Hope, Peace, Joy, Love - words or symbols associated with Advent can ring hollow because this season conjures up feelings of hopelessness, unrest, grief and loneliness for many. I have felt this paradox acutely this fall as one of the facilitators for GriefShare, a 13-week program at Covenant for those grieving loved ones. As the holidays approach statements like "How do I get through? How do I cope?" have been common. This season can feel more like a sense of dread and we don't have to have experienced a recent loss to share this sentiment. But I wonder if there is not space to hold both, both grief and joy, fear and peace, hope and loneliness? Brother David Steindle-Rast, an Austrian Benedict says "grief and joy are more like twin sisters than the sworn enemies we often take them to be. Both speak to listening hearts. Both contain unfathomable depths of feeling. And both point towards gratefulness: grief comes from a heartrending appreciation of what matters most to us, while joy reawakens us to life's wonder even when we've discovered how precarious it is."
In Henry Nouwen's book "Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life" he writes "Learning to weep, learning to keep vigil, learning to wait for the dawn, perhaps this is what it means to be human. In the midst of our sadness there is joy, in the midst of our fears there is peace, in the midst of our greediness there is the possibility of compassion." This makes me think of how Jerry Sittser in his book, "Grace Disguise," following the death of his mother, wife and daughter in a tragic car accident, describes the soul as being elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering allowing for the experience of greater joy, strength, peace, and love as well as the natural and legitimate emotions of anger, depression, despair, and anguish. So maybe this Advent we can embrace the paradox and the mystery that “the light shines on the inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it" (John1:5) by holding all emotions we experience with kindness and nonjudgment.
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