Raging against Advent

The simplicity of Advent is sometimes hard to capture.  It is not a sad, quiet time quite like Lent as we prepare ourselves for the Great Three Days of liturgy leading up to Easter.

It is similar like what winter does in nature, which may be why I struggle every year skipping straight over winter/Advent in my mind, and look forward to the joyous springtime that is Jesus' birth.  I really don't like how grey winter can be in Virginia.  The trees have lost their leaves, the sky takes on a bleak grey-like quality, and very rarely is there a sunny day that is not also too blinding without the shade of a good tree to contrast the brightness.  I waited at least a week after Thanksgiving here in America before I decorated for Christmas in my new home.  Festive music is still strictly forbidden from my car radio, and occasionally I will abide a holiday tune played in a store to make its jolly way into my heart.

I still rage against Advent in the way that I rage against winter in the northern hemisphere.

The Lord is with us (he is with us indeed) already!  Why should we have patience to sit through four weeks of Advent waiting for this Messiah when we've already been saved by grace?  Why does it matter that we have Advent specific music to sing during worship on a Sunday and we ignore the good Christmas tunes we all know by heart until after December 25?

My Advent wreath this year,
a sign of hope and light in winter

Taking a look into scripture history, the journey of Advent begins to make more sense.  The Jews of the Old Testament waited for hundreds of years for the One to come to earth.  There were many prophets who paved the way, many pains in communities who lived through diasporas and exodus' from their homelands, and many long winters to endure for this wonderful sign of Hope to feel even within our sights on the horizon.

So we wait today, thousands of years later, in the softness of our Advent.  Our four weeks of considering what waiting for Hope is like.  To sit in these long nights, pull our communities in close, and strengthen relationships to get us through the many pains we have today.

Some of us are not very pleased with the state of US and UK politics (among many many other issues of justice in many many communities around the world).  Some of us are very comforted by the current leadership lineup.  For some of us, these next four years are looking like the forty years the Hebrews had to wander the dessert before being allowed into the Promised Land.  We gather in our communities to seek comfort, this Advent.  To take a deep breath and gather our wits about us for the journey ahead.  Whichever path you're on, there are others walking beside you, praying beside you, and struggling beside you.

Advent is a time for acknowledging our brokenness, and acknowledging how powerful it is that our Hope came among us in our brokenness just as damaged, and said 'Peace be with you.'

And all I can say to that is Amen.

 

The Metaphorical AAA

After my YAGM year serving with St Chrysostom's Church Manchester, I took the time to travel to a few countries in Europe, say goodbye to the friends I made in the UK, and then traveled home to settle into the United States life once again.

First and Last group photo of the YAGM UK group. This is the amazing group of young adults who all acted as a support to one another throughout our year on that amazing little island.

There was so much that I learned, grew, and flourished in this past year, and now that I have closed the chapter on the last year of mission work, I find myself asking the Great Unknown before me what I should do next?

A group shot of a Mad Hatter Tea we had at St C's before I left.  My year in Manchester was made so special because of these people and so many more.

There was already a plan, apparently.  Before I left Manchester I had an un-looked for email from a pastor I had known at the end of my university days.  She asked if I would be interested in taking a new position at her church as a Communications and Ministry Specialist.  I took the calling, and now two months after I ended my service with St C's, I am beginning a new ministry with Muhlenberg Lutheran Church in the VA synod of the ELCA.  A short two hour drive away from home compared to the vast ocean I lived across the past year.

Getting here, though, has been a wild ride.

The day before I began work I intended to move down to stay with friends temporarily who live in town while looking for an apartment.  Other than some patience in the process of discernment and hiring with the church, everything about the last two months has been enjoyable.  Everyday has been a new kind of joy except possibly yesterday.

Yesterday was a bit of a growing moment for me.

We begin with the flat tire as soon as I woke up - unfortunate but not too big an obstacle.  A flat tire is a normal part of being a car owner, and getting it fixed is relatively easy thanks to my supportive Step-Dad.  Great, that was dealt with in barely over an hour, bags packed, and I'm on the road to meet Mom for lunch before I head out on the two hour drive.

I carefully drove out Interstate 66 for fifty miles, watching my speed and what I drove over to make sure no extra stress was put on my tires when all seemed for naught as I passed mile marker 10 and suddenly my car started jerking.  Great, flat tire again.  I throw my caution lights on and pull over on the side of a majorly busy highway to put the spare on for the second time that day, turn around, and drive back into Northern Virginia where I could meet my Mom after work and get a new set of tires.  Not really what I intended to do today, but it should be manageable and then I can be back on the road in no time.  An incredibly kind stranger who had been following me pulled over and helped me change the tire (Which we found had completely blown the inner wall), and even suggested somewhere to get a new set.

