Advent: Mystery and Memory
“To be a Christian is to sit, however uncomfortably, in the mystery.”
Tish Harrison Warren Prayer in the Night
I snapped this picture one morning in October. I’ve been thinking for awhile about this photo. did not know what I wanted to say about it, only that it echoed with something inside me. This is my dock stretching out into the lake. Water is underneath, though the fog is so thick in this photo that the water and horizon cannot be distinguished. My neighbor’s boathouse is to the left and a distant shoreline is directly in front of the end of the dock. But we can see none of that in the photograph. I know it’s there. You’ll have to take my word for it.
When we packed up and moved out of our home of twenty-one years and out of the city in June, I told friends we’d be back by October. It’s December. We’ve not been house-hunting yet, not even on Zillow. At first we were just tired from the move, then we helped our daughter and son-in-law move, then the weather at the lake was so nice, and it was football season, and then it was Thanksgiving…. Have you ever read the children’s book, If You Give A Mouse a Cookie? There’s a glass of milk, then a straw, then a mirror….it’s a circular tale. Needless to say, we have made no progress toward moving back to town. Shoes are under the bed. Clothes are on one of those hotel luggage racks in the extra bedroom. We have nowhere to put the mail, the bills and the ordinary stuff of daily life because this cabin we are living in was not built for that. Grizzly has to back his way out of the bathroom; it’s not big enough for him to turn around in. This house was built to be a weekend home. It has more square footage in covered porch than actual heated and cooled space. It’s a shelter in case the weather is inclement and a place to plug in the coffee maker.
Some mornings I have to look under my bed, in my tiny closet I share with my husband, in the guest room closet and on the hotel luggage rack in the loft before I can get out the door fully dressed. I huff and puff and say to myself, I can’t live like this! Last weekend, I cried when I realized we did not have enough Christmas lights for the tree and I was going to have to drive twenty miles to get some. But I also remember driving down the short gravel road at the end of the day. I remember the scene beyond the fog, what’s it is like to glide across that water in a kayak, the countless sunrises and sunsets, the peace of sitting on the dock over the water with my beloved, or wind in my face on a summer boat ride.
I cannot envision the future right now. There is a simplicity and a quiet beauty to the last six months that has nourished my soul, but it not practical when you both work in town or when you need more lights for your Christmas tree. We are praying daily about what home should look like for us now. No clear answer is coming. Just foggy mornings where water and sky are indistinguishable.
This post hardly seemed like an Advent one when it began to take shape, and yet this is what Advent seems to be - living in mystery. After all, what is more mysterious than pregnancy? Even with all the technology now available, one still cannot know who she carries inside her until he or she is born. When I try to remember carrying my babies, what comes to mind is the pregnancy itself - my own experience of it. I did not yet know Chip or Mary Augusta as human souls. I did not know the curious mind of a little boy that would be fascinated with the agitator of the washing machine at two years old or the eagle-eyed little girl who would spot an airplane from her carseat and exclaim, “Wook, Daddy, wook!” I did not know one would be a coxswain and the other ride a horse. One would craft words and the other would paint pictures. I knew none of these things when I was expecting their arrival, except the discomfort of large babies inside my 5’1” frame and the excitement of having a child. What I did know was something exciting and beautiful (and sometimes difficult and painful) was ahead and I needed to prepare for it.
Advent always has me thinking about Mary, the waiting, the mystery, the unanswered questions. She pondered the angels words in her heart. She knew she was highly favored. She trusted the God who had chosen her to bear him into the world, but she could not see the horizon. The angel gave her no details, no instruction books. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” was only answer she got when she asked, “How?” And yet, we read in chapter 1 of Luke that when she gets in the company of her cousin Elizabeth, the two women burst into singing. Mary’s song is filled with remembering. The uncertainty of the future is celebrated because she remembers the past. Mary remembers the mercy of God, the strength of his arm, how he brought down the tyrants and raised up the poor. When she cannot quite imagine the future, she looks back to the past, recalling who she has seen God to be for his people. In community with Elizabeth, she practices remembrance.
This is the call of Advent: anticipation and remembrance. Advent is not all just torturous waiting and living in darkness and pondering your unknowns alone. It is practicing anticipation and preparation for what it yet to come. It is pondering in our hearts in solitude but it is also singing memories in community. It is facing the unknown future by looking back, by remembering and proclaiming the goodness, the mercy, the strength of God that we’ve already seen in our lives.
Sitting in mystery is uncomfortable. I much prefer the pink and oranges of sunrise and the golden underlight on the tree trunks as the day breaks, but the foggy mornings have a beauty all their own, reminding me to remember what I know is there, even though I cannot see it.
(I highly recommend Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren referenced in the above quote.)