 14, 2001, I awoke to find my Subaru Impreza encased in a half-inch of ice. The sidewalks and roads were iced over, and snow fell steadily, swirling and drifting in a driving wind.

I spent the better part of 15 minutes chipping and scraping, until I could pry open the driver’s side door, start the car, and run the defrost. I tore a windshield wiper blade during the ordeal.

On most such days I would not have hazarded the roads, but this was not any day.

I loaded my car and trekked across town to a Jiffy Lube, where the fluids could be changed, the wiper blades replaced, and the remaining iced thawed from the vehicle. I made my way up the street to a florist, where they charged me $10 for a single long-stem rose. I did not bat an eye.

I then embarked on what would be a 7-hour westward journey over an icy and perilous Interstate 80. I was departing Kearney, Nebraska. My destination was, Lord willing, Ft. Collins, CO. For the uninitiated, I-80 is a veritable cavalcade of 18-wheelers, with grooved, undulating lanes. Under ideal conditions, it isn’t a pleasant roadway. These conditions were far from ideal.

Knuckles white and breaths filled alternately with prayers and curses, I drove like man possessed.

That Valentine’s Day marked my first opportunity to be in-person with my girlfriend of just over one month, and no act of heaven or earth was to prevent the reunion. (Ten months hence, she would become my wife.) We’re prone to forget St. Valentine was a martyr.

Upon reflection, I see that all journeys are acts of worship. Whether an errand for milk, or a road trip to the Grand Canyon; all travels attach themselves to worth. Is it any wonder Advent reads like a travelogue?

The word advent is, unsurprisingly, of the same stock as adventure: something unusual, exciting, daring and oftentimes hazardous. A “venture toward,” whose destination merits the costs.

For this reason, our intrigue is drawn to the mysterious magi; noble mystics hazarding their own westward journey. “Bearing gifts,” we sing, they “traverse afar.”

Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star

They are the “three kings,” the “three wise men,” and yet nowhere are we told there were three of them. We’re not even told they were all men! Scripture tells us only of magi; astrologically-attuned Eastern pilgrims, come, as it were, to worship.

Lore surrounding the “three wise men” owes itself to the fact that these pilgrims indeed bore three gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yet I might even say this catalogue falls at least one gift short. For these star-struck travelers actually offered a more significant gift: themselves. Put differently, they offered the gift of presence by way of journey.

The particulars of these characters has been augmented through much apocrypha, including three places of origin: Persia, Arabia, India. Even more, the tellings construct these characters in trifold specificity, imparting the names Melchior (Persia, gold), Balthazar (Arabia, myrrh), and Gaspar (India, frankincense). Rich as such traditions become, they tend to affect an evicting of the Everyman – the Every-magi – from the narrative. That is to say, they might evict you and me.

Advent is a story of worshipful journey – of pilgrimage – and, like all great stories, has its own magical way of sweeping us into the drama. The word magi is, after all, the base of our word magic.

As I write, I am aware of a set of mental negotiations taking place within me regarding magic, for its place in Scripture and in Christian regard is not uncomplicated. Frederick Buechner wrote, “If security’s what you’re after, try magic. If adventure is what you’re after, try religion.” But he would go on to add, “The line between them is notoriously fuzzy.”

In Advent, the line between magic and religion and many other things does become fuzzy, for here we have magi – astrologers – who, in their watchfulness, “observed his star at its rising.” (Mt. 2:2) Whose star? “The Child who has been born king!”

This places the emphasis of Advent squarely upon alacrity; a brisk and joyful readiness to embark.

Here was a community of Eastern star-gazers who, from time immemorial, had awaited an astral event denoting the birth of a foreign king. These had inherited a tradition of searching the skies. Likely, they had found camaraderie around this peculiar preoccupation. Why? We can’t be entirely sure.

But we know they spent their time on the lookout. Was it something to do with clues of God’s ongoing terrestrial involvement? We can be certain their lands did not lack for gods and demigods; likely many and varied. But each night they were found beneath the stars. The theological term for this is prevenient grace; the notion that God is everywhere at work in human hearts. St. Augustine described it thus, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Were they restless? Are we?

So they journeyed. Packed up their baggage and provisions, bid their loved ones goodbye, and securely stowed away their treasuries. Their journey would have taken a matter of weeks; an Advent season in whole. By the time they arrived, the nativity was no longer staged in a stable. Let us linger with them in their trip, even as we commence our own in these days.

Many of us have been confined in space in these days: physically, yes, but also spiritually. We’ve forgotten how to look for his star on the rise and our yearnings no longer drift to pilgrimage. Little wonder God’s first question to humanity was, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9) Where are you?

