Today is the Second Sunday of Advent in the Christian liturgical year. Advent is a season of waiting and anticipation — and longing for the fulfillment of our hopes and God’s dream of peace.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about time, history, and the future. I invite you into these musings to reconsider the times in which we live in relation to the sacred mystery of time. The lectionary readings come from Isaiah, Psalms, and Matthew.
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Isaiah 11:1-10
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples;
the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Psalm 72:4-7
He shall defend the needy among the people;
he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.
He shall live as long as the sun and moon endure,
from one generation to another.
He shall come down like rain upon the mown field,
like showers that water the earth.
In his time shall the righteous flourish;
there shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.
Matthew 3:1-12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”
“I think it is time.” My voice wavered as I said those words to my husband over the phone.
I was home alone when Rowan, our beloved old dog, stopped breathing. I had been sitting with him stroking his warm body. He’d had some particularly difficult days in a long autumn of increasingly hard days. We worried that he was coming to the end of his life (I wrote about this in September, “For the Love of Dog”). But we didn’t know when or what might take him. He’d been so tough and brave in recent weeks, fighting through dementia and other ailments with a tenacious determination to stay with his people. He was growing tired.
As I touched him, he drew a breath. And then he didn’t. For several moments. After what seemed forever, his chest moved again — softly, slowly, faintly. Then, it happened a second time, and a third. My heart caught in my throat.
The time had come. I just knew it.
We took him to the vet the next day, for that gentle end. In her office, on a rug laid on the floor for sad purpose, we surrounded him and held him. The last thing he did was cover my face with dog kisses, looking at me with his always-hopeful sparkling dark eyes. And then, sleep and silence.
As I touched his still body, I knew he’d reached his end. It was, at the same moment, a thundering loss and a tender completion. This was the both-and of love, where grief and some inexplicable grace commingle.
Rowan’s time was fulfilled.
* * * * *
Advent is an invitation to consider time — with its endings and beginnings. Indeed, on the Sunday after Christmas, the lectionary offers these startling words summing up the season: “But when the fullness of time had come. . .”
How do we know the fullness of time? How do any of us know when to utter words ultimately unfathomable: “It is time”?
The fullness of time involves completion and culmination, the running of our course. Something ends that something else might begin. The texts read for today point toward the end of the times we know — times of injustice and violence — and the times to come — times of equity and peace. The crooked ways of this world, with its suffering and death, will be made straight. The arrival of the Lord is near. The course of this age is coming to its end. The wolf and the lamb will live together. Peace holds sway over the whole of creation. The long-promised Kingdom of God is at hand.
Is it time? Now?
I’ve been time-curious my entire Christian life. When I was a little girl in the Methodist church, I wanted to fast-forward the year to my favorite holidays. Is it time yet, Mommy? For Easter? For Christmas?
As a teenager, newly converted to being a Bible church evangelical, I became time-obsessed with prophecy. Is the end of the world near? When will the Rapture occur? Is the Battle of Armageddon at hand? My church watched the prophetic calendar unceasingly — day after day, year after year — in a sort of biblical countdown of time fulfilled and the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
Both the Methodists and the Bible church evangelicals taught me that Christians care about time — and that we care about it in relation to God’s promises and dreams to and for humankind. Time matters. Yet they taught me about time differently.
My evangelical friends understood time as a line. Event A led to B and to C, and so on. Eventually, human time would arrive at X, Y, and Z. Beginning, middle, and end. They believed the Bible recorded this sacred chronology in its pages, and it was up to us to understand its unfolding.
After a few years, and despite being initially captivated by this vision of time, I came to see it as a bit of a theological fool’s errand.
It had been hard to grasp as a child, but the Methodists introduced me to cyclical time, a different understanding of time that eventually made spiritual and theological sense. Unlike the charts of arrowed time festooning the Bible Church, Methodists had no such linear maps. Instead we had things like Advent wreaths and Lenten fasts to mark the unfolding of time. Oddly enough, time repeated itself in liturgies and holy days. Easter came every year. So did Christmas.
Years might move “forward” in time, but each year they reenacted stories, memories, and rituals in cycles of memory and habits of practice. Over decades, over generations, over the long traditions of faith — over and over — repeating, connecting, weaving, deepening.
