“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It is she that makes it always winter.
Always winter and never Christmas.”
(Mr. Tumnus to Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by CS Lewis)
CS Lewis’ depiction of the effects of the reign of the White Witch is an image that has always commended itself to me as a description of how winter can bring with it an invitation to hopelessness. “Always winter and never Christmas.” Cold and dark, unbroken by any inkling of light and warmth. No birth, no star, no angel choir singing glory to God. No dimly burning wick that will not be extinguished. Just the bleak mid-winter. But underneath all this despair, Lewis tells the story of a small band of Narnians who subversively resist the regime of the Witch. They have not forgotten about the light of Aslan and as they await his coming; they live in the assurance that his light will melt the frozen world of the White Witch. And sure enough, the trickle of water from melting ice and the appearance of Father Christmas are among the first signs that that their hope has not been in vain.
Similarly, observing Advent is a means of joining the resistance. Advent is a spiritual discipline. It is a practice by which we demonstrate that we have chosen to live in hope. And that we have chosen to do so in the face of evidence of hope being little more than the stuff of fairy tales and magical thinking. So, as it gets darker and darker we light more candles. And at the darkest point we light the biggest candle, because somewhere there is a child who has been born who is the source of all light. His light will melt that seemingly impermeable and unassailable layer of ice and so demonstrate that there is no darkness that exists that has the power to extinguish it.
Often we represent the season of Advent as a time of waiting. One Advent when my daughter was attending the Lutheran preschool near our home, her class presented a choral program for parents. In good Lutheran tradition none of the songs they sang were Christmas carols because of their practice of not singing Christmas carols before Christmas. So they sang the songs of Advent, songs of anticipation and longing. One of the songs, set to the tune of a familiar Christmas carol, featured the lyric: “Advent is a time for waiting, not a time for celebrating.” Ah the austere religion rooted in the personality and weather of Northern Europe! Wait! It’s not yet time to celebrate. You can only open one window in the Advent calendar per day and you’ll have to wait until Christmas Eve to open that last window behind which you’ll find that biggest piece of chocolate. Wait!
Waiting is also a spiritual discipline, and waiting is one of the things we do during Advent. But Advent is not primarily about waiting. Advent is not merely about waiting for what we know we are going to get at the end of it. It is especially not about a waiting based in the admonition that some benefit accrues to us when we avoid a premature expression of levity and mirth. There is nothing inherently redemptive about waiting. It is just the necessary result of living between promise and fulfillment. Waiting is not synonymous with hope. Waiting is one of the things that we must do when we have hope. Hope is not a passive biding of our time as we wait for what we know is coming. Hope is actually an active and militant stance. And hope is the work of Advent. To light those candles is a defiant act against the darkness.
In his essay titled An Leabharlann (which is the Irish word for the library), Brian Doyle speaks of a librarian in Ireland who told him about his first visit to a library with his grandfather. As they approached the building, he heard his grandfather use this Irish word for library. His grandfather spoke it so gravely and with such reverence that he took notice even as a small boy. Because, as this librarian continued: “People who fear freedom fear libraries. The urge to ban a book is always an urge to put imagination in jail. So a library is a shout of defiance too, if you think about it: dorn in aghaidh an dorchadas, a fist against the dark.” (Brian Doyle, “An Leahharlann”, in One Long River of Song, p. 141)
The practice of Advent is also a fist against the dark. It is, if you think about it, a militant act. It is a refusal to give darkness the respect it is trying to coerce. To give witness to the light of this Word who became flesh is a calm but bold rejection of the claim that darkness tries to make on our lives. Yet this Advent fist is not one that delivers a violent blow to the head of his enemies; it is the hand of the infant reaching up toward us from his manger. This fist against darkness is the hand of generosity and love, grace and peace. Darkness has neither the ability to understand nor the power to overthrow this ray of light. So, light a candle. Join the resistance. Live in hope. The hand reaching up to us from the manger is still reaching and nothing can separate us from his love.
David Rohrer
12/5/2020