Storms of Advent

Clouds scudded at high speed coating the sky gray. Branches bent and bowed, leaves surrendered to the gusts, empty trash cans rolled into drainage ditches. Jets on departure from SeaTac sliced the clouds silently overhead, their engines no match for the noise heralding the coming storm.
 
Only the winged creatures seemed to rejoice in the fury. Seagulls and crows flapped as if catching waves, and a pair of bald eagles circled over the sea, wings wide, soaring higher until they became two spots of black that turned, plummeting toward the water before gliding above the whitecaps that whipped off Puget Sound, their tail feathers glinting in the fractured light.
 
We’d just turned the clocks back and the Pacific Northwest leaned into the lengthening dark. My thoughts were dark as well, dampened by shadows of the human soul. Two days before a murder stunned the town. A woman was killed by her live-in boyfriend who posted photos of his crime online before his arrest.
 
I felt helpless, transported back in time to days when I walked across my college campus with keys spiked between my fingers, trusting no one. As much as I believe in the better angels of human nature, I also know humanity’s long history of violence. It has a way, always, of piercing our lives.
 
The beginning of the Christian liturgical year arrives as North Americans are ushered toward our winter solstice, and the first Sunday of Advent always offers stark words from the gospel: “It will seem like all hell has broken loose—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.” (Luke 21:25-26 The Message.)
 
The drama doesn’t culminate on Christmas Eve with pageants of children costumed and haloed, all of us singing carols of goodness and joy. Instead, a child is born in exile amid the stench of manure cradled only in straw, and a king—threatened by this infant’s very existence—embarks on a killing spree.
 
The incarnation was bloody; the crucifixion wasn’t the end of our indiscriminate spilling of life; and the wake of violence and suffering can threaten even the most ardently faithful.  Advent storms in, but it also offers the hope of God’s eternal promise, even as we keen our lament.
 
In the days after the murder townsfolk organized meals, clothes, and school supplies for the four motherless children, and held a vigil to stand against hatred despite their shock, anger, and grief.
                                                                                                                                   
In her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor describes the “full solar Christianity” that presents us with artificial divisions, pronouncements, and formulas meant to guarantee our safety, and leaves us unable to adequately face and make peace with the darkness and shadows that permeate our lives.
 
What does it mean to follow Christ deep into the shadows? How do we step into what we can’t see without stumbling on our own fears and inadequacies and falling into despair? Life is perilous. Faith is difficult.
 
The rain subsided, and a small patch of blue caught my eye. The sky softly wept at my feet while, rising from the water, a rainbow arced overhead—not a small sliver, but a complete arched prism.
 
My spirits lifted as I remembered what I can so easily lose sight of: God is present in every storm, in the depth of every horror. While the incarnation can’t shield us from harm, it offers the assurance that when we’ve been shattered, Jesus will lift the shards and carry us gently near his heart.