Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

This very week, a week that included lighting the first Advent candle, I learned of two friends who received diagnoses of metastatic cancer. One was told by her doctor to “go home, sell your house and travel.” The other, who had been assured that her cancer was one that had a high “cure” rate, was told that there was no internal organ that had not been affected by the cancer and that there was very little more that could be done. My friends lit advent candles this week, as well. Sometimes our exegesis and exposition sounds so lofty and airy. Other times it can come off as predictable—clichéd, even. And I am as participant in that irrelevancy as anyone else. But for me the power of the season, as well as the power of process thought rests not in our words, or even our deeds, for that matter, but in our experience. The season asks us to get inside of our experience, not just talk about it or interpret it—which alters it, but simply be inside our experience. To be inside our experience is to understand that merely repeating the stories of our spiritual ancestors, or rehearsing rituals in their honor, or clinging to our own traditions, how ever precious they might be, is not the same as living our experience. For me, this year, my living experience will be enlarged by two friends who are pressing through the bleak mid-winter of dire news to light advent candles trusting that their vulnerabilities and God’s meet in the birth of the infant Jesus. Rejoice! ~ Tari Lennon