PrePare

No matter how well one plans, something always seems to throw a spanner into the works. I had planned out a TR for our online class last Sunday evening but my internet seemed to have a mind of its own. Even the tech-whiz at the other end of the phone couldn't solve it on Saturday evening so an appointment was scheduled for Monday at 1:30 pm. Not much help when the class was online at 8pm on Sunday night!

I had prepared --- but suddenly it was all out of my hands. I got to thinking about how many times my preparations have ended up being for almost naught, how I had either over-prepared or under-prepared and just sort of lurched from almost a success to almost a failure and back again.

Advent is a preparatory season where we prepare for the coming of the Christ child. Unfortunately it also comes at a cost; we've been in an almost non-stop preparatory period since before Halloween.  We had to have the right costumes for Susie and Billy, the right treats for small (and sometimes rather large (height-wise)) ghosts, witches, princesses and superheroes, and the right decorations to add a festive note. We prepared --- and before you knew it it was over and we were facing All Saints Day. Not much to prepare there but we had to look down the corridor to the rapidly approaching Thanksgiving celebration. 

Arranging for overnight (or weekend) guests, cleaning the house to a fare-thee-well (good luck displacing all the cat and dog hair, not to mention the stray socks and errant spiderwebs in the ceiling corners), planning the perfect dinner, securing the best ingredients, planning out the timetable so the turkey is perfectly browned and ready to carve at the precise moment the green-bean casserole is the perfect temperature and the stuffing hasn't cooled too much or the potatoes left too lumpy because we didn't have the one or two minutes more we needed to ensure their perfect lump-lessness. By the time we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner we've probably spent as much as 15 hours preparing in various ways --- all for something that is eaten in a half hour or less (although the leftovers may go on for days!). We can take it easier during the football games (although the nagging thought of the dishes in the sink is doing precisely that --- nagging) but sure enough, a stray thought or two (or ten) will pop up about what to do for Christmas.

Christmas stuff has been in some stores since Labor Day. It used to be they waited until the day after Thanksgiving before decking the halls and putting up the Christmas sale displays but no more. Thanksgiving dinner isn't even cold before we have to start preparing all over again. Gotta find the perfect gift for Aunt Sallie, even if we don't like her all that much she will expect it, and will have something for us that we aren't particularly crazy about but heck, it's the thought that counts, right?  Put the lights up on the house so the neighbors don't think we're Scrooges or worse. Fight for parking places somewhere within a quarter mile of the mall so we can go shop and then lug bags and bags of stuff the quarter mile back to the car -- if we can even remember where we parked it through the haze of frustration, anxiety and exhaustion. Find the lovely Christmas paper and bows we bought at the after-Christmas sale last year. Bake umpteen dozen cookies for the Christmas parties at the office, the school, the church and for having on hand in case somebody just happened to drop over for coffee. Select and trim the perfect tree with the right number of lights (not too many, not too few), ornaments (some of which are as old as if not older than our oldest kids), and tinsel garlands. There have to be the perfect number of presents under that tree -- not so many as to look like we're made of money or have stretched our credit card to the absolute max but not so few as to suggest we're penurious or worse yet, just plain cheap.  the preparation reaches its height on Christmas Eve and by Christmas Day most are just ready to collapse -- once they've made the obligatory visits to Grandma, the in-laws or wherever. Just don't go in the grocery or drug stores. On Christmas Day Valentine's Day decorations, cards and candy are already on display.

Advent comes in the middle of all this preparing. We're asked to take on one more preparation, an internal one with some external duties and responsibilities. Advent is a quiet season, sort of like what pregnant women feel when they contemplate what's going on inside them.  Advent is a pregnant season; it is based on Mary's pregnancy with a very exceptional child. We wait as she did, we watch, we contemplate, we prepare. 

There's no one way to have a "perfect" Advent. Although Advent wreaths are traditional, sometimes they can be extremely contemporary in look and feel while still being very traditional in use and meaning. Advent discourages the orgy of Christmas carols that ring through the stores since Thanksgiving because you don't celebrate a birth until a birth has taken place. Besides, in our tradition, Christmas still has 12 days to run after Christmas Eve!  Bet you won't find a single carol being played anywhere much after midnight on December 24th though!

We always have to prepare -- prepare for a coming birth, a move, a change in status, a death, an event, retirement, a financial crisis, a sudden catastrophic illness or accident, a whole raft of things that can and often do happen, just on their own timetable, not ours. We can't schedule them and often we can't even completely prepare for them like we can a trip "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go."

PrePare -- stop being anxious and frantic, stop trying to keep up much less outdo the Joneses down the street, stop trying to be all things, do all things and, most of all, buy all things.  Sit quietly for a time. Think about the pregnancy of the season as Mary thought about the growing life of that special child within her. Even if your hands must be busy knitting sweaters and booties or stirring the stew, keep an inward ear on what is going on inside. Nurture the small flickering flame of faith that will grow to a strong, steady fire if propriety tended. PrePare --- let God grow in you. Renemember the "P" in the middle, a link between "pre" and "are" and yet a place to pause and reflect.

Have a blessed Advent.