Gabriel's Indecent Proposal
The birth of Christ is pointless unless it happens in you.
I’m trying to make the case for a “Wild Advent” because Christmas, as we all know, has long been domesticated, and after that—how could Advent be anything but tame?
But by inviting you to prepare for a feral Christmas, I’m not trashing the cultural version of the holidays. Every year I hang angels and glass balls from nearly every light fixture in the house. I have thirty Christmas albums in my Spotify favorites—Chanticleer, but also Louis Prima and Dolly Parton. I love the Tree at Rock Center, and the Rockettes, especially when I sit next to my grandson. But I know what all that is. And isn’t.
Spiritual writer Tish Harrison Warren bemoans the “compulsory jollification” of the Christmas season. For people who know they have a soul, that’s what a December of nothing but JOLLY! ends up feeling like. What I’m suggesting, then, is not to jump completely off the JOLLY! Train, but to open a parallel track, one that leads deep into the heart of life—your own, and the world’s.
Let’s start with your own (tomorrow we’ll consider the world’s).
Advent leads with an indecent proposal. It presents to you and to me the very same message that the angel Gabriel gave to Mary at the Annunciation: God is to be born in you. The story says that when Mary heard this “she was greatly troubled,” which in the spare understatement of the Scripture means something more like, WTF!
It sounds outrageous, but God insists on being born in us. As the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz writes,
You do believe that God was born in a Bethlehem manger,
but woe to you if He is not born in you
If we’re not “greatly troubled” by those words, we’re not paying attention.
Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch clockmaker who hid Jews in her home during the Nazi occupation said it this way. “If Jesus were born one thousand times in Bethlehem and not in me, then I would still be lost.”
Often, the outward celebrations of the season find no purchase in our hearts. Year after year we cook and bake and decorate. Perhaps we even kneel at Midnight Mass. But nothing resonates deep within. That’s what Mickiewicz and ten Boom are saying: the whole thing is pointless unless it happens in you.
And how does that happen? In many different ways for different-shaped souls, but perhaps the best way to open the stable of your heart is to go outside. Pay attention to the way the earth is dying to itself, preparing for new birth. Notice how shadows gather beneath a bush or in a corner of a spent garden wall—a rich, inviting shadow that feels like it could wrap around you like a cloak. See how it feels to be in shadow without being afraid, but only expectant.
There’s a reason Christmas (and thus Advent) was situated at the end of the year. It was so that we might sync our bodies and souls with the earth. To do what it does—powering down, sitting quiet, getting empty, ready for re-creation. To wish or hope for a spiritual rebirth, while ignoring the infinite panoply of a gestating Creation right before our eyes, is sad but also pretty absurd. How could we miss this sign?
Take a walk. Let what you see out there find a home in here.
Dear David, many of your writings have hit home and this one hit me right in my soul’s core, so thank you. I will be baptized in a week and the seasonal symbolism isn’t as lost on me now. I’m eager for this symbolic death of the old me and the renewal of my life in Christ. This new life is still quite young, having divinely started on Easter this year. He really does know how to speak to us individually, both directly and indirectly. I’m thankful He speaks to me through the seasons and natural world, through music and numbers, through you, David, and through more no doubt. May we continue to acquire ears to hear His guidance. Thanks to my Aunt Pattie for introducing me to your Substack :)
This is my first holiday season as an orphan. Death and rebirth are feeling very close. I am not in misery as family and friends share memories of my parents that helps to keep them present as they now live in my memories.