My Advent Calendar*

For the director of music: Psalm 4
What if we could see all the days of our life at once, like opening all the doors of an Advent calendar on the 1st of December? Perhaps you haven’t been able to handle all the excitement, couldn’t wait, and have already opened all the doors?

Today is the day before the night before Christmas and so there should be at least one door left to open. Just one more day before Donald Duck (Sweden) and Santa Claus (USA) make their grand entrance through the boob tube or the chimney.**

In the meantime, throughout Advent, something is already going on, she’s on her way, expecting. It’s a dark (Sweden), but hopeful, joyful time of year, especially if we are prepared to wait. This is time to learn the virtues of patience, of living from day to day, and the value of rhythm in a sense we don't usually think of. It’s a time to rekindle hope and expectation, a sense of family and community. This is also a time to prepare for surprises…for creativity and the unknown. Advent – which means the coming and arrival of something momentous – is meant to teach us that time in itself is holy.

At this point in my own life, I’ve certainly opened a good number of doors. Let me take this opportunity to share with you what was behind a few of those doors. Though these are four images from my own personal calendar of life, I have chosen them because I am sure that they say something about a life and time we already share.

Let me begin with my early childhood, when my expectations of life were perhaps at their height. Behind one of those doors was a:

Music box in the crèche under our Christmas tree. Ever since I can remember, I can recall lying down under the tree and winding up the music box hidden in the manger, and listening to the delicate tinkling melody of ‘Silent Night’. Nothing could stir the spirit of Christmas in our household the way that magic music box could.
Later in life, perhaps in one of my teenage years, I remember that the box had been wound up, but that I could hardly hear the music. For a brief moment I felt a surge of adrenalin, thinking that I had suddenly become deaf. I threw myself onto the floor, beside my sister, and propped my head in my hands as close to the manger as we could get. There we could clearly hear the melody. We noted how it had become worn, quieter, though not silent, over the years. We were growing up.

Several years later, there was a door that opened onto a:

Starry sky This time I was lying on my back, in a sleeping bag, on a mossy patch in the Wasatch mountains. For some reason the Silent Night melody came to mind. As I hummed it to myself, it occurred to me that many children of the world are born in the calm and quiet of the night, under these same constellations. While the actual melody in the music box had weakened, its meaning had somehow intensified, deepened, perhaps matured within me.

Let’s see, some 20 years later, I awoke to the sound of a:

Telephone ringing I think every time we answer the phone it’s kind of like opening a door to an Advent Calendar, at least it was then, because then you never knew who might be calling. In this case it was some close friends of mine, who were calling from abroad to tell me that they had just received a young child. After several years of trying to adopt, they happened to visit a children’s home where a nun had met them at the door and said "This morning, during my prayers, I was told that a beautiful little boy was to go to the first willing couple who passed through this door today. Are you willing?” My friends were elated, and confirmed “YES” they were willing. Later they called to ask me if I could be his godmother, by default...because they simply couldn’t think of anyone else. I too said ‘YES’. It was one of the best decisions in my life, mind you.

…to be continued. I promise to open the 4th door tomorrow, on Christmas Eve.

*translation of a devotional I held for a Salvation Army youth choir in Stockholm, Sweden, on 1 December 2003. **editing 2007.