If Advent is supposed to be a season of calm and quiet, we’re failing already. This week our house has been a whirlwind of good but busy things. . . very few of which involved anything calm or quiet.
Nevertheless, here it is Thursday during the week set aside to “Hope.” I appreciated Nijay Gupta’s re-telling of Mary’s part of the Advent story. It’s significant, I think, that he pushes beyond the traditional attention to Mary’s inner life toward recognition that her magnificat proclaims a bold, globalized message.
In this same vein, here are a few other things I’m contemplating this week:
Stanley Haurwas gives a take on the virgin birth: “those that used the virgin birth as the test case for moral rectitude often seemed to forget who it was that was the virgin.“
An art historian explores how artists have depicted Mary through the ages (buckle up for this one. It’s thick but worth the time!)
I’m starting in on this book: The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope by Kelley Nikondeha
This from Fleming Rutledge’s Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ: “To be a Christian is to live every day of our lives in solidarity with those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, but to live in the unshakable hope of those who expect the dawn.”
Lots of important things to think about and, perhaps, some left unsaid. But this recognition too is appropriate for a season of hope. We do not live in certainty or perfection. The world, including our own lives, is not yet what it should be.
[Oh. And this. You all, please, please follow this. You will not be sorry.]
Lisa Weaver Swartz 