Author: Jill Crainshaw

I am a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and an ordained PCUSA minister.

Coming Home

Advent calls us to work together to create and be for each other home for now until all of God’s children–wandering people that we are–can rest in the fullness of God’s promised home.

Reflections on Advent 2019, Year A

Advent is about comings. In a sense, Advent is about “home”-comings. 

  • Jesus comes to earth–to God’s home? to our home? 
  • God comes into our lives–to abide with us.
  • We await a future “home”-going or “home”-coming–when people stream create a home of justice and peace together on God’s holy mountain. 

An overarching biblical theme of yearning for home enlivens our theologies. We seek what is already but not yet. We journey relentlessly to earthly home-spaces that are not quite home because we remain in both tangible and intangible ways “away” from God. As people of faith, we join biblical ancestors in seeking a Promised Land, a land where there is no weeping or crying or pain. In the meanwhile—until we arrive in that sought-after place—God calls us to do what we can to create God’s home here on earth, in our cities and towns, schools and churches, workplaces and homes.

Some are too much at home in the role of wanderer,

watcher, listener; who, by lamplit doors

that open only to another’s knock,

commune with shadows and are happier

with ghosts than living guests in a warm house.

****

The undertone of all their solitude

is the unceasing question, Who am I?

Denise Levertov


Poet Denise Levertov (1923-2007) writes in a 1946 poem about solitude of being “too much at home in the role of wanderer.” I love Levertov’s poem, though I tend to see faith as calling us to the opposite of what she describes. I hear faith calling us to be at home in the role of wanderer. Never settling for less than justice for all of God’s people. Restless for peace. Always searching for healing, hope, grace. In other words, faith calls us to be at home in the role of wanderer until we one day cross the border into God’s not yet commonplace home.

That, perhaps, is the power of Advent wisdom. Jesus’ followers can never stop seeking. Not until all of the hungry are fed and violence has been stopped and no one feels the sting of exclusion. Not until all have opened themselves to God’s love and are empowered to go out into the world and love others, freed both from arrogance and shame.

But Levertov’s poem says that we risk being too much at home in the role of wanderers. Sounds like a conundrum, doesn’t it? We are called to be justice-seeking wanderers. We are also called to be at home in God’s love. Whew!

I think God’s call to people of faith in the midst of this conundrum is to pray and work together to imagine and create home—welcoming, non-judging, nourishing—home-for-now for all people who are seeking after God’s resting places of justice, grace, and peace.

What does this have to do with Advent? The texts in Year A paint a picture of “home” that is as bizarre as any we might imagine:

  • Lions and lambs nap together.
  • Swords become plowshares and spears pruning hooks.
  • Desert soil blossoms with crocuses.
  • Weak hands and feeble knees are made strong.
  • A dead stump births new life.
  • God is born in a barn.

Advent invites–perhaps even urges–us to watch for the unexpected ways that God is with us. Advent also urges us to imagine how we can be home-for-now for those whose lives are broken, how we can be home for our communities’ strangers, how we can be home for those whose stories have left them isolated, alone, without hope.

Advent calls us to work together to create and be for each other home for now until all of God’s children–wandering people that we are–can rest in the fullness of God’s promised home.

This year’s Advent season–called Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary–immerses worshipers in what we might call “impossible possibilities” that take us beyond the world as we know it to a world of Shalom. I hear in this year’s four weeks of Advent four verbs of expectancy, and I am excited to reflect on these four verbs each week as the Advent journey unfolds.

Watch

Turn

Imagine

Be

Advent 2019

**Note: Featured image is by Sheila Hunter and is used by permission. Thank you, Sheila!

Pumpkin Season’s High Happy Day

How can we encounter eternity in daily human experiences?

Forever–is composed of Nows–

Emily Dickinson

The day is here. Halloween. The high happy day of Pumpkin Season!

I love Halloween in our neighborhood. My neighbors liven up their yards with orange and purple lights, pumpkins, and other fall decor. And when evening comes? Many people will be out and about, offering candy to trick-or-treaters and trick-or-treating with their children and grandchildren. In our neighborhood, Halloween has become a grand communal affair.

Today, if past experience is a predictor, just over 200 ghouls, ghosts, super heroes, and other characters will arrive in my neighborhood seeking Halloween treats. Many of the trick-or-treaters are children from nearby neighborhoods. Their parents seem to feel good about bringing their little ones to our community.

Sheila and I have fun sitting on our porch welcoming the treat seekers. The tiny goblins are adorable. We also look forward to seeing the imaginative costumes of the School of the Arts students who make their Halloween pilgrimages down our street.

More than meets the eye

But there is more to the high happy days of Pumpkin Season than meets the eye at sunset on October 31.

Halloween itself may be the most visible festival this time of the year, at least in my neighborhood. Perhaps less known is that Halloween is one of a trio of cultural and religious ritual observances that fall during the transitional days between October and November–All Hallow’s Even (or Evening), Hallowmas (All Saints Day), Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The histories, beliefs and practices connected to each of these days vary depending on cultural and geographical location.

All Hallow’s Even and Hallowmas

All Saints Day dates to the early 7th Century and is observed on November 1 in many Christian traditions. All Saints Day commemorates those saints, now departed, who have influenced Christian faith. Many observances of All Saints Day, especially in Protestant churches, celebrate all Christians, past and present, who have died in the last year.

Some churches commemorate local “saints” on All Souls’ Day, the day following All Saints’ Day.

The historical name for All Saints was Hallowmas–“hallow” meaning “saints,” and “mas” meaning “mass,” or Eucharistic feast. Those who observed Hallowmas held a Eucharistic feast in memory of saints of the faith. The day before Hallowmas was (and still is in some places) the Vigil of All Hallows, or what is now recognized in popular culture as Halloween.

Dia de los Muertos

In some countries, for example in Portugal, Mexico, and Spain, All Saints coincides with Dia de los Inocentes (Day of the Innocents), which is the first day of the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). On the Dia de los Inocentes, communities remember infants and children who have died.

The Dia de los Muertos is observed in varied ways in Spanish-speaking countries, and at the center of many celebrations is time set aside to visit, and in some places decorate, the gravesites of loved ones who have died. The Dia de los Muertos is a national holiday in Mexico.

Encountering eternity in daily experiences

Emily Dickinson’s famous poetic line, “Forever—is composed of Nows–,” comes to mind for me as we arrive at these October/November days of remembrance.

Time, in Christian tradition and theology, has been defined, discussed, and debated over many centuries. The history of sacred and secular calendars reflects this liveliness of human understandings of time.

What Dickinson expresses in her poem reflects one dimension of this season’s trio of ritualized remembrances. Scholars think that in the poem that contains this line Dickinson wanted to emphasize how we can encounter eternity in daily human experiences.

What does this have to do with All Hallows, All Saints, and Dia de los Muertos? Perhaps the poem and these remembrances suggest that the saints are, in a sense, with us today. And we who are alive to remember them are living eternity now.

So, on October 31–Halloween to some, All Hallow’s Eve to others–we enter into a time of remembrance. In my neighborhood, we take to the streets after sunset, laughing and talking as our flashlights dance at our feet. One of my neighbors builds a fire in a fire pit in her driveway, and people stop by to visit and warm their hands.

This year, I am imagining our neighborhood Halloween sharing as a small foretaste of God’s reign. For a few hours, we will be community together, and that “now” will become a part of an anticipated “forever” where all people are free to laugh and play together.

As I write this on Halloween Eve, I lift a prayer: Holy Spirit, dance in our midst in these autumn days and inspire us again toward creating and being your Beloved Community in our cities, towns, and neighborhoods.