Advent is Here–All Things are Become New

I have said many times that Advent is my favorite liturgical season–this year it promises to be even more meaningful than usual. My new book, A Year of Faith and Philosophy, is themed to the liturgical year–althogh it was ready for publication last spring, the publisher chose to delay its release so that it would be available just before the new liturgical season begins–which is today! Groups of people in at least two local churches, Trinity Episcopal in Pawtuxet, RI and St Matthew’s Grace Lutheran in Pawtucket, RI will be using the book as a study guide over the next twelve months. P.S.: for the unitiated, Pawtuxet and Pawtucket are not the same village!

Advent is a season of hope, anticipation, silence, and waiting. It also is a season of promise–of new things, new possibilities, and the end of old things. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” A few weeks ago, I told Jeanne that I was coming close to pulling the plug on this blog, at least for a while, complaining that I have been redoing and updating past essays for quite a while without any new ideas. Someone must have been listening, because since then some new, unexpected possibilities have been thrown unsolicited on my plate.

For instance, the college’s provost announced the creation of a new position will help advance academic excellence in undergraduate education across the college. Even though I have told everyone who will listen for several years that my days in administration are over, something about the description of the position caught my attention. I told Jeanne that evening that “if I was ten or twelve years younger, I would apply for this.” She said, “you should apply for this.”

I haven’t done so yet, but after a bit more fact gathering this coming week I probably will. The fact that it eaught my attention and that I’ve already exchanged brief emails with the provost testing the waters tells me that somewhere deep inside me I am ready for a new challenge, even at 69 years old.

Then there’s the music. A few months ago, upon hearing that I have been a church organist on occasion over the past decades, the music minister at the Lutheran church where Jeanne is a lay minister invited me to entertain myself on their organ whenever I like, going so far as to suggest that I play a prelude, postlude, or something similar sometime. For weeks I responded by thanking her then immediately noting that I haven’t touched an organ for at least a couple of years. But the seed of possibly returning to the organ and music was planted.

Then the priest in charge at the Episcopal church I have been involved with for over a dozen years reached out with what she called an out-of-the-box request. Their music minister is moving on to bigger and better things, she reported, the new musician is unable to start until the New Year, so the church is in need of someone to play the organ for the Christmas Eve service. It’s been so long since I played the organ that the priest, who is relatively new, did not even know that I played until someone mentioned it in passing. Is there any chance I would be willing to play?

Sensing a pattern, I agreed after a bit of reflection to dust off whatever keyboard abilities I still have and (with “fear and trembling,” as I told her) not only will play the Christmas Eve service but also for the Sunday after Christmas (until the real organist shows up). She told me that I am an answer to prayer. Additionally, at the Lutheran church this morning I will be playing the prelude at the same service where Jeanne will be giving her first sermon. And on Christmas Eve, I will be rushing from the Episcopal church ten miles north to the Lutheran church just in time to accompany the choir in a piece that has a much more difficult accompaniment than I have any business learning. I have my work cut out for me! All things are become new.

So Advent really is about new possibilities for me this year. I was raised in a version of Christianity that had no sense of the liturgical year. The landmarks of my Baptist youth were Christmas, Easter, and everything else. I knew nothing of Advent until my twenties, and loved its energy, its carols, its texts. Inwardness, reflection, anticipation, and patience—Advent is for introverts.

Although I have now spent well over half of my life as an Episcopalian, I still find this liturgical and lectionary stuff just as fascinating and compelling today as I did when I first wandered into Saint Matthew’s Cathedral in Laramie, Wyoming, more than four decades ago. I love Advent’s call to centeredness, to watchfulness, to expectation, its hymns, and its purple.

The great but incredibly difficult German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in a rare moment of clarity, wrote that all important human questions can be boiled down to these three: What can I know? What ought I to do? and What may I hope for? Advent focuses on the last of these questions. May Advent be a season of new possibilities for you. Enjoy the ride!