In the darkness... we wait

As a minister, I have a lot of friends in ministry.  Due to this overabundance of religious folks in my life, my Facebook newsfeed has been flooded with Advent posts.  Most ministers in my denominational tradition and similar traditions have a great appreciation for the church calendar and often try to fight against the ads and the and commercials that have been blaring Christmas music for months now.  And while the commercial Christmas season is upon us, the Church is in a season of waiting.  The Church has found it fruitful to engage in a time of waiting.  So we wait.

And while I could go on and on about waiting for this Christ Child--waiting for the small and vulnerable baby to be born as the first sign of showing the world a subversive way to be in the world-- this season of waiting is always wrapped in the darkness which consumes us.  There are so many wonderful things about the Christmas story and layers to the advent waiting, and while I appreciate the many angles of Advent, I am most enthralled with the small candle that is lit in the darkness, reminding us that this darkness will not last forever.

I have great appreciation for the intermingling of the pagan traditions of the winter solstice and birth of the Christ child.  Christians have not developed anything new when they created a season of waiting for the light in this season of darkness.  Instead, they shared in this waiting with people from around the world, putting their own angle on it.

I have a really hard time with winter.  Winter has always been my least favorite season.  I have a really difficult time enjoying the cold, long nights.  As much as I love a good bourbon on a cold winter night, I would still, on any day, rather be watching the sunset at 9:30pm in the heat of the summer.  But every fall I find myself fighting for daylight as it slips away, day by day.  And then as December rolls in, and I find myself again defeated in my fight for the light, I wait.  I know that I must wait.  The light is coming, even if it is not yet here.

Soon after Ashley and I first started dating, she spent a summer working in Ohio at the Arc of Appalachia Nature Preserve.  One of the landmarks that the preserve has acquired is a Native American mound formation called "Serpent Mound".  And while I will not claim much knowledge about the ancient culture that built this mound, it is clear that there was a huge appreciation for the astronomical calendars, in particular the winter and summer solstices.  The giant mound formation which forms a huge serpent is built in such a way that the sunset of the summer solstice sets directly in line with the head of the serpent and the sunrise of the winter solstice rises directly in line of the coil of the tail of the serpent.  How cool is that?

picture of the summer solstice celebration, 2010

The solstices, these days, are celebrated by local pagans and hippies at the mound.  The summer that Ashley worked at the Preserve, we went to celebrate the longest day of the year with the drummers and meditation circles.  And while I cannot claim to know what these ancient cultures thought about these astronomical events, it was quite the experience to spend a solstice on this site that has surely had visitors and celebrations for thousands of years.  I hope to one year spend that winter solstice up on that hill.


Winter begs us to wait and look for that light that is to come.  And as the early church leaders placed this Christian celebration right in line with pagan celebrations of the solstice, they entered into the larger dance in which we are just a part.

So as the minutes of light continue to slip away into the darkness, every year I enter this season of Advent with an expectant heart.  I wait for the light to return.  I join in the pagan celebration in waiting for the solstice.  And I join in the Christian celebration in waiting for the vulnerable Christ candle to be lit in the darkness of winter.