first sunday of advent

Clear off the table and lay a purple cloth under these words. It is the beginning of our new year. It is our great chance to step into liturgical time and out of this other time that is increasingly ordered by the forces of commerce and delusion. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light." My knowledge of Isaiah comes not so much from reading the Bible as from hearing and playing those passages in Handel's Messiah. "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,.....make straight in the desert a highway for our God." The words and melodies are part of my biology after all these years of learning them at the piano, rehearsing with singers and choirs. Now the songs are my way in--the entrance to Advent for me. When I encounter the same words in my Bible reading, I greet them as old friends, and they point me deeper into the texts I barely know.

Last night, I pulled the Advent wreath out of storage. It is a plain circle of straw and wire, with four unvarnished wooden candle holders attached to it. I stepped out into the rain and cut a few sprigs of low hanging pine from the tree that towers over our house. I walked over to the old holly bush whose life has been spared for this purpose, the first night of Advent, and I cut a few leaves, not knowing for sure what I was getting in the dark. Inside, I wired the damp greenery to the wreath and added the beeswax candles, thinking of Peter from the Farmer's Market, who rolled the beeswax into candles, and who may have raised the bees, but I'm not sure.

More music in my head, a recording of renaissance music, women's voices in an echoing church: "Gau-de, gau-de, Em--man---u-el, shall come to you o, I---sra-el."

My little family of three gathered at the table and we said the prayers and lit the first candle, light in the darkness.

I love the darkness of Advent-- the anticipation, the preparation, the nothingness. This weekend, visiting my mother-in-law, I picked up one of her National Geographic magazines and opened it to a picture of a group of Orthodox monks holding candles in the dark. The caption said that they regularly rose to pray in the middle of the night because they believe that these are the hours when "the heart is most open." So here we are, at the darkest time of the year, and we too, are offered the gift of open hearts. I am praying to wake up, to not lose this great chance to listen in the darkness, to be open, and quiet, and unafraid.