Preparing for Preparation

Ever notice that you're never ready for Advent? You get your wreath out, you change your paraments (if you have paraments, or a blog that dresses according to the season), you begin to think of shopping and holiday travel, relatives and when you'll get the tree.

But these pre-Advent thoughts differ from the thoughts that happen during Advent. During Advent you think about the look on their faces as they open the perfect gift. You wonder if there'll be snow, and hope there won't be ice. If you're a student, you calculate how many pages you have left to write before Christmas. If you're a parent, you calculate how many times you'll hear questions about Santa, how many times they'll request to hear the same Christmas song again, how soon is too soon to put fresh sheet on your student's bed before they come home.

Today starts Advent, and, as usual, it hits with surprise. Even though we prepare for it, we are never really prepared for it. You show up for church in the morning and Boom! everything's blue (Lutherans use blue for Advent), the readings are from a different Gospel (each of the liturgical years follow a different Gospel: the year we just began is Luke), and suddenly we're singing Christmas songs and "People, Look East," and where did the time go? Now all those Advent questions have to be thought on. When will you get a tree and where will you put it? Who's coming over and when and what will they eat? And it's not just Christmas to prepare for, but winter. (Unless you're somewhere *cough*Iowa*cough* that already is wintered.) Do you have salt or sand in all the cars? What about emergency hats and gloves and such? If you get snowed in, do you have enough yarn?

Advent is my favorite season because it is the season that most reflects our lives. (Us being Christians.) We live in expectation that Christ will come again. In Advent we celebrate that expectation by remembering and celebrating the fulfillment of hope that was the first Christmas, and we look forward even more fervently to Christ's return. That's why so often in the lectionary the Advent readings are preparation-heavy. We "look east" and talk about John the Baptist advising us to prepare the way.

This Advent is a new adventure for me because I'm in a new preparation phase of life. We are all so often preparing for things. We spend the first 18 years of our lives "preparing" by going to school, learning social customs, language, and behavior. And we continue: we prepare for new family members, we prepare for the next holiday, we get dressed in the morning (prepare for the day), we prepare for the next big meeting, the next paper, the next performance, the next product update, the next big thing.

This is my first Advent while officially preparing for my career, and, as it's a career related to Advent, it's interesting to think about the connections between Advent and seminary.

But Advent's just starting, so they're young reflections and connections. Because the joy of Advent is that it isn't just four-ish weeks of preparation for Christmas, it's four-ish weeks of reminding us to prepare, daily, not just for who we want to be, but who we already are as children of God.