Advent the Tension Time

 Today is (or was) Saint Nicholas Day, the beginning of the festivities. Saint Nicholas was originally robed in green and it was Saint Patrick who was robed in red. One bishop marks the beginning of winter and the other it's ending. Nicholas, patron of stormy wintry seas in one with Njordr and Odin as well.

The last season of the year or the first depending upon how you think of it, the time of Samhain, was harder than usual, because death was more on my mind than usual. I kept thinking of losing my mother, and then I lost her, and am now living in the light of that loss, in this new world that is the same world. Advent is much more poignant season this year, but it means what it always did. We do not like the way the Great Wheel turns, and from the common vision it turns without mercy and with a total finality. But we see a mystery in the days of All Hallows which we share with Advent. We open the gates for all lost and journeying souls and at All Saints, revere and beseech souls triumphant who have reached their destination, and then on All Souls return to the memory of those lost souls, or those still journeying. 

Advent moves from the door of death to the gate of birth.We move from a mystery which is profound, but incomplete, that of death, to is other side which is not simply infant birth, but rebirth, a final birth. We look from the passing world, to the glory is it passing into. We remember that all things must end, not because ending is blessed in itself, but because they must begin again.

Advent is the tension time. We look back.... and simultaneously forward... to the birth of Jesus, to the presence of the Holy Child in our lives and in this world and he came so long ago. We believe he is coming, and yet that coming is incomplete. It is the beginning of a restoration which, somehow, is also happening, but which our eyes cannot see. We long for the possible and we long for the impossible as well, knowing that some of what we are waiting for we cannot receive on this side of things.

One of the antiphons says something to the effect of, The Lord is coming and will not delay. He will arrive with all his saints and then there will be endless day. This antiphon has always excited me, because ofcourse, we are the saints of the Lord and it means we are not only waiting for the appearance of God, but of our very selves. We do not know the world, or its real nature. We do not know life or its real nature, and in some ways we have yet to meet ourselves.