an advent-ure

I do not do piety well.

Sometimes I pray. I don't tend to bow during the liturgy when I'm supposed to. Every night I begin the rosary, but in my head, not with a rosary in hand (though I do have a lovely collection of rosaries). I don't even follow (know!) the mysteries. There are few saints whose feasts I know, fewer still whose feasts I actually celebrate. Marian devotions tend to baffle rather than inspire me. I have three icons in my bedroom, but rarely do I look at them with any sort of prayerfulness.

And so it is slightly surprising to me how intensely I have been preparing for this season of Advent. As this First Sunday of Advent approached, I looked forward to it with excitement, solemnity, and, yes, devotion.

I do not recall ever having an Advent wreath in our home when I was growing up. Mom and I did have a little Advent tree, on which we hung one ornament each morning while we said a prayer together. The ornaments were made out of buttons that my great-grandmother had collected. It was a creative approach to Advent, which should have prepared me well for this weekend's Great Advent Wreath Hunt.

I wanted a pretty wreath, with pretty pink and purple candles. Nothing fluorescent or obnoxious. A fake wreath, of course, but it couldn't look too fake. Something simple.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an Advent wreath? Or pink and purple candles? In a sea of red and green and white? While Christmas songs are blaring through the speakers of whatever craft store hell you've managed to find yourself in?

I'll tell you: It's not hard; it's impossible!

I did, however, find myself a beautiful wreath that met my expectations yesterday. And then I gave up the fight for candles and brought myself home for recovery and a renewed plan. Maybe I didn't need an Advent wreath. I could throw this simple one on my front door and call it good.

Today, however, I decided to brave the craft stores again because I wanted a damn Advent wreath! (The irony of that language is not lost on me, of course.) As I meandered through this craft store (this time not so hellish), I realized that maybe I needed some Advent tree creativity. The wreath from yesterday would not work very well with votive candles; it would be very nice on my door, though. And, look! Purple and pink glittery bows! I could use those to mark the weeks! And, there! I could get white candles, put them on a glass plate, and surround them with little purple glass pebbles!

Doable Advent. Creative Advent.

Advent.

This morning at Mass the word "anxieties" popped out at me during the gospel. But when I sat with the readings this afternoon, a different clause grabbed me: "Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy." I'd like to think that my wreath fervor will carry me through this blessed season, that perhaps my excitement for Advent is a symptom of my heart stirring. How easy it is to let our hearts be weary. How hard it is to admit that we are drowsy.

But, truly, my heart has been drowsy. I live in my head way too often, in my heart way too infrequently. What else is there for it to do but rest? And when the heart rests, the mind goes wild, allowing all sorts of fanciful ideas to come out and play.

Several months ago I read this article by M. Craig Barnes in The Christian Century. In it, Barnes writes, "We all have issues, and we pray that none of them are greater than the issue of holy love that flows over everything else." This season of Advent is a time of tuning in to that holy love, of letting our hearts fill to overflowing with excitement and anticipation. We await the coming of the infant Jesus—fully human, fully divine—as the incarnation of God's love for us.

Today, I lit the first candle on my Advent wreath and felt my heart grow calm, my head slow down, my body relax. Maybe, just maybe, that holy love will find a crack to slip into this Advent season.

peace

Up and down. Inside out. Turbulent.

That has been my month—personally and professionally. For reasons I'm not really willing to write about just yet. Suffice to say that October has been a bit on the wacky side.

When things got ugly for me two years ago, the main way I was affected was anxiety. I have always been a worrier. But that summer and fall, my anxiety skyrocketed. My mind and body could not settle down. Every freckle was melanoma waiting to kill me. And then I couldn't breathe, so I probably had lung cancer on top of it. And, did I just feel dizzy? Oh, God. A brain tumor too! With a heart attack and probably a tornado falling on my house as well, for good measure.

These thoughts are, now, somewhat amusing. Mainly because I don't have them every day anymore. Snippets of anxiety still find me, but it is nothing compared to the day in and day out panic I felt during those months in 2010.

In October of that year, I started taking anti-anxiety medication. We don't tend to talk much about mental health as a society. As a result, the bad patches seems pretty damn bleak. Our problems seem so individualized, so personal, so isolated. We go it alone, with assurances of prayers and thoughts from friends and family. If we're lucky (and I was), there are people to talk to, but said people aren't in our heads rooting out the ugly. We get to do that all on our own.

In 2011, I went off my medication for fifteen weeks. It was time, I thought. Only after May passed (a month full of anniversaries and birthdays of dead people) did I realize that maybe I wasn't quite ready. So on again I went. And stayed. Because when something keeps us healthy, it's best we stick with it.

Sixteen weeks ago, I went off my medication again. I was forgetting to take it, which seemed like a good sign that maybe my mind and body and heart were ready to be med free. So far, so good. I admit, earlier this month I strongly considered it again. But the causes for my anxiety have been logical and there are end points for the crazy. And, I'm able to talk myself out of the circle of hell that is anxiety.

It's possible that this post is leaning toward the overshare category. But I think it helps (a) when we don't hide the fact that we have mental health issues and (b) to set up the point of this post. Which is peace.

When I was in the worst of my anxiety problems, the thing I missed most was peace—that sense that things were going to be okay, that ability to sit still and listen to myself and God. Recently someone asked me if, after my uncle died, I was ever angry with God. There's no good way for me to answer that question without sounding saccharine, but no, I wasn't. I knew God was sitting with me in silence, because that was all I could take at the moment. I was a humming ball of nerves, but God was very much present in that time.