We now find ourselves at Costco, getting the back two tires replaced.  It took twice as long to travel the distance back East as it had taken to go West.  Along the way, though, I saw a dead black bear along the side of the road, various beautiful small towns full of civil war history, landscapes that were utterly gorgeous, and I had a good cathartic cry.

It takes the guys in the tire center forty minutes to get the job done, bless them, and my Mom is there with me to sooth my nerves and help me make sure all the paperwork is dealt with properly.  My carefully cultivated cool has been a bit tested by all of this, but thanks to some frozen yogurt recovered well.  

Getting ready to hit the road again, we find that this very troublesome day has not quite taken the last punch out of me yet.  This is a long story, and believe you me, it was much longer to live through yesterday than it is to type it up and have you read it.

My front brakes are making a horrible noise as I leave the parking lot, despite being changed the previous summer they are worn through, and as Mom and I discuss our options, I completely lose it.  She has selflessly offered to switch cars with me to deal with changing the brakes out and allow me to start my new job today without worry of transportation.

And all this could have been a nightmare that made starting work today seem like a bit of a bad omen.

Honestly?  I think it was the best reminder of the Metaphorical AAA I have watching my back through family and friends and complete strangers who all care so deeply for me and their community.

Who is your Metaphorical AAA?  Do you act as as the Metaphorical AAA for someone else?

14 August 2016: Emptying Out My Closet

It is almost overwhelming returning home to a room and space and a whole household of things I lived without for a year.  And I mean a full household of my own personal belongings that turned my apartment into a home for two years at University.  There are things I forgot about (My Lego collection and several sets of odd sized bedding), and a few I missed terribly (playing Nintendo 64 Tetris).  Much of my year living in Manchester was done with the consideration of 'living simply', and some of the clutter seems unnecessary in my room now.  The place where I felt this change most was when I turned and looked into my closet with a bit of a sense of angst.

Let me assure you here that there are not any skeletons or bodies hiding in there.  There are no strange relics of past lives or echoes of a self that I'd rather keep hidden.

All there is in there are some old clothes and university t-shirts that might have once been more important than they are today.  Some people might think of them as second skins that create an identity of a formative part of life and should be held onto as memory from that time.  Once upon a time they probably did for me too.  The simple story was that a lot of it didn't fit post-Manchester-me anymore.

They are no longer my identity.  Just memories that were good mostly, have come to pass, and now I have grown into the current best version of me that lived out of two suitcases of clothes for a year.  This current and best version of me also lost several clothes sizes worth of weight after cycling or walking everywhere around Manchester, and the things I left behind last August quite literally no longer fit my body.

Change is easily seen from the physical outside, it was harder for me to see the change a year of accompanying St Chrysostoms Church had inflicted on me until I stood there staring at a closet of transformed 'me's and said out loud to myself:

"It's okay to have grown and not wanting to be who I had been when I was last in this room packing a year ago."


Suddenly that little knot of angst loosened in my chest and I felt like I could let it all go, and give myself the permission to be me as I was in Manchester in Virginia.

Reflection from 17 June 2016

Packing

The date suddenly hits you
  

One month until you finish work, another few weeks before you leave - naturally you start winding projects to a close and packing your things.  There is so much to do, where do you begin?

You start with the immediate, making sure to take in every new moment and experience, tallying up all you've yet to do and all you've already done.  Then these lists take you back in your memory to the beginning of this journey.


Lets start over


Packing started the day you arrived, in a reverse way: everything was new and you had to take it all in somehow.  Sights, tastes, smells, new people, new work, new everything.  All of it at once and you were pushing all this excitement into every day, packing in as much as you could into a day.

It very soon stopped being new, and even though you're miles from where you began it all started to feel familiar, but you were given the chance to be unfamiliar.  Not unfamiliar with others, but with yourself.  Given the chance, you now have the opportunity to grow in a new environment foreign yet familiar to the one you came from.


But now you are at the end and you've still got to pack


How do you fit all of this garden of change into one suitcase, one backpack, one sentence when people ask you how your year was?  You want to ask them, 'Do you have a year for me to adequately explain?'

All you can do is smile when you answer, 'It was good, and I am still trying to unpack all of my experience that has changed me through the past year, though I did not bring nearly as much physically back as I left with!'  But the memories you packed into your heart along the way


They take up no room and weigh the heaviest of all.

Garden from Rocamadour, France

23 minutes/1.2 miles

One of the parks I walk by daily while the sun was setting

I walk a whole ton here in Manchester.  I walk to and from work (most days), which is about 23 minutes/1.2 miles one way.  Mostly along major roads, by a few parks, university halls, a Turkish Grocery, and several strips of little shops.

It's a beautiful walk in the sunshine, rain, when the leaves were bright and green when I first arrived, and now as they change with the season and fall.