John the Baptist said that the “way” would be made straight, not the time! Even while proclaiming the Kingdom, time remained poetically elusive. It reached both backward and forward, it overlapped and was overlaid. This Age and the Age-to-Come, oddly meshed in — and in conflict with — the world we know.
Of course, the Methodists had clocks and calendars like everyone else. But it slowly dawned on me that biblical time was less like an Advent calendar of countdown and more like an Advent wreath of verdant reprise. Not as much ticking off the days toward an event as a spiral of anticipatory wisdom. We live in what is already not yet.
Perhaps the “fullness of time” is less of a line and more of aureole, like a nimbus of time. Somehow time and light meet — in the stars, through the cosmos in the words of the Gospel of John, visible in candles of the wreath, and palpable on a rug on the floor at the veterinarian’s office as life fades into death with a brilliant last blaze of love.
Unless you are a physicist, you probably can’t explain time and light. You just know when the time has come — and you see differently, you experience a flash of recognition, a moment of enlightenment as it were. The fullness of time doesn’t break upon us as much as it cracks us open. It doesn’t bring worlds down from the heavens; rather, it brings forth wells of compassion from deep within. Time spirals within and around, lighting our way toward compassion and peace, filling the universe with love and justice. And creative joy.
There are no calendars for that.
I have no idea when — or even if — the Kingdom of God shall be manifest in earthly glory. I don’t know if the end is at hand and a new heaven and earth beckon. I do, however, know it is near. It is coming and it is always.
Over the decades, I’ve learned to trust when the time is coming or has come. I understand when time is ripening. And I certainly experience times of culmination, completion, or fulfillment. This is the very meaning of discernment, of awakening.
Advent sharpens our sense of time, alerting our intuitions to the fullness of time. Perhaps that’s why John wants us to “repent.” To let go of all those things that interfere with the circles and spirals and cosmic wonders of time — to enter into nonlinear apprehension and let our hearts grow toward a more profound awareness of endings and new beginnings. And to prepare ourselves for all the mysterious ways in which the fullness of time presses into our lives.
* * * * *
On the human side of this mystery, we live with clocks, calendars, and chronologies. In this world, grief frequently accompanies endings. It is a strange irony that sadness often follows completion and fulfillment. Many of us fear beginnings as well, apprehensive of new things being born.
The fullness of time is not an easy embrace. We may long for it, but the truth is that when it arrives it can overwhelm us in sorrow as it moves our hearts in directions not yet known.
Perhaps children and animals are, indeed, the best guides toward the Kingdom. Time is more fluid for them; newness is welcomed not dreaded.
And that’s what I’m contemplating today. The mystery at Rowan’s end. Of the last dog kisses and the final breath. Of knowing that one reality has passed into another, that a treasured companion has moved into memory. Imagining him running free off the leash into that unknown country, perhaps glimpsing back to see if we’d follow. But we can’t. It isn’t our time. His completion — the fullness of his life — leaves a frightening emptiness in ours. Death and life, life and death.
And yet — that’s where faith flickers most brightly. We might experience the fullness of time as the starkest of endings. But the fullness of time also opens to a world new born. Peace on earth; goodwill to all. God with us.
So, no matter the sadness, faith lights candles in the dark, marking the journey along the crooked road of human pain and suffering with beams of luminosity — confident that Isaiah’s vision is at hand. All creatures living, playing, and prospering together in safety and joy. Life redeemed. Faith holds fast to the promise that “in his time shall the righteous flourish; there shall be abundance of peace till the moon shall be no more.”
The peaceable kingdom awaits us — and is with us — in sacred time, the sort of time with and in the heartbeat of God. Even when our own hearts catch a beat; even when we feel we might break. Every ending reminds us that time winds toward this glorious culmination, when re-creation enfolds all loss, pain, and death in the totality of love.
This mystery is ever-present. Is always deep within, and it hovers just beyond the horizon. That place where all promises are kept, hopes realized, and love dwells in the fullness of time. The time is near. And it is far off. The time is coming. And it is time.
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INSPIRATION
This is our calling — co-creation. Every single one of us, without exception, is called to co-create with God. No one is too unimportant to have a share in the making or unmaking of the final shining-forth. Everything that we do either draws the Kingdom of love closer, or pushes it further off.