The Sons of Korah wrote, “Blessed are those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.” (Ps. 84:5) They continue by saying that, though they may pass through many a sad and arid landscape, “They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.” (v. 7)

Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

Thy perfect light! The blessed exist within a life of pilgrimage, with Zion fixed in their hearts. Elsewhere, the psalmist Asaph called Zion, “the perfection of beauty,” the place from which “God shines forth.” (50:2)

The perfection of beauty. This is the destination of Advent. The journey is often made by unexpected peoples from unexpected places, and what – or rather Who – they encounter defies expectations also.

When the star began to rise, so did the magi’s hearts. It was for them a divine overture and it must be for us also!

You may remember the Disney film Finding Nemo. It’s the one where a little clown fish is captured and made to live in a dentist’s office aquarium. He had given up hope of ever being liberated and reunited with his father, until the day a pelican arrives at the window and regales the aquarium-dwellers with the love-inspired exploits of his father – and Nemo’s yearnings are rekindled!

Advent is a story of worshipful journey; of journey predicated on worth. Yet, above all, the journey is God’s. The gift is His presence, and all is hazarded in the hope of reunion. Your life is the worth.

Therefore we sing,

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Advent is God’s journey to us, which might become our journey to him. Advent is a journey of one to another, and it is a journey to be made with a company of star-gazers.

Oh that its magic might gather us together and set us on the highways to Zion for worship!

Fog has a fascinating way of demarcating; revealing distance through gradated silhouettes; converting the world into an enormous pop-up book. Have you ever noticed that? Generally speaking, novel conditions have a way of enforcing themselves on perspective—insisting we take notice of things previously undetected.

We’re in such a novel condition. Our whole world mostly is. The effects of this pandemic are expressing themselves in countless ways, and no one can definitely speak to the duration or true meaning of this time. Yet, as the condition’s name suggests, it is pandemic—of all people. Thus it is common.

For me, as with fog, this has brought into stark relief what we call dimensions: our relationship to space and time themselves. I’m going to try to write four posts, each tied to the dimensions of reality. These are mere reflections; a humble prompt for inspection. May they offer you something helpful, should you read them.

Dimension 0 | A Point

Technically speaking, a point is actually no place at all; a null set. It derives its value, its meaning, its space only insofar as it connects to other points. It is the dimension of zero. The dot in the i of Jeremy Bearimy.  There are two symbols for the null set: the slashed zero (Ø) and the empty “curly brackets” ({}). (Yes, I just put curly brackets into parenthetical brackets.) Within the zero dimension we are bracketed thus with curls.

I’ve already written a piece about the present elusiveness of meaning, but, as this moment protracts, this seems even more the case. Yes there is value or, one could say, “values” available. Kindness and patience retain value, reaching out to others within the digital landscape while remaining present to those within our newly-shrunk society, prayer and mindfulness, physical activity and meditation on Scripture, care for self; all these are values within the nebula. And no, this time has not dissolved ultimate meaning; not tossed God from His throne nor totaled the vehicle of Truth. It’s more like we simply cannot find the place on the map reading, “You Are Here.” This type of meaning evades what bible students call “the interpretation” and scientists term “conclusion.” It has the distinct feel of chasing after the wind; literally, “an attempt to herd wind.” “The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind…” (Ecc. 1:6)

This point in space is both a dimension and no dimension at all, which is to say it is a paradox—a mystery. I find that people range from tepid to cold when it comes to mystery. Mystery: a “mouth-shutting-ness.” Forrest Gump has up and stopped running, and we’re left shouting, “Now what are we supposed to do?!” The emphasis is certainly upon the word “now,” a strange track set on repeat.

Days all feel vaguely the same. If you live in Chicago, you have spring, winter, summer, and fall all in one week. We’ve lost track of all of the yearly rituals that have vaporized into the ether: Opening Day and March Madness, Spring Break trips and Proms, weddings and funerals, Holy Week. It is a point whose point escapes us. Tomorrow promises to be much the same. And it is disorienting, no two ways about it, as we discover ourselves scraping and searching for bearings, groping desperately in darkness. Don’t we perceive this pent up energy? Have you been wondering what it’s about?

In the null set we are getting far too much time with ourselves, aren’t we? You are the one self with whom social distancing is regrettably futile, and you’ve become too close for comfort! It was the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who portrayed hell as an eternity in which people are their own tormentors—left alone with the abrasion of their own relentless self-critiques—in his aptly titled play, No Exit. The alarming question appears early, “how shall I endure my own company?”