I like my walk but sometimes it gets a little monotonous.  The same road, the same trees, the same pavement.  Even some of the same crazy drivers who whiz by me (Thank goodness there are bike lanes for when I ride the bike the church is letting me borrow for the year!).

Walking around the Parish one day, I found
this gem of a sign that reads:
NO FLY TIPPING RUBBISH DUMPING
Translation: Don't throw your trash on our lawn

Because of this 23 minutes of alone time I have twice a day, I have been trying to find ways to use it ‘productively’.

It was almost funny at first when I realized that I was feeling frustrated with time I thought I was wasting walking.  Why was it wasteful?  Walking is good for your health, and it wasn’t as though I never had enough time to get wherever I needed to go while walking.  So punctuality wasn’t my issue.

Was I bored from watching and listening to the cars whiz by?  I tried walking through the parks while it was light enough out instead of along the road, which was gorgeous, but didn’t address the deeper question.  It served to distract me from it.

Sometimes I listen to music, or a podcast while I walk.  That helps to keep me busy, and is usually pretty enjoyable, but this is only something to do during the daytime, and I still am very vigilant of who is around me.

What I began to do which has become a ritual several times a week now, is to use that time to pray.

The road I live down just after a big rain

Some of us (myself included) might be thinking at this point that this was the obvious answer all along, and I’ll say well of course it was.  In fact, it was something I started doing my second week of service at church.  But it still didn’t detract from the feeling of frustration some days.

It is something I’m working on, though.  Prayer is so important, and sometimes I have a focus of people I am praying for (in my first few weeks here I prayed for each country program, alumni, and other supporters of YAGM), and other times I just talk with whoever in the Holy Trinity is listening about what is weighing on my heart today.

 
I’m getting more comfortable with the idea that I have a 23 minutes/1.2 mile walk to and from church each day.  It means that when I need to, or want to, or am called to, I have time and space to pray.  We can do a lot with 23 minutes, but I think I’ve found a way to make the most of it so far.

Rethinking Our Baptisms and Connecting It With Others

We've had several baptisms at St C's Church recently which has reminded me of the sending worship service we had with YAGM where we relived our baptisms while a YAGM Alumn sang this song.  It was a very moving part of the worship where we all took our shoes off and walked through the 'waters' of the font, then had our feet dried by our other Alumni accompanists for the week.  I don't think anyone put their shoes on afterwards, and we all finished our time together in Chicago barefooted and bare souled.

It was one of the moments before we left for our years of service that stuck out to me as meaningful, and I think the best way to explain it is to refer to Luther's Large Catechism:

“Suppose there were a physician who had so much skill that people would not die, or even though they died would afterward live eternally. Just think how the world would snow and rain money upon such a person! Because of the throng of rich people crowding around, no one else would be able to get access. Now, here in baptism there is brought, free of charge, to each person’s door such a treasure and medicine that swallows up death and keeps all people alive.”

In our baptisms, we are all made equally loved children of God, and in this day where I hear something about the refugee crisis in Europe nearly every day on BBC news this is something important to remember.  Even should they not all be baptized Christians, they are all loved Children of God just as much as I am, and they are my siblings in this love.  The language surrounding my brothers and sisters in news articles and radio reports can be extremely xenophobic as the BBC has pointed out, and we as faithful people need to see past this and remember that there are people behind these reports.  There are children and parents and friends who are struggling to find a safe home and need not only our prayers on a Sunday morning but our encouragement of involvement from our respective Governments and relief agencies.

We waded into the water with Christ, why can't we wade into the water with our fellow man?

Ministry Found in a Cup

Figure 1. The view out of my room the
day I arrived.

It was the first words I heard when I arrived to my new home (Figure 1) in Manchester after exchanging hellos, "Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?" and I have not gone a day without hearing them since two months ago.

I think everyone who moves to England finds that a cup of tea is not just a drink to be consumed, but a type of communication shared within a group of people.  It's a sign of hospitality, welcome, and an invitation to start a conversation.   It's how you start and end your day; it's the middle of the day when you're tired after lunch, or when someone unexpectedly wanders into church (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The Church space I work in

It's this last part that I find so important.  You can never be sure of where someone is emotionally-wise when they walk through the front doors, but somehow tea is always the right way to start a conversation.  Whether it be celebrating joyous news, or working through some intense personal turmoil, or just to hydrate, having that cup in your hands helps to put life in perspective again.

These big revelations over cups of tea do not happen every day, nor am I probably aware of how important most of my cups of tea are; but it doesn't lessen the fact that sitting with someone and listening to what they have to say is so important.  That's one of the biggest lessons I have learned since moving to Manchester.  Fostering those relationships over a cup of tea allows for someone to find our church a safe space to be vulnerable and to talk to God, or just to each other.