Advent the Name of that Moment

“The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment. .” ― Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary, pp 2-3.

Have you experienced that moment? A moment when you are waiting for the show to start – Hamilton, Wicked, Lion King, etc is just about to start. The lights have dimmed. The phones are off and there is this breath that everyone takes as they wait for the opening notes, for the start off the show. In that moment there is so much hope. The waiting is full of longing. As Buechner says Advent is such a moment. It is a time for us to pause, to wait, to be filled with longing and hope for what is to come.

The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance of the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor. But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of you somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, your can hear the world itself holding its breath.” ― Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary, pp 2-3.

This time of year is pregnant with the expectation and waiting. The leaves have fallen off the trees. The birds are leaving or gone already. And when that first snow hits the world is wrapped in white and quiet. It is as if the entire world is waiting. We are in that in between moment, that moment of breath. What if we enter the season of Advent with our breath held, waiting, longing, hoping? What if we see this moment as one of expectation where we are not yet experiencing the event, instead we are to live in the pause, that held breath? We live in the moment where we can’t wait and yet can only wait. We are given these twenty-four days to be in that held breath where we wait for God to come and heal us, hallow us, save us.