In terms of the pandemic, our waiting is hopeful because three vaccines have tested effective vice the novel coronavirus. It is no longer a matter of if but of when. While the anticipated time between now and the when of vaccination may still be discouraging to those who have been forced to isolate the past 8 months or so, there is a light, the end is in sight, even if still off in the distance.
My point with all this is simply to note that during this particular Advent we need look no further than our own experience for what this season is all about. It's about hope-filled waiting. Hopeful waiting is perhaps best described by the word longing. Longing is the result of desire. Desire, in turn, is what makes us human beings. Being human means to be made in the imago Dei, the image of God.
What is it we long for? We long for satisfaction and contentment. In a word, we desire to realize some form of completeness, wholeness, holiness. So many songs and poems are about this longing. These show us how many different forms this takes. It is wholly unsurprising that the desire-induced longing that constitutes our humanity is often expressed in terms of erotic desire.
"Erotic" is not synonmous with "sexual." What is erotic both transcends and goes deeper than sex. So, far from being inappropriate, such the assertion that our longing inherently possesses an erotic dimension is highly appropriate. Consider the power of the Song of Songs, an erotic text if ever there was one! This book is considereed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as holy writ.
A close-up from Bernini's The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1647-1652
The pandemic experience, too, is about longing for connection, for sociality, to be able to once again gather in parks, pubs, concert halls, movie theaters, cafés and restaurants, churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. Our desire to celebrate birthdays, deaths, graduations, and the like.
For many and to some extent for most, this time of pandemic is a bit like an exile. Just as the ancient people of God longed to return from exile, we, too, long for the promised land, a place of light, joy, and happiness.
We sing "Come, O, come Emmanuel" in the awareness that God is already with us. Moreover, we sing it in the awareness that there is nowhere we can be that God is not already there. Nonetheless, he is often present by his absence.
For my personal Advent devotion this year I am reading a lovely book by Carys Walsh entitled Frequencies of God: Walking Through Advent with R.S. Thomas. Who is R.S. Thomas? He was a Welsh Anglican priest and a very gifted poet.
Each day, Walsh takes one of Thomas's poems and reflects on it in terms of Advent. In yesterday's devotion she reflected on the poem Suddenly, which came after, as a companion piece, to the poem Kneeling.
In her reflection, Walsh wrote what is perhaps the single best two-sentence insight on Advent I have ever read: "Part of the mystery of Advent is that time collapses. We are waiting again for that which has happened, which also happens continually and will happen again at some unspecified time."
Our Friday traditio for this First Friday of Advent is not a song. It is the poem Suddenly:
As I had always known
he would come, unannounced,
remarkable merely for the absence
of clamour. So truth must appear
to the thinker; so, at a stage
of the experiment, the answer
must quietly emerge. I looked
at him, not with the eye
only, but with the whole
of my being, overflowing with
him as a chalice would
with the sea. Yet was he
no more there than before,
his area occupied
by the unhaloed presences.
You could put your hand
in him without consciousness
of his wounds. The gamblers
at the foot of the unnoticed
cross went on with
their dicing; yet the invisible
garment for which they played
was no longer at stake, but worn
by him in this risen existence.
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