Circular

Every year I am compelled to write at the beginning of Advent. This year my favorite liturgical season is at its shortest – only 21 days between the first Sunday and Christmas Eve. Moving holidays have a tendency to sneak up on you. 

I’ve loved the long wait since we would light our very thin candles and say our call and response prayer when I was a child. We kept Jesus’s manger empty. We opened the doors on our paper calendar. We watched the big wreath at church get brighter. We waited. 

My current Advent wreath is one I made when I was three months married. We’ve changed out the candles over the years, but the bones remain the same. We’ve added nativity sets throughout our house, one of which has a star that we hide each day for the kids to find. All the mangers sit empty. The calendar’s drawers are filled with activities from the traditional – Christmas carol dance party, shopping for others, drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace – to the brand new – Cookies & Carols with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. The days will get shorter, and we will wait. 

We will wait with anticipation for our Christ to be born again. The liturgical year is a cycle with no true beginning nor any real end. We wait, celebrate, repent, and celebrate in perpetuity. We can rest into the circular, giving our attention to where we are instead of where we are going next. 

Christmas will arrive, as it always does. But before it arrives, we will wait. We will wait as the lights on our wreath grow to replace the diminishing sun. We will wait as the world around us spins with frantic calls to spend our money and attention on the outward while we choose to look within. We will wait.