So the time is finally here. The season most of our folks long for and the children actually pine for is here but are we as a church ready to fulfill those longings? Recently I sat in a team meeting where the focus wasn’t on planning for the Advent season but it did come up. My sense was that as a church we really weren’t ready for this moment.  By that I mean we were not ready to educate our congregation about the meaning of the season.

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In the midst of preparation to lead a retreat this weekend, with “Home for Christmas” as its theme, I’ve been reminded of the old adage about how the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The idea for this particular retreat came to me as “the holidays” were drawing to a close a year ago.  I had taken a hastily scheduled trip to Portland to spend a week with my younger sister, as she prepared to begin radiation and chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer.  That ordeal was to begin in January.  Meanwhile, we were to have a week of “sister time,” the week we usually had in August, but this year August had been consumed by our joint effort to connect, or reconnect, cousins - - her children, my children, their children - - whose homes are on opposite coasts.  That was before the cancer changed everything.

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Due warning: this is a rant of uncommon impatience.

Now that I’m on the other side of the pulpit, in the pews as part of the congregation, I find that my impatience with “bad worship” has increased. This summer I got to visit a lot of different churches while traveling to do seminars, consultations, and workshops, often participating in Sunday worship. For the most part I’m able to set aside my critical brain and enjoy the existential experience of worship with a congregation. At times I’m pleasantly surprised by a well-crafted service and a thoughtful sermon. But there are times when I’m tempted to walk out of the worship service when inflicted upon by some of the things that go on during the sacred hour.

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Fall in Virginia is quite a different matter from the same season in New York or Oregon, the other two places in which I have experienced its bittersweet mingling of pulsating life and coming death.  It has always been my favorite season of the year, but here in the steamy South (I know it gets steamier south of here, but this is all the steam I can bear) it is a completely different matter.  Fall, when it finally comes here, is a more about the weather than the calendar, and when the weather finally cools I tap into that combination of renewed energy that comes with a new academic year and the melancholy of remembering that winter will soon close in around us.  My melancholy has an extra depth this year as I watch my sister’s struggle with pancreatic cancer, a struggle she stands no statistical chance of winning, but still we hope. 

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