Getting ready for a retreat last summer, our leader assigned some pre-reading that included, to my jaded mind, yet another nature book. Some of you know what I mean. We’ve read Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver, and (the recently deceased) Sally McFague. We’ve loved these tender, observant writings; they’re inspiring. But, “Really, another one?” I thought, rolling my eyes.
My cynicism seemed justified when I opened to the first chapter and found it focused on—of all things—snakes! I settled in, scowling.
Seems like I’ve been doing more than my share of scowling. At the weather. At politics. At, yes, I admit it, the church. At having to drag out the Christmas ornaments, again. I mean, yes, they’re pretty and all, but is it that time again? Already? And in no time, I’ll have to find time, again, to put them away.
That author—Kathleen Dean Moore—opened her book sounding more interested in snakes than anyone ought to be. She kept track of what snakes appeared under which piece of corrugated tin, and she described cupping them in her hands, warming them, and I thought, eeewww!
What’s wrong with people, I mean, really?!
As I arrived for worship at the prison last evening, I was lamenting not having Advent candles. If you’re a church person, you probably know this is the season we’re in—the four weeks that lead us to Christmas, during which we light one candle each week, looking ahead to the coming of Christ. It’s not the first time I’ve arrived at Advent without the requisite four candles. You’d think a pastor could manage something that simple, but it sneaks up on me every time. It’s one of those top-of-the-list Pastor Fails.
Like yesterday in the minimum-custody live-out unit, which lies right outside the razor-wire fence. I probably couldn’t have had real candles and an actual flame there. Some battery-operated candles, though, would have worked, and I didn’t even have those.
And yet.
Advent is a time when we lean into the wonder of what God is bringing, even if we can’t see it very clearly. Juergen Moltmann describes God’s future hurtling toward us. That seems hard to believe, every day as I listen to the news. I want to say back, “Hurtle faster, already.” But Advent says, remember. Open up your imagination. Hear the promise again.
So, as we began worship, I asked the ten or so women who had gathered to notice the Advent wreath that I had set out in the blank space I had made on the table, next to our Communion elements. I pointed to the four imagined candles, not yet lit. I saw nods and smiles as they caught on to what I was asking. It truly was just a blank space on the table, and yet it held something real, something deep in our bones, getting ready to glow, for all of us.
Remember those snakes in that book—Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature—that I was skeptical about having to read? It turns out that Kathleen Dean Moore has paid enough attention to them, and learned enough about them, to tell this story, that utterly blows my mind:
Scientists surmise that a snake, like a mouse, has more than five hundred genes in its “vomeronasal” system, this sensory system that somehow reads the air. The genes encode the receptors, the chemical streambed that carries the dark world into a snake’s centers of fear, lust, hunger, thirst, and satisfaction. The human mind has that many vomeronasal genes, too, five hundred. But all but six of them are broken and degenerate. I can hardly bear to think of this loss: Four hundred ninety-four ways to drink in the world are lost to us, crumpled in our exalted minds…. Now humans can no more sense the full meaning of the air than snakes can walk. (p. 7)
It saddens me to think how much more we could know about our surroundings, about one another, about the tears and delights that saturate our homes and this planet.
And yet.
I find that Advent helps me know things I couldn’t know, if it were up to my degenerate thinking. Like, for instance, Advent made candles blaze, right there in that blank space on the table, last night in prison!
One of the women read God’s amazing promises in Isaiah 35.1-10, and then I asked another to help me light our Advent wreath. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her imagined lighter, and the woman next to her used it to light two of the four candles I had pointed out. (I had to take the lighter when we were done, because it would be contraband; everyone laughed at that.) Our faces glowed in those candles. And then I told these friends that those candles represent hopes larger than whatever meager hopes and wishes and annoyances any of us had carried into that room. I said that to women who can’t leave, at least not yet.One is anxious to get home to her 13-year old daughter who has cancer. Another’s mom just had a stroke. Yet, buoyed by Isaiah’s words, we glimpsed a light that truly is bigger than the hurts we brought with us.
Advent helps us read the air, I think.
Like actually opening the box and starting to decorate my Christmas tree put me back in touch with the many friends and memories wrapped up in those dozens of ornaments, found and received across decades.
Like Christmas lights on houses and trees help us notice details we overlook, most of the year. My favorite of these is the star that my brother places at the top of the tall Harvestore silo just past the house, on our family farm. He finished harvest yesterday. It was a joy for me to drive home, after worship, and see that star glowing, claiming this space for peace and hope, and something new always getting born.
If Advent gets its way with me, pretty soon I’ll be out holding snakes myself. Good grief.
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