"I am waiting" [Advent Meditation]

Sculpture of Mary at the University of Portland

“I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder.”   

I first encountered these words in a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti when I was still young and just making my way in the world.

At that time the words resonated with a deep longing that was just being awakened within me.

With the passage of the years I have come to hear these words as distinctly Advent words.

For Advent is a time of expectant waiting.

Advent is a time pregnant with the perennial seeds of possibility that reside in the human heart

—seeds that can only be nurtured by the hope of an awakening.

And yet, the times in which we live are uniquely devoid of possibility and hope for so many.

These are times where moral leadership is strikingly absent from the public square.

Where few, if any, voices are able to unite us across our divides.

Where cries for justice go unheeded.

So what can it mean to live in hope during this season of Advent?

The Song of Mary

Perhaps during these Advent days we need to turn to Mary.

For Mary understood a world that was dominated by the rich and the powerful, a world held down by forces of oppression.

And yet Mary found a way to sing her song.

This “Song of Mary,” which we know as the Magnificat, can be a song for those of us who are waiting as Advent people.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant . . .

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things . . 

Mary is telling us that God will bring about a reversal in the order of things

—that the God in whose mercy we place our final trust is a table-turning God.

Thus our waiting can become a hope-filled waiting.

But what does it mean for us to wait in this kind of way?

I think it involves nurturing the seeds of hope we find within us.

And this begins by claiming the small gifts of wonder that visit us each day:

The face of a child, open and eager.

An act of kindness extended to us.

The arresting beauty of a flower in winter.

Icons of Hope

These small seeds of hope remind us that what we can do while we wait is to become ourselves visible signs of hope for our world:

—by acts of compassion and consolation

—by standing alongside those who are vulnerable

—by walking in the pathway that leads to justice and reconciliation

Advent people are those who are actively and relentlessly awaiting a rebirth of wonder, who themselves become an advance guard of wonder-workers, icons of hope, part of God’s great reversal . . .

a reversal that is coming soon and very soon  . . . as the divine love comes to birth in a quite unexpected way . . .

Wonder of wonders!