When Amazon first introduced its “next-day delivery,” and people began to expect instant gratification I would joke and say, “Advent is good preparation for the apocalypse.” Some of those who heard me actually thought it was funny and would giggle too. A few years later it didn’t seem so funny. The World Health Organization had declared a pandemic, and suddenly “next-day delivery” was a thing of the past. There were product supply shortages and logistics difficulties. For a few people the apocalypse had arrived, and they found it so difficult to be patient. This impatience branched out into other areas of society, health care, meeting the needs of seniors and people with physical or mental challenges, food shortages, travel, and the list goes on. However, although some of us lost family, friends, colleagues, or acquaintances, most of us survived and did our best to return to what we considered our normal lives of yore. Yet, much of the old normal couldn’t be retrieved. There are still, some 3 and half years later, shortages in some areas of life, some businesses and services don’t even exist anymore, and there are still logistics problems.

I have a new appreciation for Advent. Although it has long been my favourite season, since those days of limitation it has become even more wonderful for me. It is a time when we focus on getting ready. We take time when there is excitement in the air of what is to come. It’s that anticipation that causes the excitement and gives us the patience to wait. In the waiting, we get to decorate, to visit with friends, to enjoy snowball fights (when there is snow) to drink eggnog, coffee, hot chocolate and to eat treats.

We also get to reach out to those who don’t look forward to the future. We get to share food, warmth, shelter, medical care, a smile, a listening ear, a hug, and a compliment, and we take time to accept what others have to offer.

I love this season of twinkling lights–some electrical and some the glow of candles. I love hearing the advent stories, being reminded of promises made and then kept, and the promises still to be fulfilled but the certain hope they will be fulfilled. I love this time of inward reflection that leads to outward expression, and waiting. I even love the sentimentality of some of the modern Christmas/Chanukah movie craze that follows the theme of abandonment, family, closeness, cynicism and reaching out–because saccharine though they are, they can, if for a short time, give a warm glow–and for some, those super sweet movies are the only warm glow around.

Unlike in days of yore, when people fasted for the four weeks of Advent, the modern season can also be a time of overindulgence. There can be too much to eat, and there can be too much to drink. For a stress eater like myself, while working on a thesis and getting too little exercise, this is not a good thing. Eggnog is one of my favourite drinks–and it doesn’t matter if it’s with or without.

Today’s first Sunday of Advent church service stressed the waiting and the hope. The sermon stressed reaching out to others, being and working in community, and both giving and receiving hope and comfort. Two of the choir members sang a perfect duet anthem, Mary’s Son, the Prince of Peace. This is the first church I have attended with more male voices than female voices. It’s quite different.

Following the service we went to the church hall to enjoy coffee, treats and birthday cake for a member who enters a new decade today, and to view a beautiful nativity display. I think there were about 13-14 different creches. They were from various countries, made from different materials and were made by people of different ages. It was interesting to see the different expressions of nativity. I hope that the display is done again next year. When I put away my Christmas things I will make sure my various nativity sets are at the front and not the back of the storage shelves.

Sometimes new ways of waiting can be found. This year I received a new Advent calendar. Each day’s box contains 40-50 pieces of a bigger jigsaw. Mine is a nativity scene, and today I was able to do the first part when I returned home from church. I found it an excellent way to relax and reflect on the morning’s events.

Tonight at 7:00 I hope to join others for something I’ve never experienced before. The churches in town are participating in a joint Advent walk. I love when various church traditions join together for activities, and I’m quite looking forward to this one. We start at St. Celia’s Roman Catholic Church, then move on to St. Paul’s Anglican Church, and finally end up at Grace United Church–where there will be more food. Each year the order of churches. changes.

Many of us are waiting during this particular Advent in different ways. We are waiting to see what transpires with many governments, and one large government in particular that is changing leadership. We are waiting to see what emerges within the context of our faith-filled hope. One of the concerns that I and many others far more intelligent and knowledgeable than I hold in the midst of this waiting, is the usurpation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the Christian Nationalist cause. The Bonhoeffer being vocally, cinematically and journalistically portrayed by some is the very antithesis of the Bonhoeffer that lived. So, it seems to me to be fitting to conclude my ramblings about my love of the season of waiting with a few stanzas from one of his poems:

Waiting Is An Art

Celebrating Advent means being able to wait.
Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten.

Those who do not know how it feels to anxiously struggle
with the deepest questions of life, of their life,
and to patiently look forward with anticipation
until the truth is revealed,
cannot even dream of the splendor of the moment
 in which clarity is illuminated for them.

And for those who do not want to win the friendship 
and love of another person—
who do not expectantly open up their soul
to the soul of the other person,
until friendship and love come,
until they make their entrance—
for such people the deepest blessing of the one life
of two intertwined souls will remain forever hidden.

Whoever does not know
the austere blessedness of waiting—
that is, of hopefully doing without—
will never experience
the full blessing of fulfillment.

For the greatest,
most profound,
tenderest things in the world,
we must wait.

It happens here not in a storm
but according to the divine laws
of sprouting, growing, 
and becoming.
                         -Dietrich Bonhoeffer translated from the German by O.C. Dean Jr.

Advent blessings and patience to all.