Stories, Lost and Found / Advent Day 3

What I meant, when I said that "the good stories get lost," happens to me all the time. Last night it happened this way. Marin and Matteo were bedding down in our upstairs radon-free nest, and I was reading something at the dining room table.

"Light the Christmas tree," chanted Teo, leaning on "tree" in his sweetly emphatic way, "for the baby." Huh? I didn’t get it, but Marin usually knows what’s on his mind. She replied, "that’s right, Matteo, there’s a baby that’s born during Christmas."

I could barely hold myself back from shouting the corrective, "Baby Jesus," drawing out "Jesus" in my sermony, corrective, highly-annoying-to-Marin way, but managed to.

But what the heck are the Christians doing spending four weeks of their lives in the dark during Advent, lighting candles, praying, longing, listening, singing quietly, asking for God to come. "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (means "God-with-us").

They’re waiting for an intervention in their lives, a sign, a fierce encouragement, a liberation. And when, faithfully, you look for what you need, you receive what you need, in one way or another. This you are required to believe, somehow or other, in order to be healthy, to be a good companion to your friends, your community, your generation, your era. To be a good steward of all the universe has invested in you.

Jesus was one of the heros. He found a richly adorned religious facade with forbidding guards and an imposing admission-fee-structure (no women, no children, circumcision, etc). From the side, though, the view was different. A lot of people knew that, but Jesus was the one who knew what to do about that. He located and entered by the side door, and invited all the people he ever met (+women, +children) to bring their most important hopes, dreams, and memories with them, and help him reconstruct the ancient ruin. To make life-giving a place that inflicted death.

This is the time of year we remember people like him, who are born into our world and give the world its greatest hopes back, at great cost. We owe them dearly. In the darkest time of the year (and up here in Fairbanks, that’s no metaphor – it’s 9:00 am as I write and there’s a crescent moon hanging in the skeletal trees behind me through the window, but there won’t be a lightening of the sky for another half hour, and I’m not even talking about sunrise), all people who know their connection to the earth and to each other, prepare to light the bonfires to call down and give thanks for these heros, these enlivening spirits.

They have helped bring us back to ourselves when we have locked ourselves (or been locked by others) into various dark rooms, behind shiny facades of many failed illusions. Each has a side entrance. If you can find it, bring your friends along when you invade, and make a real home for all of you there. Don’t forget Pooh, the bear of very little brain, and his very good stories.