marramgrass

(I sat down to write, and discovered that I’ve said before what I want to say. I originally posted the below on Christmas Eve 2007.)

John 1:1-14 (NIV):

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

As The Message has it, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.”

This portion of the prologue to John’s Gospel is a slip of Scripture that I return to again and again, largely on account of those words. There’s a word theologians use when they talk about it:

Incarnation.

Advent is closing, this is why we’re here.

I had thought about a lengthy post on this one, but I’ve decided to leave it at this: God became man, with all the mess and the fuss and the need that comes with the territory. If you think about it too much, the implications can leave you dumb. So keep it simple: Immanuel — God with us.

Tomorrow the celebration of that birth is upon us. Merry Christmas all.

Sunday 30th November, 2008: the First Sunday in Advent.

My brother has developed a family tradition whereby he will, on roughly this Sunday, haul his fiancee to my parents’ house and put up their Christmas tree. If you haven’t seen my mother’s tree, look out your window :) It stands about seven feet tall in a low-ceilinged room, and I don’t know how many lights are on it — possibly more than are on the tree outside City Hall. (Actually, given the feebleness of that tree, I wouldn’t be surprised.) My father likes to joke that if you listen carefully you can hear the wheel in the electricity meter speeding up.

The evening, including a visit to see my gran in the City Hospital, was a reminder that alongside the liturgy, the longing and the waiting in darkness, this joy and these lights are also true markers of the season, and — if I can say it — offer a little taste of Kingdom. There is room for laughter in the observance, an accompaniment to the hope of the day.

This is my routine. Three days a week, at the moment, I find myself sitting in the car outside Belfast City Hospital; I’m waiting for my wife. While her work day notionally ends at 5 pm, the realities of caring for patients mean that while I may see her shortly after 5, it could be half an hour, an hour, sometimes much longer before she climbs into the seat beside me.

I could spend three or four hours in a week just sitting here, waiting.

There is a temptation to call this wasted time, time when I could handily be somewhere doing something, but these few hours are instead precious to me, and when other commitments (generally a work thing in the evening for one or other of us) mean that I’m not here to collect my wife, I miss this time.

With everything else calling for attention, when I sit here I don’t get the computer out; I rarely make a phone call; I don’t have the room to write comfortably. Instead, I can just sit.

It’s one of the few opportunities I get to read a book, or to relax with a puzzle played on the screen of my phone. I might listen to a podcast, or an audiobook run through the car stereo. I may even tap out a blog post, one letter at a time.

It doesn’t really matter what I do, just that this is the time in my day when nothing else can take my attention, purely by virtue of where I am. That’s precious.

It says something of me that I need circumstances to force this space on me before I can take these pleasures without guilt. Othertimes, that sneaking niggle is always there.

It’s almost Advent, a season of reflection and anticipation — both attitudes and activities that require space and time. The Mockingbird’s Leap (see the sidebar) is to be reconvened, a call to attention to the little graces that surround. That, too, requires the beat, the break in the scurry and hurry.

Rhythm is found as much in the spaces between the beats as in the beats themselves. There is a need to find that rhythm in a day, a week, a year.

I wrote here recently that Advent is my favourite season. It is for many reasons, but foremost are the quiet, the darkness, the anticipation and the yearning for what is to come, the presence of the fullness of life, of life itself.

I sit here waiting, in more ways than the obvious.