Advent Reflection 1

*a note before: at St. Matthew's we celebrate advent with a series of midweek suppers followed by advent vespers. This is the first reflection I wrote this year.

The beginning.

Do you remember the beginning? Of course you don’t. Not your own beginning, at least; certainly not the BIG beginning. But some beginnings you may remember.

The first Christmas you remember may not be the first Christmas you experienced. But it’s the beginning you remember. A tall tree, trimmed with decorations and brimming with all the anticipation of family, and friends, and food. So much bigger to a two- or three-year-old; they don’t make trees like they used to.

You remember other beginnings: the first ‘I love you’ you said; then the first time you said it, and realized you knew what it meant. Carrying your first child, knowing that life was inside of you, and sitting down and feeling the first butterfly flutterings in the core of your being.

Placing your hand on the swelling belly, and feeling the little knee, or elbow. The beginning. You’re going to be a father, or a mother, or grandfather or grandmother. The beginning.

Some beginnings are endings, too. The last spadeful of dirt shovelled into a winter tomb; the headstone tilted askew at the head of the grave, as tilted as crazy as your life has become. The words of a doctor, lawyer, judge: ending one life, and just beginning another. The feeling of being born again, into a world that you don’t understand, can’t fathom, and yet is familiar.

The beginning. We prepare for another beginning. Advent, we call it; the word means ‘coming’. We prepare, with no real idea of what the beginning will look like; no real idea of what will end in order for Christ to begin.

It’s a big beginning. A beginning like none other; for this too is a beginning for God. God, whom we call the Alpha and the Omega; both the beginning and the end – this advent is a beginning for God, as well.

God has not before felt the constriction of the womb, nor felt the pain and cold of labour. Has not before nestled next to a beating heart, not before been knit together, cell by cell, surrounded by warmth and water and love. This is beginning for God, as well.

God, the creator of the world, surrenders to the creative power of the life which God created: the Creator, who in the words of Athanasius is uncreated and unlimited, is found to be created and limited, bound to the heart and the hands of a poor woman. God, who stepped down from the highest lofts of the vaulted heavens now finds a home in a bumpy, jostled, busy, terrified world.

The beginning. Something new, for God and for us; something different, for the world and for all time. The beginning comes in surprising ways.

One beginning, in a womb and a world – the mystery of how the one who is Uncreated and Unlimited would choose to be both created and limited. Limited by flesh and bone; limited by hunger and thirst; limited by love and compassion.

In the midst of the beginning, we too share the beginning: the beginning of the good news; the beginning of new life and new creation, the beginning of all those things that celebrate as right and good in our lives;

For like a new mother, God is beginning to show, in the gently rounded belly; in the open heart and mind; in the blessing of peace and goodwill; those things that begin our world anew, each and every day.