Sunday Stories: Advent and Looking for Light
Today we enter my favorite (liturgical) season of the year, Advent, where we keep watch for what is coming—glimmers of hope even as the days and their light grow shortest. Will you abide with me?
Nine years ago on the first Sunday of Advent 2013, I began a practice suggested by a friend who wanted to help me find my way out of the isolated place of grief and despair I’d found myself inhabiting a year after my beloved father’s death.
“Remember,” my friend said, “to look for the light.”
“Advent is made for that,” he told me. “I always try to find a big, old cathedral on that Sunday…and let that festival of light bring some real illumination.”
So, that Sunday nine years ago, I made my way to the Basilica of San Juan Capistrano a few towns away from my home in Southern California. I sat alone in a pew toward the back, listening to the liturgy and prayers, to the familiar songs and the homily. When most of the people in the sanctuary walked forward to receive the Eucharist, I chose not to participate in the ritual that night.
Instead, I watched.
I watched the light from the candles on the altar and in the alcoves. I watched the light from the mission-style chandeliers reflect off of golden retablos and in the eyes of a little boy in the pew in front of me.
I watched the subtleties of light as the last vestiges of an ombre sunset faded through the silhouetted belfry and stained glass, as if someone somewhere were slowly turning a cosmic dimmer switch.
After that night in the cathedral, I kept watching for light—in the day and the night, the dawn and gloaming, inside and outside, in nature and in my home, and in my heart and mind. Literal and figurative light-spotting became, for many years, my main spiritual practice, filling the void when words and doctrine, ritual and devotion couldn’t be mustered or trusted. At least not by me, at least not with any regularity.
Things are different now in so many ways. My heart and mind are more open than I have ever known them to be; my view of the world and understanding of the Divine more expansive and intimate than I could have fathomed when I was younger. Grief remains ever present, even as the 10-year anniversary of my father’s death came and went earlier this month. I miss him every day and often shed more than a few tears when I least expect it, caught off guard by the enormity of his absence and that of other beloveds who have gone on to the More in recent months and years.
I suspect my dear dad would enjoy my practice of paying attention to the light—to both its presence and absence. The holy is in both. And I believe he knew that perhaps more than most people I’ve known.
So, as we begin our Advent journey together, all over the world, marking it intentionally and not, liturgically or not, with rituals and smells and bells, or through the viewfinder of our camera or the black mirror of our allegedly-smartphones—may we be aware of light, particularly as it appears around the edges of things.
May we incline our hearts and minds toward the sun and its light, toward love and grace and their light as well.
On each of the coming 28 days of Advent, I’m going to be sending out a brief daily dispatch with an image or video, a short passage of prose or poetry (sacred or otherwise) that I have found meaningful, and a verse from holy writ.
The daily dispatches will be titled Lux In Tenebris Lucet. It’s taken from a longer Latin quotation, “Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt,” which itself coms from the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John, which Eugene Peterson, translated this way:
“The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.”
Perhaps you may use the wee dispatches to pause in your day, however briefly, and consider…whatever you’d like to consider. You might think about that for which you are waiting—abiding in expectant hope for its arrival, whatever it may be.
Perhaps you will use the image or words as a prompt to meditate, reflect, write, journal, or create something of your own. An image. A song. A meal. A moment.
Or perhaps it will simply be a reminder that you are precious and beloved, that you matter and make a difference just by being alive.
You have not met yet everyone you will love, nor have you met yet everyone who will love you.
As we look toward the light that Advent summons, may we be brave and kind.
Much love to you all,
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When I fall, I fall hard, carnally or spiritually. This questionable trait led me to blunder along blindly after a priest I thought to have ALL the answers. Turns out he was flawed much as we all are, and shame on me for expecting too much of him. He did leave me with a thought I often turn to when the light is hard to find. He said, "We already know the darkness doesn't win." I believe that, and I hold onto it because I know other believers, like you, are out there spreading the good word. Love you and all that you do.
Thank you! Looking forward to this!