This year’s Advent theme is Awake in the dark.  We based it on the gospel for this coming Sunday from Mark chapter 13.  The reading begins with the sun being darkened, and ends with the words of Jesus: “What I say to you, I say to everyone: Keep awake.”  It has a serendipitous connection with Carolyn May’s November 15 sermon in which she talked about the goodness of Endarkenment. One experience of being awake in the dark is the sleeplessness that comes with anxiety and fear – something we have each likely experienced in some form this past year.  Another is a kind of wakeful alertness of late fall and early winter evenings – the light’s early retreat gifting an interiority within home, mind, and heart. Advent is about watchfulness and expectation, with pregnancy as a primary metaphor.  Mary is our chief guide here.  During Advent, we are all pregnant,

I appreciated Carolyn May and Phil Hart’s exploration of darkness imagery last week, and it reminded me of Joel’s sermon (a while ago!) that interwove the song “Joyful is the Dark.” In screening thousands of songs for Voices Together, I have become all the more aware of how some biblical images are used over and over in Christian songs while others are absent. Our work on Voices Together text editing included revising some hymn texts to remove negative darkness (for example, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” will say “drive our fear and doubt away” rather than “drive the dark of doubt away”). These small phrases, when repeated in many songs over many years, can add up to shaping our unconscious biases and habits. I recently wrote a blog post, “White as Snow: Race and Church Music,” that explores these ideas in more depth. The essay discusses darkness imagery in Mennonite hymnals,

A mentor once told me, “Brent, when you decide to change yourself for the better and really bear down, the universe will test you. When you decide to take control, the universe is going to give you all sorts of…*STUFF*… before it gives you any shinola.” When I started writing these Daily Connectors, my purpose was twofold: 1. To encourage the reader to take inventory of their blessings. 2. I realized that I myself, could be the beneficiary of a reminder-and a refresher of how-to look upon all that God has made and realize its goodness. In my first connector (Monday, 11/2), I talked about changing the narrative of 2020 by counting all of the positives that have happened this year. On Thursday, 11/5, I got a call from my sister that my dad was in an ambulance being taken to Joel Pomerene Memorial Hospital in Millersburg, OH. (“STUFF” #1).

“What is this place, where we are meeting?” A monitor screen, covered with a patchwork of squares, filled with the faces of people A community, a family, “a body that lives” even though we are gathered virtually. We affirm that the God that is here with me is also there with you. Unencumbered from habitual seating and the gravitational pull of familiarity, we invite one another into our homes, stitch our names to our faces, and offer virtual hospitality fusing our lives with a different kind of kinship, creating an altered fabric of being, forever changed. We are pilgrims on a journey where Truth and Neighbor are no longer valued or welcomed, where isolation and fear invade our hearts and homes, where greed trumps hunger, Covid runs rampant, and physical and mental needs abound. Through all, our calling remains the same: to be channels of God’s healing, hope, and peace.