Peace, however, was not present. Peace evaporated.

Oddly enough, one of the most anxiety-inducing places for me was the liturgy. I was convinced that I would pass out during Mass. No reason. I just knew it would happen. (It didn't.) Before the new translation of the Roman Missal (the prayers used during Mass) was implemented a year ago, during the Our Father the priest used to say, "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety."

As someone with anxiety issues, that line stuck with me. Especially when one of the priests at the abbey presided, who was fond of saying, "protect us in our anxiety." I liked that. We aren't freed from anxiety; nor should we be. When ordered rightly, anxiety can be a helpful thing. But when anxiety had taken over my reactions to everything, I needed to hear that I could be protected in my anxiety; being protect from anxiety hadn't worked.

With the new translation of the Roman Missal, that line has been changed. It now reads, "Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress." It's not quite the same, but what struck me on Sunday as the presider recited these words was "grant peace in our days."

I've always thought that was a sweeping, Miss America kind of statement. "What do you hope for?" "World peace!" Well, who doesn't?

But this week, these words I've heard countless times fell differently on my ears. "Grant peace in our days." Here. This day. Grant peace. It might not be the resounding peace we should all be striving to create in this war-torn, violence-filled, life-negating world. It's not magic peace. Maybe we are granted the peace that gets us from one moment to the next, the peace that helps us see that what seems big and scary isn't all that big or all that scary.

It's the little peace we experience that helps us to build an overwhelming peace in which war, violence, and death—not to mention anxiety—hold no power.

Saturdays

There are certain themes that show up in my writing and in my life: books, Spirit, tea, loss/death, bees, quilting, church, photography, pens, gardening.

I tend to think of these things as threads that weave in and out of pieces of cloth I'm sewing together. (Excuse me while I get my 2 x 4 to make my point.)

Yesterday I was visiting with one of my coworkers about writing. I told him about a blog I did with a friend. Each week, we selected a theme and wrote about it: she did poetry; I did prose. It was one of my favorite writing projects, despite the fact that I frequently found myself frustrated by my inability to sit still and write. Unfortunately, the blog ended because of my aforementioned writing hiatus. But before its demise, I was able to notice the threads in my writing, the things that popped up unexpectedly.

I didn't realize how important quilting is to me until I started seeing it in my words. I didn't pick up a quilting needle until a year ago, but the experience of seeing my grandmother with needle and fabric in hand has been deeply ingrained in my mind. It has somehow formed me.

So too with gardening. I was never one to rush into the garden to help my mother make things grow. She practically had to force me to pull weeds, water flowers, mow the lawn. It was not something I enjoyed. But when I think of my mother, I think of gardening—of nurturing little things, of being a cocreator with God, of making space that is beautiful. I have lived in dorms and an apartment for the past ten years. One of the things that surprises me is that every spring my fingers itch to dig into dirt. Perhaps it is the joy of seeing dirt after the long Minnesota winters. Perhaps it is one way of embracing the many ways in which I am my mother. One day I will have a little bit of earth where I can plant some flowers and watch them grow. I did not know how badly I wanted that until it started to show up in my writing.

But this post is about the themes that other people see in my life.

A friend of mine has recently made several comments about the ritual-ness of my world. In photographs, I'm attentive to where things are (another influence of The Mother), what's in the frame, and how it all fits together. To have my eye drawn to this ritual quality should not surprise me. I am, after all, a theologian who loves liturgy. And yet, I don't think it occurred to me how prevalent ritual is every day. But my friend is right.

Saturday mornings have become ritual time for me. I can be rather protective of them. But this is nothing new. In high school, my Saturday mornings were walking to a coffee shop across the street, reading and talking about books with T., waiting for other regulars to show up, laughing at B.'s antics, visiting about the days that had passed, looking forward to the days to come—all with the shared cups of coffee and tea, the broken bread of croissants and scones.

In college, I missed those Saturday mornings something fierce. So I was delighted when a little coffee shop opened in my college town. (I know, you think a college town should already have such a shop. I thought so too.) I would pack up a book and a notebook (not school related) and head down to Pumpernickel for a large decaf mocha. I would sit and read, quietly, savoring the time that was my own, not given over to schoolwork. That time restored me. It allowed me to refocus and recenter.

In graduate school Saturday mornings were also sacred. After a while one of my friends and I realized that we were often the only ones up and ready to go on Saturday mornings. We started going over to the Refectory for brunch on those days. Again, we broke bread together and talked about religious life, liturgy, church, dreams, school, people, fashion, sex, books, study. It was a holy time with one of the holiest people I've ever known (though he'd deny that last).

Moving into my apartment after graduation, after most of my close friends, including my brunch buddy, had moved away, I had to establish a new Saturday morning ritual. These four years of Saturdays have not been consistent. After Shaun died and I finally got a television, there were many Saturdays where I rolled out of bed, moved to the couch, and watched whatever show I was into at the time. Some Saturdays I get up and clean, or go see friends, or work on projects. But my favorite Saturday mornings are those on which I can wake up slow, make a pot of tea, make scones, throw in a load of laundry, snuggle with the cat, grab a book, settle into the chair on my porch (or the couch in winter), and do nothing more demanding than read for several hours, occasionally lifting the teapot to refill my cup. Such was my Saturday today.

It is, indeed, a charmed life.

I thank you, MK, for reminding me that these times are holy, that the movements of my days are, in fact, ritual movements.