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Advent has come.

 

But the Advent of what?

Sharp clanging sleigh bells and presents wrapped so bright they could cut?

Of smiles painted like plaster  over hearts that wait in darkness?

 

The Advent of what?

Pressure that wraps like snakes

And drowns each one in gilt and dross?

 

The Advent of what?

Of whitewashed hope?

Of optimism as see-through as cellophane?

Of solitary, desperate cheer?

 

Why not wait for a different Advent?

One so poor it lies in straw

One so dirty that shepherds share it

One so unlovely that the unlovable can wait for it

 

Why not wait for a different Advent?

For faithfulness that always persists

For hope that springs from dry places

For love that grows green things in grey spaces.

Don’t complain about the commercialization of Christmas. The world’s’ religion is capitalism; of course it will commercialize, militarize, nationalize, sentimentalize and trivialize everything about our faith. Ignore it. If you want to fight commercialization, practice generosity. If you want to defend the meaning of Christmas deepen your prayer practice and love your neighbor. Don’t complain; just live differently. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes

God spoke to fourteenth-century mystic Catherine of Siena, saying, “I did not intend my creatures to make themselves servants and slaves to the world’s pleasures. They owe their first love to me. Everything else they should love and possess, as I told you, not as if they owned it, but as something lent them.” (Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals)

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