Making the most of Advent

I am decidedly bad at Advent. I tried to do better this year: I decided not to use any of my time watching movies and TV, and I tried to take lots of contemplative prayer walks. But of course I quickly discovered YouTube (Have you seen "Surprise Kitty"?) and lots of reasons not to go out into the cold. I missed church twice during Advent: The first Sunday because I was on an airplane to Ohio after Thanksgiving, and again because my Dad and I got stuck in West Virginia when the turnpike closed because of snow. Then there were finals. And a fifteen-page paper for my Biblical studies seminar, but I spent very little of the time that I worked on it thinking about God, let alone talking to him. So I find myself once again almost at Christmas without a speck of spiritual wisdom or insight into the holiday to offer.

I learned lots of practical things in the last few weeks. If you hold a kitten in your lap, tickle it's tummy while saying "goochy-goochy-goo," and then suddenly make a surprise face with your hands spread on either side of your face, the kitten will mimic the adorable surprise face, just like on the Surprise Kitty YouTube video. Also, while you don't need a thesis to start writing a fifteen-page paper, you should probably come up with one by the time you finish. Caffeine does a splendid job of keeping you awake when you want to study. It also does a splendid job of keeping you awake when you want to sleep. While these were all useful things to know, not one of them helped prepare me for Christmas.

There were some fantastic moments, moments when God made himself known, in the last three weeks too. When I told one of the ministers who work with Ecumenical Christians of Oberlin that I was bad at Advent, she gave me an advent calendar that had something to do on every day. I did really well with things like "give someone a compliment" and "tell someone you love them," but things like "give someone a gift of love" and "remember charity" took a little more creativity. I stayed awake long enough to go to Midnight Mass, although my Disciple feathers ruffled a little when I couldn't take communion. I went roller-skating with the youth of Washington Avenue Christian Church, and winced every time one of my Sprouts fell down. A couple days ago, my friend Robin brought chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven at midnight to the library where my friend Rita and I were working on papers. That might not sound like a God thing, but a fresh cookie during finals is pretty miraculous. Still, approaching the end of the season feels a lot like the feeling I get whenever a class ends. I made it to the end, but I am not sure that I really took advantage of the opportunity.

I would really like to draw some conclusion from my Advent experiences, to learn some lessons that would assign some value to them. Not only would that negate my earlier statement about not having any insight into the season though, I wonder if jumping too quickly to the answers is how I got to be so bad at Advent in the first place. All I can (and maybe should) really do now is thank God for the times he was extra present during the season and be aware of the areas where, as my Dad would say, Christ still needs to be born into my life.