All That Can and Cannot Be
All That Can and Cannot Be: 15 December 2023
I often feel a cognitive dissonance this time of year. I want to embrace the dark, the waiting, the expectancy of Advent. I want to practice surrender. Time is pregnant, I feel the silent growth in the dark, what will the epiphanies bring? I want to sleep, and eat well, and do yoga, and not talk, and, with Mary, ponder mysteries in my heart.
Here’s what I’m actually doing this week: Traveling for work, observing Emma’s final winter violin lesson, taking Emma to a doctor’s appointment, taking Jack to a doctor’s appointment, going to a Christmas party, picking up Jack from a wrestling tournament, picking Jack up from another wrestling tournament, setting up zoom for Emma’s voice lesson, setting the table for Mark’s colleague party, going to a Session meeting, going to Emma’s voice recital, helping with Jack’s 3rd wrestling tournament, going to Emma’s basketball game, taking Jack to the wrestling party, hosting the Sr high youth group party, going to the choir party, going to Mark’s book club party, taking Emma to basketball practice, and working full time. That list includes some, but not all the events necessitating two white elephant gifts and 10 food offerings. Not included are the three events we couldn’t squeeze in, Christmas shopping and wrapping, writing this essay, meal prep and laundry, or logistics related to upcoming vacation time.
If you glanced at that list and skipped ahead to this paragraph, I don’t blame you. It’s boring, exhausting and also flattering to be so occupied. You, lovely reader, are either living in the same whirlwind or irritated to experience mine. I agree. It’s the exact opposite of the Advent call to expectant waiting. But it’s precisely the Advent call to experience the right-now-ness of each pregnant moment. It’s both. And that’s part of the Advent mystery.
Last month on a walk in Montreat I passed a certain spot where I always remember a story Mama told me from her childhood. And I thought—that event happened 80 years ago and still lingers here on this small stone wall. In Montreat I often feel layers of time all at once. I feel the past and the present together. I feel the weight of cumulative lives—loves, losses, joys and sorrow. I sense all that can and cannot be.
Advent is the liturgical season to pay attention to collapsing, overlapping time. It’s reenacting rituals that make ancient mysteries relevant now. It’s realizing that ancient peoples lived and loved exactly as I do. It’s trusting that when my life is distant, unfathomable, ancient history, that future generations will incorporate rituals to express their solidarity with all that has been before. Christ is always now.
On Monday morning, 4:10 a.m., I woke up to the boom of a transformer blowing. Sure enough, no electricity. There was an annoying thrum that sounded like a neighbor had invested in a new generator. I resigned myself to being awake, but without tea, so I stayed in bed. Then I heard a strange sizzling, crunching and thought that the neighbor didn’t get a very good generator. When I looked out the window I saw flames in the air, and when I put on my glasses it looked like a fire at a house across the pedestrian bridge. I went to the living room and from that window could see that the fire was at the top of a utility pole right across the street! I went to get my phone to call 911, but when I came back, the fire was gone. I went back to the bedroom, only to see that there was a fire on the ground right across the street. I grabbed my slippers and my phone, walked into the predawn darkness and called 911.
The 911 operator listened and then patched me through to the Wade Hampton fire station. Ironically, Emma’s Scout Den had toured that fire station one week earlier. The firefighter confirmed my address and said he’d alert the others: I could picture them jumping out of those twin beds, rushing down the stairs (no pole) and pulling on their gear within the two-minute window. From the time I dialed 911 to the time three trucks were parked beside my house—12 minutes. I was impressed.
My neighbor thought 12 minutes was entirely too long! It’s a long time to watch a threat and not know when help was coming. I, at least, had a start time and confirmation that help was on its way. But it was scary, watching the fire and wondering whether it would spread, also wondering where the people were that lived in the house next to the fire.
Advent is knowing that help is on the way and that help is here right now. It’s knowing that help has always been available, no matter when the clock started. There is some comfort, and also a fair few measures of angst in this mystery.
I know people like to bad mouth TikTok, and I get it. I mean the whole Chinese spy thing is, admittedly, troubling. In my case, I’ve never tweeted, I don’t snapchat, and I can’t for the life of me figure out Instagram. But I love me some TikTok. I’ve been introduced to comedians, recipes, and history lessons. I follow a crazy array of randomness including an amazing Black vegan forager, actors reading poems, a couple of hair stylists, a ventriloquist with a sassy monkey, a bunch of comedians, Rep. Jeff Jackson, the Institute of Human Anatomy, and a donkey who likes squeaky toys. The algorithms do try to draw me into sexual and political content, and I do worry about this, but it also serves up science and beauty and hilarity and wisdom that generous people offer the world for free.
Last night TikTok queued up a snippet of a talk by Coach Kara Lawson to her Duke Women’s basketball team. It was from June 2022, but it sure hit home this Advent, and when I googled it this morning I saw that it has 860+ million views on YouTube. She told the players to stop waiting for life to get easier—after the next test, the next semester, the next game. “It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better.” I saw some Handle Hard Better T-shirts online, too, so the message clearly resonates. Later Coach asked the players, “And the second we see you handling hard better, what are we going to do? We’re going to make it harder.” She concludes, “Don’t get discouraged through this time if it’s hard. It’s supposed to be. And don’t wait for it to be easy.”
Here we are in Advent, the beginning of the church calendar, the pregnancy before the birth. Gestation in the dark. It can feel hopeful and exciting, pregnant with possibility and wonder. It can also feel pregnant with fear. Wars, political polarization, loneliness, global climate change—the stakes feel especially high.
How can little me do anything to lessen the world’s pain, to offer the world hope? In one interview, Coach Lawson said she thought her Handle Hard Better talk struck a nerve because “everyone wants coaching.” We all want coaching. We all want someone to hold us to a high standard and then help us achieve it. This is who we are as church. Together we help each other handle the hard stuff. Together we encourage one another not to wait for life to be easy. Together we usher in the Beloved Community foretold, embodied and intended by the baby Jesus. It will not be easy. It never is.
“So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.
The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.”