— Madeleine L’Engle
Love yourself, and that means rational and healthy self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That’s the length of life. Then follow that: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That’s the breadth of life. And I’m going to take my seat now by letting you know that there’s a first and even greater commandment: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength.” I think the psychologist would just say with all thy personality. And when you do that, you’ve got the breadth of life.
And when you get all three of these together, you can walk and never get weary. You can look up and see the morning stars singing together, and the sons of God shouting for joy. When you get all of these working together in your very life, judgement will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
When you get all the three of these together, the lamb will lie down with the lion.
When you get all three of these together, you look up and every valley will be exalted, and every hill and mountain will be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh will see it together.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay,
Leopards will join with the lambs as they play,
Wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade,
Blood will not darken the Earth that God made.
Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Life redeemed from fang and claw.
Peace will pervade more than forest and field:
God will transfigure the Violence concealed
Deep in the heart of systems gain,
Ripe for the judgment the Lord will ordain.
Little Child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Justice purifying law.
Nature reordered to match God’s intent,
Nations obeying the call to repent,
All of creation completely restored,
Filled with the knowledge and love of the Lord.
Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe.
— Thomas Troeger
Every Christmas, The Washington Chorus performs The Dream Isaiah Saw at the Kennedy Center. The piece is an adaptation of a Thomas Troeger hymn based on Isaiah 11:6-9. The first time I heard it not only was I reduced to tears, but the entire Kennedy Center audience was wiping their eyes and sobbing. Over the last decade, it has become a highlight of the season for many people in Washington, D.C. (which is worth noting in itself!). Last year, because of the pandemic, the chorus posted this moving rendition interlaced with contemporary photos of events in the nation’s capital to communicate Isaiah’s hope for a world of peace and justice.
ADVENT CALENDAR
Last year, I sent a post every day in December as an online Advent Calendar. This year, I hosted a gratitude month in November with daily posts instead of December daily offerings.
But you can revisit last year’s Advent calendar — or visit it for the first time if you weren’t at The Cottage last year!
I’ll send out the links for the entire week each Sunday. Just bookmark this Sunday Musings, come back to this newsletter each day, and click on the link for the appropriate date. The Advent calendar begins on December 1. Some of the days of the week will be a little off because it was assembled for last year.
Advent Calendar December 4: War on Advent
Advent Calendar December 5: Blue Advent
Advent Calendar December 6: Experience of Wonder
Advent Calendar December 7: Cradling the Image
Advent Calendar December 8: Beauty and Truth
Advent Calendar December 9: Friendship with Bodies
Advent Calendar December 10: On Doubt and Deconstruction
Advent Calendar December 11: Anticipating the Kingdom
NOTE: The 2021 special offer for a free book with a gift subscription is no longer available. The 2022 gift offer — 10% off a year subscription — can be found above.
GEORGIA ON OUR MINDS
SOUTHERN LIGHTS 2023 is in FIVE WEEKS! Y’all come!
This coming January on St. Simons Island in Georgia, Brian McLaren and I are hosting extraordinary guests including Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, theologian Reggie Williams, and Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio in a weekend festival of reimagining faith in words, for the world, and in context of the cosmos — poetry, theology, and science!
We’re also going to do live, on-stage podcasts with guest pod hosts Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Tripp Fuller — and great music from the wonderful Ken Medema.
Please join us in Georgia or virtually online. CLICK HERE for info and registration!
Rowan, our beautiful Glen of Imaal Terrier, was born on April 19, 2010 and died shortly after noon on Friday, December 2, 2022. He was the best of dogs — intuitive, smart, loyal, and brave. He was loving and well-loved and will be sorely missed. We are grateful for those of you who prayed with and for us in these hard last few months as we struggled toward this ending time.
Thank you for that poignant story of your Rowan's life and of your loss. These beautiful creatures are such great teachers, letting us know when it's time to say goodbye. Having been through many of these moments with fur babies, they still do not stop me from loving another one at the right time. Blessings for 2023.
Beautiful, poignant post regarding your Rowan's passing. As a former hospice, now hospital chaplain through the pandemic, and a mom of four-legged kids that left way before we are ready, it is a journey of love, surrender and hope; hope that despite the grief there may be room in our hearts to love again.