Advent Chaos

or, three vignettes of prayerful failure

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

There are two books of daily Advent meditations that I look forward to praying with each year: one by Richard Rohr and a collection of essays published by Plough. This year, seeing as I’d located both of those books before Advent began—a real contrast to my usual ritual of scouring our home’s bookshelves for them somewhere around December 17^th—I figured I was cruising toward an elevated Advent experience.

This was my year; I was going to wait and watch for the Lord like a champion. The candles were out, the calendars were stocked. I was about to crush Advent.

I was wrong.

*

I was late to church on the First Sunday of Advent aka the very first day of Advent. My family wasn’t, mind you, but I was because—in true anxiety-ridden fashion—I couldn’t remember if I’d blown the candle out after breakfast and wasn’t about to sit through the source and summit of our faith while wondering if the house was on fire. I dropped my wife and the girls off in the church parking lot and headed back home to check.

Except it wasn’t quite that easy. Our church has a pretty intense parking ministry and, well, my pulling off to the side and popping the hazards on was frowned upon with an intensity I wasn’t prepared for. I had to wait to be welcomed back into the line of cars and then I had to be guided to a parking space I didn’t want and then I had to put the old EV in reverse and pull a killer K-turn and then—somehow, for some reason—get back in line so I could leave the church campus.

By the time I got there and back again, we were halfway through the homily. I was, let’s say, displeased and struggling mightily to even mimic a prayerful state.

And all the while, the candle had been safely extinguished.

*

We made our annual pilgrimage to the Home Depot Christmas tree parking lot corner on December 2^nd aka the second day of Advent, and boy would you know we might as well have gone on Christmas morning—that’s how picked over and depressing the whole place was. Sure, we had our choice of diseased trees, of trees with no needles and trees that others had quite literally thrown on the ground. But a good tree there was not. For the hottest of seconds, we thought about buying an honest-to-god Charlie Brown tree before we remembered Lowe’s was just a two-minute drive up the street.

Same deal though: an apocalyptic selection of trees awaited us, and this time we didn’t bother with Charlie Brown jokes. Instead, we bravely faced our grim choice: Pay way more than we wanted to for a halfway decent tree elsewhere, wait another week and hope the selection improved (though lose a week of Christmas joy in the process) or acquire an artificial tree which, to be quite honest, was never a choice to begin with.

And so, back at home, expensive tree now firmly in-hand (and paid for in cash), we struggled with the ten-year-old tree stand. Is that old for a tree stand? Should we start measuring time in tree-stand years? Because this beast was rusted through like a car door dropped in the bottom of a lake.

But fear not: I had a wrench. And so I twisted on those little screw-like things, driving them ever farther into our poor, expensive tree like I was trying to pierce the very fabric of time. And guess what happened? Time marched on, and I broke the tree stand—those screws just twisted in place, wrenched—quite literally—from their requisite holes.

I was again, let’s say, displeased.

I will now and forever treat future tree stands with the love and care they so clearly deserve.

*

We have quite a few Advent calendars in our house. Two of them dispense LEGOs—one for the girls (princess-themed), one for me (I’ll let you guess), obviously—but we didn’t want the cats to feel left out. So, we got them those calendars that they sell at Trader Joe’s.

That was definitely Sebastian’s Advent highlight last year. He’s pretty pumped about it this year, too.

But Socks—our new little guy—seems to get pretty intense gas from whatever old Joe puts in his cat treats. It’s so bad, in fact, that we can find Socks—a cat who has proven himself great at hiding—based solely on smell.

And that trick we discovered on the third day of Advent. Everyone is displeased—Socks most of all.

*

It’s tempting to romanticize Advent, to assume that Advent at its best is this period of prayerful quiet, of snowy days passed gazing hopefully out a huge bay window. We’re waiting for the birth of Christ, right? Quiet now—don’t make too much noise; you’ll wake the baby.

We look at our actual Advent journeys—the busyness of the season, the Christmas prep, the winding down of school and work, the hardening of our homes against wintry weather—and castigate ourselves for doing it all wrong. If I was really good at Advent, I’d be in front of the bay window in silence, but alas—not to be!

Here’s the thing: those cute, pretty nativity scenes are all wrong. We’re not tiptoeing up to a scene of peace and quiet. We’re tripping our way into continued chaos: a baby is born in a barn, outside and in the cold, and then quite immediately becomes a refugee fleeing certain death.

I think my phantom candle and rusted tree stand and smelly cat are much more in line with this God who breaks into chaos and noise then any snowy bay window.

Advent is about waiting, sure. But it’s also about surrendering control, letting go of a desire to order all things into perfection and instead sinking into the mess and beauty of real life. After all, isn’t that what God does in the Incarnation? Isn’t that what Jesus’ whole ministry is about? And aren’t we made in the image and likeness of that very same God?

We may wish for peace this Advent. But God, I think, is just as present—if not more so—in the tumult and the rust and the fallen pine needles and the chaos.

And another thing:

I’ve had the great privilege of editing submissions for our Advent series over at the Jesuit Media Lab, “Waiting and Wassailing.” A whole host of wonderful writers are sharing their reflections on songs that inspire Advent meditation. Check it out!