A season to search for transformation

Advent is upon us. Christmas is certainly coming – in the world of American retail, it has been imminent since at least September. But for those in Christian churches that follow the liturgical calendar, time, in theory, slows down now. Christmas Day arrives at the end of Advent. Meanwhile, we watch, we wait, and, ultimately, we celebrate the birth of one whose coming brings transformation.

From the depths of who we are to the diminishing promise of who we might be, we need transformation more desperately each day. Injustice and inequity have always been with us. They are nothing new. But the sense that many are relishing them, and that those in power are actively working to normalize them, lands like brutality doubled.

Advent and Christmas remind us that God’s choices make manifest that all of God’s children are equally loved and valued – a young, unwed mother; a displaced and endangered family; humble, watchful farmworkers; and foreign visitors who refuse to be co-opted into a ruler’s villainy, heeding God’s warning, instead, to go home by another way.

In keeping with God’s love for all of us, to truly embrace the season, we should remember that transformation can come in the righting of wrongs, the easing of suffering, and the lifting of oppression.

Mary knew. Upon learning that she was pregnant with Jesus, she proclaimed in the Magnificat, captured in the first chapter of Luke, that God had “scattered the proud in their conceit,” “cast down the mighty from their thrones,” “lifted up the lowly,” “filled the hungry with good things,” and “sent [the rich] away.”

Howard Thurman knew, too. Calling out the need for transformation in his poem “Christmas is Waiting to be Born,” the theologian describes a time, “Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,/And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,/Where little children age before their time,/And life wears down the edges of the mind…”

For both Mary and Thurman, transformation can be viewed as disruption. Systems must be overturned. She was open to it. He pointed out the need for it. Both offer a vision apart from what the season has become and hold up opportunities for those dissatisfied with empty excess.

Rather than losing ourselves in the frantic sprint to Christmas, let Advent be a time to pause and consider how we will show up in the world, not just in the coming days but beyond.

Giving more of ourselves. Putting aside the urgency to be places and buy things, taking the single small step to see people as worthwhile and acknowledge them, especially those with whom we rarely make eye contact let alone share a word in passing.

Investing time and talent. While the seasonal generosity that marks this time of year is vital to organizations doing invaluable and significant work, true transformation must also extend beyond passing tributes. Commitment to changing the structures that make such generosity necessary reduces the need for temporary fixes. Indeed, belief that we are all equally beloved makes that need intolerable.

Being open to the terrifying possibility that we are capable of things too important to imagine. It doesn’t have to be huge. It doesn’t have to be loud. It doesn’t have to be expensive. But it may require us to change.

Use these days ahead to be transformed.