Confessions of an Ignorant Protestant

I love blogging! No wonder…I love journaling, and blogs are glorified journals. Ones we choose to make public. When I was a young girl, Mother used to get after me for being so “public” with my thoughts. She’d say, “Cathee, you always wear your feelings on your sleeve.” I honestly had no clue what that meant, so it did little to deter me from sharing everything I thought or felt. Today, a whole trendy culture has come into being which encourages us to tell the world what we think. While I have learned to temper my sharing with propriety, I nevertheless am pretty much an open book.

Before I launch into my topic, I want to let our friends know that between us, Fran and I have sold about 300 books in our first month. We won’t know for some time what Amazon and Barnes & Noble have sold, but we’ve had good success in moving books almost every day. Of course, if Stephen King were reading this, he’d have a good chortle. I guess everything is relative, huh?

There’s still time to order for Christmas. We can ship to you directly from our own supply or you can order from http://www.pleasantwordbooks.com/. We continue to be blessed by the many responses to the book (see side column) and the re-orders of multiple copies. Thanks.

As a mainstream, non-liturgical evangelical protestant, I never observed the tradition of lighting Advent candles to herald the four weeks leading up to Christmas. In my Christian experience I didn’t know such a thing existed. Through the years I would hear the term “Advent” from time to time, or thumbing through a magazine I’d come across a table set with an Advent wreath, four candles set amidst the greenery, but I never connected the dots.

Looking back, I see that I must have quickly sized up any references to Advent as “high church,” or “ultra religious,” though I would have had a hard time defining either of those if you had questioned me further. I know now that my beliefs were shaped somewhat by events that took place after Martin Luther’s opposition to excesses in Roman Catholicism. I am a product of the Reformation. As so often happens when mankind attempts to correct an extreme, the darling little baby gets dumped out with the dirty bath water.

In an attempt to purify the corruption, all ritual, symbol and ceremony were immediately suspect. Consequently, we ended up with ordinary, unattractive buildings stripped of their art, grandeur, and majesty. We travel to Europe nowadays to visit places like the Notre Dame Cathedral so we can stand in awe of the creativity of gifted people who used their talents to glorify God.

As a side note, I will concede that the Church herself is not a building at all, but the physical Body of Christ now present in the earth. However, that does not do away with mankind using all that is within us to draw our attention and worship toward our magnificent God. It’s quite interesting to note that the first time someone is “Spirit-filled” happens to be as Bezalel (Exodus 31:3 ) is endowed by the Lord “to design artistic works, to work in gold, in silver, in bronze” in order that the Tabernacle be filled with beautiful things that would teach us about God. It is refreshing to see a resurgence of art appreciation within the Church today. It’s long overdue.

Because I now occasionally attend a liturgical church, I am learning many things that were hidden from me all these years. Beautiful ceremonies that incorporate form and substance. This year I decided to commemorate Advent for the first time by using a devotional tool designed for that purpose. God With Us – Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, a work of art itself, is a book filled with histories, meditations, prayers, poems, Scriptures, and famous paintings. It has a reading every day starting with the first Advent Sunday. It was here, I am almost ashamed to admit, that I discovered that Advent, the fourth Sunday before Christmas, marks the beginning of the Church year.

Last Sunday I began to read and to observe the season, a time of heart preparation, by lighting the first candle in the wreath. No wonder we rush about like maniacs trying to find the perfect gift for the least amount of money, or pledge not to max out our credit cards this year only to end up saying once again, “There has to be a better way to keep Christmas than this!” No one ever showed us how to prepare for the advent of the child. The coming of God with us, in us, beside us, around us.

I find the season of Advent to be a meaningful paradox: it’s a celebration and a solemnity all at the same time. “It is said that the door to the stable where the Christ-child has been born is very low – and only those who kneel find access.”[i] Advent is a time for repentance, humbling and evaluating how we can prepare a way for the Lord by making a clear and level pathway in our own lives for Him.

The young girl, Mary, gave the most wondrous response to the angel who told her God Himself would be enfleshed in her womb and ultimately in our humanity – “Let it be to me according to your word.” Oh, how I want that to be my constant response to Him.

Tonight, the Second Sunday of Advent, as the westering sun’s colors fade from red to coral, and the lavender twilight moves in, I light the second candle on my wreath.

“We are forever seeking, while the forever for which we seek is now.”[ii]

[i] Celtic Daily Prayer, (The Northumbria Community, 2002) p. 228
[ii] God With Us – Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, (Paraclete Press, 2007) p.19