The season of Advent began on Sunday with the lighting of the first candle on the Advent wreath, the candle of Hope. I love Advent. It is so counter-cultural and it appeals to my delight in thumbing my nose at the consumerism of the day by saying things are different here at church. We don’t jump into Christmas with both feet. We step slowly and deliberately into the season by first measuring out the days of Advent.
Nonetheless, I have been doing lots of shopping and dropping lots of coinage as I prepare for the frenzy of gift-giving and festive living. For all my desire to live a simple life I easily get seduced into the purchasing program promoted by stores and catalogues.
I have thought a lot about Christmas this year and what I will do. It will be a different Christmas for me. For the past 30 years I have spent Christmas with my one true love and this year there will be a yawning space sitting beside me on Christmas day. I am being proactive and making plans so as not to succumb to more melancholy than I can handle. But it will be a day accompanied by sadness and while the magazines and tv commercials lead us to envision the perfect Christmas day filled with a happy family, a perfect tree, just the right gifts and a delicious meal, I know that for many, if not most people, Jesus’ natal day does not look like any of those tv movies! Many of us spend the day acquainted with grief, or debt, or anxiety or sadness.
Leonard Cohen wrote a wonderful song called “Anthem”. The chorus goes like this, “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.” I like that! If something is perfect, with no cracks, then how does the light get in? In his song Cohen encourages the thought that nothing is perfect, everything – everyone has a crack, a break, a blemish, a grief, a debt, a sin. And that is how God breaks into our very soul – through the cracks, the openings, the not-perfect self that we are.
I am cracked. And I am glad. It is in the crack of my grief that Christ will find a place to be born this Christmas. Nothing about my day will be perfect except that I spent Advent preparing my soul for the coming of the Christ child.
