Signs of the times, or in time.

This morning I sat on my couch and drank my coffee, thinking about the rose candle, and the slow march of Advent. 

Except for the candles themselves, which have particular days on the calendar, I do not hold to a strict schedule for what preparatory trimmings should go up when.  I dole them out a little at a time as I have time and energy, or as I feel the need. 

• SUNDAY I:  I cleared bare my shelf of devotionals, and put the Advent wreath there alone; I cleared a spot on the schoolroom counter for the nativity crèche and gave the animals to our 6yo to arrange.   And I searched in vain for the string of plain-white outdoor lights.
• SUNDAY II (having put up the newly-ordered new outdoor lights the previous Friday): I gave the 6yo the manger and Joseph and Mary, and delighted him with this year's new figures, a set of ridiculously geographically inaccurate barnyard fowl, which made him very happy.  Now that the crèche has an American turkey, I should let Fontanini know that we expect a Komodo dragon or a kookaburra next year.
• SUNDAY III, ANTICIPATED:  The 10yo and I set up the tree and the 6yo helped me put up the colored lights in it.  Then I nestled a holy card of the Virgen de Guadalupe in, since it was December 12; it looked nice with the colored lights, so I decided to pretend it was on purpose.  I gave the 6yo the shepherds to add, and the angel---well, I never quite know what to do with the angel, whose feet don't stand up and whose hanger has no attachment point on the stable.  This year I pressed a ring stand (formerly a makeshift document-camera tripod) into service as an angel clamp:

+ + +

I'm especially grateful this year for the grounding that the liturgical seasons bring.  Evidently it is a huge temptation, year in and year out, for Christians to find their guidance about how to move in the world in the signs of the times:  the fleeting and illusory signs that the world around us brings.  In plagues, and wars real and imaginary, and in a cacophony of prophets and princes.  The liturgical seasons should silence the noises of leaders and would-be leaders of all sorts:  Nolite confidere in principibus.

This year, the plague having driven us indoors, and put a quarantine between us and our plans to see loved ones, the season is slowed down and silenced more than usual.  I appreciate this slowness and silence. 

 In the summer, when the danger was fresher, I spent hours sitting outside in my patio chair, letting the sun pour down and warm me.  The high fence around my back yard surrounded me and my family, the children's sandbox, the ripening cherry tree, like a fortress, and I felt grateful for it.  Today the strand of warm white lights on the porch railing, between my window and the street, feels just as strong and protective.

+ + +

On the other side of the string there is a great deal of clamor and noise right now, and, I think, a lot of people who have fooled themselves into thinking the noise they make is the trumpet of the Lord God himself:  a foolish game, a parlor game; but a dangerous one, like spinning a chamber, or like summoning spirits.  Bishops and archbishops among them, the princes of the church.

I am sure I am not the person who will be able to convince any of them otherwise.  If I could, I would call them all simply home:  to the signs that aren't signs of progress along an inexorable march towards some bloody clashing climax.  Instead to the signs of the seasons:  the whirling of the years, the light falling and the light growing, and our candles keeping time; the crèche with its adoring figures, the comfortable and the ridiculously incongruent, added here and there, one and two at a time; the dark Virgin and the lit-up Norway spruce; later, a birth, and then the slow attraction of the wise, the journey home enlightened; and following on that the other seasons, the teaching, the wedding, the desert, the cross, the alleluia.  The way it all starts up over again.  The way I watch it turn, and the way mark the time, here in my home, a living sign myself, ourselves, something I'm powerless to obliterate, even if I wanted to, with my own obscure errors.

+ + +

Today I watched my parish's Mass on livestream.  The second reading, for Gaudete Sunday, is "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in all circumstances give thanks."  It goes on, though, and my ears pricked up:  Test everything.

Do not despise prophetic utterances, but test everything.   Retain what is good.  Refrain from every kind of evil.

Today calls for test everything.  Our reason and our discernment are called for.  Our judgment is called for.   And we mustn't, I think, make our judgment based on some distant, cryptic, dramatic endpoint, the end that no one can see clearly, though some pretend it's upon us and the old rules are thrown off already; but instead against the background of things that always were and always will be, that move and turn to let us see them and yet always come back to the start again so we can always recognize them, old friends, if our eyes and heart are open.

+ + +

 O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem,  fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:  veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. 

Comments

[Melanie Bettinelli]

I love how you've picked up on "test everything."

" And we mustn't, I think, make our judgment based on some distant, cryptic, dramatic endpoint, the end that no one can see clearly, though some pretend it's upon us and the old rules are thrown off already; but instead against the background of things that always were and always will be, that move and turn to let us see them and yet always come back to the start again so we can always recognize them, old friends, if our eyes and heart are open."

Today I watched the homily from our favorite Benedictine Abbey. The sound quality wasn't great and the priest had rather a monotone, but he said something that resonates with this. He said we can't do anything about the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago. Or about his coming in glory in some future end time. But we can be responsible for Jesus being born in our hearts right here and now, today. The coming of the hidden Christ in our midst and the manifesting him to the world in our actions.

[bearing]

Melanie, that's exactly what I mean.

Being ready for the end times doesn't mean expecting it's just around the corner. The foolish virgins ran out of oil because they didn't have enough energy to last for the whole wait, which I guess, was longer than they expected.