Advent in the swamp

Hieronymus Bosch, Hell 2

Happy First Sunday in Advent, which is equivalent to New Year's Day on the church calendar, only without the hangover.

To honor the season, I recommend listening to Leonard Cohen's "Anthem."

And when you've finished weeping--if you're wondering what Advent is all about, or if you just want a refresher on why Advent is a particularly good idea--read this NYT op-ed piece by the Rev. Tish Harrison Warren: "Want to Get into the Christmas Spirit? Face the Darkness."

Many of us in the U.S. are struggling through a three-year Advent (and counting) as the swamp is systematically drained of truth, respect, honor, and compassion. With repulsive swamp creatures surfacing one by one, and sometimes in whole flotillas, it's only natural to want to flee the darkness.

But Advent is about looking directly into the darkness.

It's about living in Narnia under the white witch's domination, where it's "always winter but never Christmas." It's about the wars that will be fought again, the holy dove that will be caught again, bought and sold and bought again. It's about crying out with the souls under the altar, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (Revelation 6:10).

It's about reality.

Strangely, Advent is also about hope. Not the hope provided by Santa and eggnog and presents under a tree, lovely as those things are. The hope they provide is a momentary distraction that goes out to the curb with the Christmas tree, leaving us with bleak January.

Advent hope, by contrast, plumbs the dark depths and yet still sees light breaking through--faint, perhaps sporadic, but persistent.

That too is reality.

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — 

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Maybe Trump WILL make America great ...

A lot of people are worried. Terrified, even. With Trump in the White House, they believe, we're flirting with World War III, a second Great Depression, a tyrannical destruction of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans except white billionaires with shriveled consciences.

Actually, that doesn't sound so far-fetched.

But before succumbing to a full-fledged panic attack, let's take a look at good things that have happened since November 8--things that probably wouldn't have happened without Trump.

1. Quite a few Super Bowl ads promoted compassion, working together, and respecting the dignity of every human being.

2. Organizations that advocate for civil rights are seeing a major increase in donations.

3. Republican pundits are saying complimentary things about the Clintons and Obama.

4. Democratic pundits are saying complimentary things about the Bushes and Reagan.

5. Men everywhere are realizing that hair dye and comb-overs are counterproductive.

6. People of various persuasions are phoning their lawmakers and marching on behalf of important causes.

7. Women are feeling empowered to report sexual assault, and men are realizing how many women have experienced it.

8. White people are starting to listen to what people of color have been trying to tell them for years about the pervasiveness of racism in America.

9. Comfortable people with secure jobs are learning that a large number of Americans desperately need adequately paid work.

10. More people are realizing that both major parties need serious overhauling.

11. More people are paying attention to what the Constitution actually says.

12. Republicans are trying to figure out a way to offer more Americans better healthcare at lower prices (good luck with that!).

13. Americans have become more aware of the need to reform our immigration system so as not to exclude the people who will work with us to keep our country great.

14. People know more than they used to about protecting themselves from narcissists and gaslighting.

15. The importance of the media - and of trained, responsible journalists who strive to tell the truth  - has never been clearer.

16. The corrupting influence of money in government has never been more obvious.

17. Someone invented an app that turns pictures of Trump into kittens.

18. A bright light is shining on our lawmakers, enabling us to see who will stand up for principle and who is willing to sell their soul for presumed votes or for access to power.

19. More people are advocating for reforming our electoral system so that every American can easily and legally vote.

20. Several striking videos have highlighted the importance of treating one's wife with respect.

21. More Americans are paying attention to what's going on in the rest of the world.

22. Millennials now know why voting is important, even if their favorite candidate isn't on the ballot.

23. "Saturday Night Live" is funnier than ever.

24. Americans have taken a sudden interest in European history of the 1930s.

25. Over to you--this list is just a start.

When danger threatens, people often forget their differences and pull together for the common good. Is that happening now? Are conservatives and liberals joining forces to combat selfishness, incompetence, and insanity? If so, then this worst of times could turn into the best of times, and America could once again be a place where people of differing opinions work side by side to craft solutions that benefit everybody.

Together, we can make America great the old-fashioned way--not through corruption, lies, and bullying, but through honesty, humility, respect, responsibility, decency, hospitality, humor, kindness, justice, and the openhanded, welcoming generosity that once defined our nation to the world.

Looking for light: Christmas 2016

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God...

What came to be through him was life,

and this life was the light of the human race;

the light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness has not overcome it.

The Gospel according to John, chapter 1

Take those words literally, spiritually, metaphorically, mythically, mystically, poetically, or however you can. At the end of 2016, we all need reminders that the universe is ultimately good, creative, loving, alive; that though the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice. We need to hear that light overcomes darkness.

There is so much darkness.

For most of 2016 the world has felt like Narnia before Aslan showed up: always winter, never Christmas. Even Christmas alarms us as the world perches on the edge of chaos. We read W.B.Yeats's "The Second Coming" and wonder:

...[W]hat rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And then an angel slashes through the darkness, shouting: "Don't be afraid!"

And the shepherds, who have been diving for cover, suddenly notice that the sheep are laughing at them, and so they sheepishly crawl out from behind the rocks and begin singing "Everything's gonna be all right."  And they all live happily ever after ...

... except for those Bethlehem babies that Herod murdered, of course; and Jesus's family, who were so afraid of the new king that they hid from him in Egypt; and Jesus himself, who was executed by a Roman puppet too timid to stand up to the mob; and most of Jesus's best friends, who within a few years were dead, and not of natural causes...

There has always been so much darkness.

In noontime darkness two thousand years ago, the dying Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In this dark year, 2016, the dying Leonard Cohen cried out,

You want it darker

We kill the flame

And yet there has always been a glimmer of light in the darkness.

The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around.... 
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.

Martin Luther King Jr., "I've Been to the Mountaintop," 1968

On the year's darkest days, we light candles for Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa. Their light is faint. It flickers. It is imperfect. But still, we light them.

As we head into a possibly calamitous new year, I think of Cohen's "Anthem":

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

If 2017 turns out to be even darker than 2016, I hope I can hang onto the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins in "God's Grandeur":

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The light shines in the darkness, 

and the darkness has not overcome it.

Is it too much to hope?