Doesn’t that question speak to a torment we are all presently enduring? One of the characters in Sartre’s play finds herself wondering when the tormentors will arrive, and the valet asks her how she would recognize one. Her answer? “They look frightened.” This amuses hell’s valet, “Of whom would they be afraid? Their victims?”

“Laugh away,” she replies, “but I know what I’m talking about. I’ve often watched my face in the glass.” This character, Inez, knows inherently that fear is at the center of all torment, and it is alluded that the victim and tormentor shall be one and the same. But why?

Journalist Judith Shulevitz addressed this in her 2003 New York Times Magazine essay, “Bring Back the Sabbath,” bemoaning our “machinery of self-censorship” and the arduousness of “stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach.” Our activity, it would seem, performs an unacknowledged function; it is a noise machine to muffle this irritating murmur, whose droning has largely been eliminated without our consent. (In CS Lewis’s  The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape informs his demonic protégé Wormwood of hell’s intent, “We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth.” Yes they have.)

This condition is what theologians call “ontological lightness”—the perceived weightlessness of our self. As the late Brent Curtis put it, “the reality that when I stop ‘doing’ and simply listen to my heart, I am not anchored to anything substantive. I become aware that my very identity is synonymous with activity.” The discomfort, it turns out, is an existential crisis over which we skate precariously. The calls are coming from inside the house!

So we are all versions of Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly striving desperately against the disappearance of his world and very self. It is both terrifying and amusing. It is our corporate plot line. “As soon as they stop performing,” Curtis observes of our culture, “their identities—and ours—disappear.”

Are we the null set? God forbid! Constructed entirely of our doing? Or is there a self beneath it all; one with which we may be at rest, even apart from its productivity, even in naked stillness or newfound ineptitude in performing and producing? Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve never stuck around long enough to find out. 

Faced with her own crisis of self, my friend Kendra penned a poem that is both deeply honest and deeply wise,

Would your dove ever descend on me and say you are well pleased?
I’m not even a son but a daughter, so the quote doesn’t even fit
You speak a foreign language when you say I’m loved apart from what I do
What clothes, skin, and bones do I have apart from my endeavors?

She continues later,

If you unraveled my performance you’d keep going going going
Is there a core it wraps around or simply the end of the string
If it’s just the string God don’t unravel it
I’ll exist no more

The poem ends with a gut-level plea that says so much,

Do you like these words? Will you put them in a book?
Good, then it was worth it. I don’t have to do the real work.
My heart can remain unchanged; just tell me, “wow your heart’s so real!”
Tell me, tell me, tell me so I do not have to feel.

Can the love and pleasure of God actually rest upon those whose ledger of merit reads zilch? Can there be a being with value beneath the yarn once it is all unspooled? Can we avoid having this conversation a little longer? Please? We discover in times like this just how much our lives are a mad scramble to cobble together our sense of self.

The one thing I know is that the “You” in “You Are Here” is precisely where the now has brought us; inescapably so. Are you coming to see how ontologically light you really are? Have you any answer your auto-torment—your own frightened face in the glass? If not, can you re-enter the world with anything but fear and renewed desperation? Or will the you who you are re-enter with greater rest and an enlarged capacity for generosity?

“You have made us for Yourself,” observed the great bishop of Hippo, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” The you who are here,  are made in the very image and likeness of the Creator, and, before a work hour was complete, were beheld to be “very good.” The Dove descended upon Jesus, and, before a single sermon or miracle, the Father’s voice pronounced love and great pleasure; the type of love that defines the object as beloved. And he became “a life-giving spirit.”

You are here.

And, to quote my friend’s poem, “the real work” is before you; to name your noise and restlessness; to claim your silent rest—or at least a taste of it!

Wendell Berry spoke so simply and so poignantly about this “real work” in his poem “Our Real Work”:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

In his Noise-lauding letter, Screwtape quotes George MacDonald’s “sickening” description of heaven, “the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.”

“You Are Here,” and here you may remain until the you who is here comes to rest with your self, as defined apart from all of its noise and accolades; to rest in the goodness of your being and belovedness. The “Where” of “You Are Here” may only disclose itself by way of this real work, and although it may remain murky, you will be allowed to orient yourself by the unfamiliar sounds of music and singing—issuing from within, of all places!

As this happens, you will actually have something new to offer; something to give. And you will say along with another poet, Walt Whitman, “When I give I give myself.”

 

Our world has been flung into a peculiar quiet, and we know not what to make of it.  Life within ‘The Great Pause’ finds us confronted by our craving for noise. More truthfully, we are coming to see how all the noise of our hustling and bustling serves to drown out the clamor within. As we’ve learned from the movies, “it’s quiet—too quiet!”

