The already and the not yet
I’ve meant to write about Advent as a liturgical season for a few years—but I’ve never been able to distill my thoughts into something sufficiently polished that I could, in good conscience, ask anybody to read it.1 How do you explain the mystery of waiting for something that has already happened, of hoping for something that is already promised? Exile is a simple enough theme. So is a return from exile. But anticipating a return from exile that, try as we might, we’ll never win for ourselves? And why we do this every single year? These are larger questions. Maybe this year I’ll toss out thoughts in smaller pieces without trying to splice them together.
That’s the whole strength of a microblog, isn’t it? The impressionist approach to story-telling. I’ll throw stuff out there. Somebody else can make the connections, if there are connections to be made. Maybe there are no connections. We’re adrift. I suppose Advent isn’t a bad time to be adrift—or to accept that we’re adrift. That we’re waiting. For some one to find us. For somebody to tow us in.
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Hello new followers who are only reading this blog because somebody reblogged some snarky comment I made, probably about a Republican. Somebody once told me that I had a solid personal brand going as a liberal political blogger, which was great. Except that I hate my brand and take a deep personal joy in trying to kill it. And those who, for reasons unknown, are still reading this space either have to suffer through it when I go off message. Or maybe they’ve figured out that we’re people, not brands, and that exposure to a diversity of interests won’t hurt us much. ↩
