Third Week of Advent, Second Week of Exams

"What material do I have to work with this week?", I ask myself as I consider what to write here. As usual, I have ordinary life. This week, life was dominated by exams.

Exams. A student's life is not so bad until evaluation comes. Exam, term paper, whatever it is, it looms larger than life. It is then that we students taste fear: fear of failure, fear of a blow to our pride, fear even of feelings of inadequacy, fear of the unknown.

Is there even fear of death? Perhaps not directly, but subtly so. Perhaps, I realized today, we feel its shadow. Why else would we cling so tightly to such a finite thing as academic success? In our short lives, one little test can take on significant proportions. Does it really matter? If we are really just dust to dust, ashes to ashes, trying to make a difference in a suffering world, then maybe we do have reason to stress out about such things. Or maybe that is reason to give up in despair.

The season of advent, concurrent with this time of intense pressure in the lives of a student, helps us in this respect. In the story of the incarnation, we hear of hope, of a light glimmering in darkness, of God intervening in the ordinary and often dark lives of human beings.

That is part of the wonder we hear in Mary's voice as she breaks into the song we call the Magnificat:

"My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant." (Luke 1:46-48)

And in the incredible prophecy of Isaiah, fulfilled in the coming of Christ:

The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, [b] Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David's throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
will accomplish this.
(9:2,6-7)

May we have eyes to see that light which dawns on us.

"comprehended by what it cannot comprehend."

So it has happened. I forgot to post on Sunday evening. The thought crossed my mind once, but it then kept going and didn't come back until Monday night, well after my electricity and magnetism exam was over.

This week I have come to this conclusion about advent: it is celebrated in community, and not isolation. The people of Israel waited together for hundreds of years. We, the church local and global, wait together.

I started reading Wendell Berry this week (thanks to my writer-sister for lending me the book!) , and thought I'd share one of his Sabbath Poems. The second to last stanza really struck me.

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed y us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.