Streets without traffic, gridlocked minds; public venues stilled, private venues cacophonous; bodies idle yet pent up. There is no telling when this infernal quietness might end. Whoever said silence was golden? It isn’t! Silence is foreboding, if anything. Even monks don’t like the stuff. They spend their whole lives “acquiring the taste.”

During my undergrad I memorized a lot of Scripture. I was part of a group that heavily emphasized it and have never regretted the storehouse it has been for me. During one study group, we agreed to memorize John 14:6 and Luke 6:46. Of course someone got it wrong and committed Luke 14:6 to memory: “And they had nothing to say.” We laughed about this and, naturally, all agreed to memorize this verse as well.

We do have nothing to say. Our politicians and pundits and so-called ‘talking heads’ have seldom been so flummoxed. Even the wise in markets and theology and psychology and science are at a veritable loss. I know I am, middling though my wisdom be. O but we want to say or hear something—anything!

In actuality, it isn’t as though we have nothing to say. There is some good stuff being said; and a lot of rubbish also. But there is saying and there is saying. It’s the second one that is in scarce supply at present—like toilet paper and rubbing alcohol.

I’m fond of a vignette that is found toward the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has invited his three close companions John, James and Peter on a hike to the summit of an arid mountain in northern Galilee. Atop the peak, Jesus suddenly begins radiating light like a sun. Even his clothes became white as light—as Mark put it, “whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.” He was transfigured; the Greek word is metamorphoō; altered from one state to another; something humanly familiar became something altogether apart. Some might say holy. Certainly dazzling.

Moses and Elijah showed up too! The three of them had a conversation about his impending “departure.” And Jesus’ three fellow hikers were gobsmacked. Speechless. Or nearly.

True to form, Peter opines, “Lord, it is good that we are here.” And he has a recommendation, “If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Luke offers us readers a parenthetical: “(He did not know what he was saying.)” Peter was saying something but he was not saying anything.

Without warning, and while Peter was in mid-saying, “a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.'” Isn’t that just perfect? Something marvelous and ineffable was happening, but Peter’s incurable instinct was to speak—surely something must be said or done or? Peter, you don’t need to say anything or do anything—save listen.

I was on a walk with my dog the other morning, and I found myself asking God to teach me to pray. I just haven’t felt like I’ve had the right words for a while now; nor the right heart; nor mind. I walked and walked. My dog looked for squirrels and smelled the bases of trees and lamp posts and poked her nose into shrubbery. Soon I was nearing my home, and the walk was nearly complete. I had blown it! Thirty minutes of disjointed thinking and still none of the right words at all.

Nearing an intersection, I realized that I had not even been consciously in the presence of God. And I found myself saying, “God, help me learn to enter your presence.”

Maybe I hadn’t blown it. Maybe he was teaching me to pray.

The writer of Ecclesiastes offers counsel for entering the presence of God: “let your words be few.” But he says more: “draw near to listen.” God doesn’t begrudge our talking so much as our lack of listening. He has something to say. I think I mostly keep talking because I don’t totally believe this, and the roaring on the inside and out leave me so afraid.

Silence is that terrible and titular prowling monster of Shūsaku Endõ’s novel, “the stillness of the night” which forces us, as it forced Rodrigues, to rightly name both the agony of groaning beyond our doors as well as the abyss of questions gaping within us. A moment of truth. A stark one.

None of us asked for this. Who knew silence could be so disquieting? But the world around us is speaking volumes presently, and the world within us is speaking volumes as well. In the former case, I believe it was Rousseau who remarked that the thoughts of modern man had become so preoccupied as to make him incapable of discerning the cries of the needy on the streets outside his own home. With regard to the latter, Parker Palmer laments our aversion to self-listening. “We listen for guidance everywhere except from within,” he says. And he continues, “if I am  to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else.”

Only then, Palmer says, we can hear the “words that arise when the inner teacher feels safe enough to tell its truth.” God is offering ears to hear—as king David wrote, “you have dug for me an ear.” God is digging us ears right now, like it or not.

Our world has been thrust into a bright cloud of sorts—what one medieval mystic called “The Cloud of Unknowing”—and it is ours mostly to listen. What are the honest and uncomfortable questions yearning to be asked? How is our world making its deepest needs known? Is it possible that if we remain with such enigmas—patiently, curiously as those “drawing near to listen”—we may end up hearing something unexpected from the mouth of God? Only one way to find out. Shhhh. None of us like being shushed, but don’t we all need it from time to time?

Perhaps silence is golden, or, rather, a smelting by which something golden might be extracted from so much dross. Those damn monks are probably onto something!