How We Feel This Advent
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How We Feel This Advent
One of the recurring holiday memories from my childhood is of jumping into the car to go see extended family.
We often drove through the dark of long, prairie nights — the world dimly lit by passing vehicles, the scattered yard-lights of farms, and a canopy of stars. I loved how our small, warm car interior contrasted so starkly with the wide expanse of the wintery world. And I often imagined other children and families travelling across wind swept roads of their own — all of us waiting for the familiar lanes and lights of home to appear.
As I’ve grown older, these memories have been joined by others that resurface around Christmas for me.
The loneliness of being far from those I love.
The frustration that not enough has changed for me as another year comes to an end.
The annual sadness in remembering my grandfather who passed on Christmas Day more than twenty years ago.
The truth is that, while these memories are drawn from my story, you likely have your own collection. There might be moments of nostalgia that warm and cheer you, building a sense of expectation as the season approaches and you get ready to celebrate. But there are also points of heaviness that are unique to your experience too.
Maybe this year has been particularly challenging, and you aren’t sure how to feel as the lights go up around the city. Or maybe there’s some grief or difficulty that you have no choice but to recall as you make your way toward Christmas.
The season of Advent makes room for all these things. It creates a healthy reflective space by inviting you into the profound emotion and need that saturate the stories of Christ’s arrival. It also invites you to turn toward the depths of your personal story as an act of solidarity because memory and longing are something we all live with.
That might sound trite or trivial, so let me follow up with the invitation to give at least two gifts this year:
First, give the gift of attention and honour to all you feel. You’ve been through so much, and maybe in offering your experience the dignity it deserves, you’ll discover that Christmas has a soulful, settled quality that doesn’t need any contrived cheer from you.
Second, give everyone else the gift of assuming they are feeling their feelings too this season. Try this with everyone you chat with at a party, everyone you pass in the mall, everyone who cuts you off in the parking lot, everyone you see at family gatherings.
Here at Commons we want to be a source of thoughtful engagement and meaningful connection during the Advent season. This is why we sent out some beautiful liturgy cards for you to use at home. It’s why we’ve tailored our Advent series to address the complexity of our human experience, and how we see this in the characters of the gospel stories. It’s why we’ve made plans to host a Darkest Night Liturgy on December 21st, where we invite you to come and reflect and hold vigil in the face of whatever darkness you might be facing. It’s why we’re so excited to invite you to one of our five Christmas Eve services, where we will sing and light candles and fall quiet because hope is sometimes tender and fragile and worth the wait.
Peace to you this season,
Scott
Find out more:
Darkest Night Liturgy
December 21, 2022
7:00-8:00pm
At Commons Church
Details here
Christmas Eve Services
December 24, 2022
Service times: 1:00pm, 2:30pm, 4:00pm, 5:30pm, and 7:00pm
Details and tickets here
