to everything there is a season

i keep finding myself spouting off on facebook about keeping the season of advent during the great american anti-christ spending orgy.  i do this in compassion, i hope, and love for the people who are posessed by the spirit of this sinful age.  but i am very serious about it.  we are trading joy for baubles.  as the prophet of the advent season, isaiah, asks us in one of the readings for the feast of st. andrew, 'wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of david.'

i was reminded again last night of the desperation with which greed and consumption fight against the gifts of darkness as i walked around the little suburban neighborhood in which i live.  houses were garnished with hundreds of watts worth of garish lights; giant inflatable santa clauses and snowmen rose and sank in ther yards, some with recorded 'music.'

but above the din of what thomas merton calls 'the contemporary psychosis,' the silent stars go by.  i would suggest that the treasures of darknes are still waiting to be given to us, if we but still ourselves.  the message of the angels of the holy ones are hovering over the fields if we but quieten ourselves.  and so, i suggest a very simple practice for this season in which we await the coming of the light of the world in the gathering gloom of winter:  each night, go outside and look up into the skies.  see orion and the seven stars.  watch the moon as she rules the night.  then come back inside, and sit quietly in the dark except for one candle.  (if you want to add on each week of advent, that's allright, but this is not an advert for making advent wreaths.)  listen to your breath, and the wind that is the breath moving across the face of the deep of winter.  remember that to everything there is a time, and a purpose for everything under heaven, even the cold and dark of winter.  see if the leanness of the season is not fatness for your soul.