New Rituals of Invitation: Day 1
The wafting aromas of smoked meats, artisan cheeses, roasting chestnuts, spiced drinks, potpurries, and candles greet the senses as the market fills with high-spirited citizens strolling the lanes of rustic ligneous booths adorned with lights and mistletoe. Merchants display their many and various wares from custom wooden toys, ceramics and handicrafts to t-shirts and kitchen gadgets. The trees are raised on each city square to the tune of school children singing their long rehearsed carols and the mayors performing their ceremonial duty of switching the lights on to much pomp and applause. Well... in a ‘normal’ year anyway. The advent season in the Czech Republic and throughout much of Europe is a special amalgamation of the old world meeting the new, and one that must be experienced in order to fully appreciate. The city squares, for some brief but repeated cycle, become Meccas of magic and wonder.
Last year in the Czech Republic, like most of the world, a very atypical advent was experienced due to the pandemic. The markets were closed. The trees were lit without pomp, the only audience being the technicians who connected the wires. The concerts and choirs and merchants alike were accessible only on the sterile blue glow of computer monitors. The city's displays of new year fireworks were abandoned. Ironically it seemed equally tragic for the patrons of the secular and sacred. The normal rhythms and realities by which we capture and comprehend life were cancelled. Stouthearted believers leaned in and mustered conviction of the fact that while the conduits which have long made emotionally manifest the observance, God was not absent.
This year, it would seem the world has determined to return to a state of quasi-normalcy. We will go to the shopping centers and markets, we will invite family to celebrate with us, we will worship with our church families, and we will recapture what was lost Christmas last. I imagine many, in dogged determination will set about to ensure that this Advent season reclaims all of the pomp, nostalgia, and tradition that felt so good and right just 2 seasons ago. Perhaps if we repeat and reinforce those familiar forms, all will indeed return to our notions of normalcy. Or will it?
I confess there are equal parts of me that hope for and against it. I love the comforts that the rhythms of life bring, but I despise their narcotic effects, lulling me into delusions of false homecoming and ease. I cannot unsee what has clearly been before my eyes these last 20 months. I can’t ignore the glitch in my matrix. That pernicious thing which worked its way into my mind and heart, which succeeded in riling my emotions, which disturbed my peace, and deceived my brethren. I dare to say that it will not simply disappear if I ignore it.
So while many may be reclaiming the ‘Spirit of the season’ I will be working toward some kind of recalibration. An advent celebration to be sure, but one that fully embraces a reality that includes a past I cannot return to and a future uncertain. I’m no skilled surgeon of spirit, so my efforts to extricate the glitch will focus on rituals of invitation. Regular invitings of the Holy Spirit who is the healer and helper in such matters.
May we lean in to listen for how we might align with His current and coming reign, while basking in the timeless echoes that He came.
