Turning into reality

Here it is a dark, cold snowy morning. I have yet to go out for my morning walk. Every fiber of my being wants to stay in my recliner here in my den. But, after composing this, I will dress and walk, praying my morning Rosary as I make my way along the street. It's good for me to push myself, up to a point.

The trouble is, I can't locate that point. Meanwhile, mentally, I vacillate between feeling I don't push myself enough and that I push myself way too hard. I am told there is a balance and that it can be achieved. I remain skeptical about this.

It's funny when I was younger, I always envisioned my mid-50s as a time when I kind of had life figured out, at least the practicalities of life. In reality, I find myself struggling with the same things with which I struggled in my thirties and forties. You see, I didn't really get up and running, in the worldly sense, until I was thirty-one. Looking back, I take pride in the fact that I spent my twenties mostly doing what I wanted to do- for better and for worse.

My point? The same one I make with some frequency in these Friday posts: life goes by fast! Acknowledging this seems fitting as the Second Week of Advent comes to an end. On its Third Sunday, the Advent season takes a turn. It turns from focusing intensely on Christ's so-called Second Coming (he's never left) to looking forward to our celebration of his Nativity and, moreover, to his abiding presence as we await the fulfillment of God's creation.

Over the course of this Advent, a sentence keeps popping into my mind: "Christ is not really born until he is born in you." I think that sums the direction Advent takes after its turn mid-way through. This year, with Christmas happening on a Saturday, Advent is as long as it can possibly be. So, we have quite a lot of time to prepare ourselves to receive Christ again on the Feast of His Nativity.

Just as Jesus's birth happened not merely in "humble circumstances"- surely a euphemistic phrase in this context- but in what we would consider an appalling situation, so his birth in us has to happen in the messiness of the reality of our own lives. Typically, he does come screaming in from above, like a meteor, or creeping around from the edges of the circumstances we daily face. No, he comes in and through people and events. Usually in and through the most unexpected people and circumstances.

In my experience, grace is not some clean, shiny thing that is clearly distinct from reality as I experience it. It is right there in it, present in and through the opaque transience of my life. This, I'm pretty sure, is what is meant by the adjective "incarnational." Rather than absent ourselves from the nitty-gritty of life, putting our heads in the clouds, as it were, following Christ is to turn into reality.

In anticipation of the turn, our traditio for this Second Friday of Advent in the Choir of Saint John's College Choir, Cambridge, with "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus."