Remember

On the First Week of Advent

During Advent, I keep things a little quieter around here. This time of year is noisy enough for most of us, and I don’t want to add to the noise. So, as I’ve done the past two years, instead of my normal lengthy newsletters, I’ll instead be sending full subscribers a short weekly Advent reflection. The reflections are based upon the theme set out by the Church in her weekly Sunday Scripture readings. Along with the reflections, I’ll include a series of questions and a short prayer, which will hopefully help as you do the work of Advent: prepare your heart for Christmas. It is, in a sense, like a mini-Advent retreat, created for those who don’t have the time for an actual retreat (like me).

Thank you, as always, for subscribing to this newsletter. Please keep us (and some particularly vexing paperwork issues with our mortgage) in your prayers this week and know that you are very much in mine.

Readings

Reading 1: Isaiah 63:16B-17, 19B; 64:2-7

Responsorial Psalm: PS 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19

Reading II: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Gospel: MK 13:33-37

Reflection

I spent yesterday knee deep in remembrance, sorting through old photographs and letters, ticket stubs and boarding passes, scrapbooks and maps of European cities. I opened cards with sweet messages from my grandmother, sent to me the year before she died, urging me to remember “Mother Mary and the Church” (I did, Grandma, I did.). I cried over my mother’s handwriting, which I haven’t seen for at least two years now, since Alzheimer’s took her ability to put pen to paper. I smiled to see long forgotten friends’ names on envelopes, marveled at what a baby I was in photos taken at times when I thought I was so grown up, and wondered what on earth possessed me to save so much random stuff?

In the end, far more went into the trash then went into the one box I allowed myself for personal mementos. I was a bit ruthless. But I had to be. Partly because I am not paying $1 a pound for the movers to haul boxes of old playbills when we leave this house a month from now. Partly because I began the year sorting through the detritus of my parents’ lives, and I want to spare my children as much of that work as possible. But mostly, because I want to avoid the temptation to mawkish remembrance, to over-sentimentalizing the past and holding too fast to what’s gone.

It’s easy for me to succumb to that temptation these days. I miss my dad. I miss the woman who my mom was. And I miss having their home to go back to, with all its familiarity, routine, and ease. Because of that, the temptation is strong to spend my days looking back, grieving what’s past, resenting what’s present.

The onset of Advent makes that temptation even stronger. I have more Christmases behind me now than I have ahead of me. Which means I have a head full of Christmas memories, all a bit more luminous thanks to the haze of time. Looking backwards, I can see the glow, the warmth, and the love that was, while the actual details of each particular Christmas have disappeared. The deadlines I was chasing, the heartaches I was enduring, the hundred tiny stresses I was experiencing, all that is hidden now, in a generic Christmas glow.

The hundred tiny stresses of today, however, I see all too clearly. I see boxes, bills, dishes, and paperwork problems that might delay our mortgage process. I also see grief, fear, and worries about the future. All that can tempt me to look away from my High-Definition present, where even small problems feel huge, and look back to an airbrushed past, where time has softened the harshest realities. That looking, in turn, can make me feel dissatisfied with what is and send me on a wild Christmas goose chase, trying to recreate—with trees, lights, music, cookies, and perfectly wrapped presents—a Christmas perfection that can’t be recreated because it never existed to begin with.