advent

My parents' church had a Christmas service yesterday. It was kind of like a Christmas musical, actually. I don't mean that as a bad thing, necessarily--the songs were lively, and my dad was in it as a narrator. But, it was strange.

On and off for the past five years, I've been going to Presbyterian churches. I even became a PC USA member(the more liberal of the Presbyterians) two years ago, when I was living in Colorado. I was going to a really great Presbyterian church, First Presbyterian in Fort Collins. The people there were about a lot of the things I want/try to be about: social justice, AIDS relief, art, community, the idea of Christianity being about the redemption of everything that's broken in the world, now. This sort of faith makes a lot of sense to me.

The other thing I liked were the services. Presbyterians believe in tradition--even in my "emergent" service, there was a guitar and sometimes violin and lots of folksy songs, but then there was all the other traditional Presbyterian stuff: communion every week, recitation of the Creeds and other liturgy, readings from the Old and New Testament, lighting of candles and finally, the church calendar.

In the church calendar, holy days are always led up to with building anticipation where the church does all sorts of things to remind ourselves the holy days are coming and to think about what they might mean for our lives. During Lent (the 40 days leading up to Easter) all the colors in the church are darkened. Prayer includes mostly silent personal confession and we remember, all of Lent season, both our own suffering and the suffering of people around the world. Also, everyone's supposed to give up something that is, to some extent, controlling their life (food, some activity, etc.) Advent's the same--a slow building until Christmas--then at midnight Christmas eve, the church moves from darkness to light. Candles are lit all over the otherwise, completely dark church (it's quite stunning), there's singing and food and generally, partying (as much as Presbyterians party.) It's pretty great.

This is why a pre-Christmas Christmas party, of sorts, felt so unbelievably strange. Essentially, we skipped the reflection and went right to the celebration. Now, of course, celebration's not bad, but I've begun to think, these past few years, that reflection's not bad either--and maybe it's essential. Without Advent and Lent, I find that I rarely stop to reflect on my own life--what's working and what is not--, on suffering all over the world and on the meaning of redemption. I miss that.