Heading Toward the Light

Last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. Because I have a thing for certain generally pointless rituals I chose to attend the main service at Christ Episcopal Cathedral not far from where I am presently living because I knew they would begin the service with what is known as The Great Litany. In the Anglican Church, this long, drawn out, and rather tedious ceremony is only read (complete with processions around the church and choral responses and bells ringing) on the first Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday of Lent. It's far too involved to deal with here, but all I really have to say about it is that the ritual feeds me for some reason that I really can't completely explain. This is particularly true in the present moment.

The other thing about last Sunday is the ritual of lighting the first candle (there are a total of four, five if you count the Christmas candle at the center) in the Advent Wreath. While this is symbolically rife with long standing ceremonial christian and non-christian elements, mostly it's a consideration of the dim light, far off in these dark months (at least in earth's northern hemisphere) as we approach the turning of winter. It's a symbolic gazing into the darkness to squint and see the dim little light far away, but coming closer. Each week for the next four weeks we will light an additional candle, gradually increasing the light until at Christmas (four days following the Winter Solstice when the sun stops moving away from us and begins to approach us again) we will light the fifth candle and celebrate the coming of the Presence of God in the world.

I've loved these rituals for years, much to the confusion and chagrin of many of my friends, but I don't think I have ever had a year where these things meant as much to me as they do right now. Walking around this still devastated city (three months to the day since the levees broke and the water rose to the tops of the houses that friends and acquaintances of mine used to live in) continues to feel like moving through a movie set, or a ghost town, or a bad dream. Each day there are people returning; each ride on the bus reveals more people trying to make a life. Every day another store, or office, or restaurant reopens, usually displaying some form of thin hope that they won't be closing again. We need the light to return, but it's still very far off and frighteningly dim. The coming of Advent signals to me that there actually is life out there, and it is returning steadily, even if ever so slowly.

Right now, this morning… that's almost enough to live on.