Advent

Christian Century, Dec 5, 2001 by Heidi Neumark

TWEETY BIRD is everywhere--on balloons, plates, napkins, cups, walls, cake, pinata and party bags. Plaster Tweety Birds mounted on styrofoam greet the guests as party favors. Everything is yellow and white.

Tonight is the baptism and first birthday party for Marta's baby, and I've brought my children, Ana and Hans, because she is their favorite baby-sitter. Neither of her brothers is home. When I ask for them, I learn that Giovanni is in jail and nobody knows where 16-year-old Christian is. Va y viene, they say--he comes and goes.

The children gather around the Tweety Bird pinata, eager to take a turn at slugging him to smithereens, and Christian comes in. He is wearing baggy red pants with a baggy red sweatshirt. Hanging down from his back pocket is a red bandana. Christian has joined the Bloods and is showing their colors. I remember him as a six-year-old, sweet and shy and sad. He, Giovanni and Marta lived with their elderly grandmother because their own mother was strung out on drugs. The grandmother did her best, but her health was not good and it was hard to keep up with three teenagers. When his mother died of AIDS, Christian was 15. He sat slouched with his face in his hands, crying uncontrollably through the entire funeral. Soon afterwards, he joined the Bloods. Many times his grandmother wanted to baptize him, but the date was always canceled.

Christian sees me, smiles and comes over to give me a big hug and kiss. There is a deep scar across one cheek. Always small for his age, in my arms he seems frail. Which is probably how he feels, and why he is probably armed. Young, dangerous and endangered.

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent. We will hear the prophet's vision of swords turned into plowshares. I wonder how this might happen for Christian. But now it's time to leave. The children struggle to see who can cram the biggest harvest of candy into a party bag. My own kids are in the thick of it, Ana helping the younger ones to glean stray pieces. She convinces Hans to share his Tootsie Rolls with a crying toddler who's afraid to enter the melee. When we leave, we find ourselves walking toward a fight that's about to erupt between two groups of teenagers. They are not kids I know and this isn't our neighborhood. We hurry to the car.

After the children are in bed, I put up our Advent decorations: glittery calendars, the wreath of candles, the lion and lamb, the bowl of stars, each with a name for prayer. Marta and her family are on one of the stars. For as long as I can remember, Advent has been my favorite time. Before going to bed, I read again the text for tomorrow:

   Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made
   low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain (Isa.
   40:4).

When will this be? The prophet's words were recorded around 2,500 years ago and I haven't noticed much movement in the right direction. The gap between the rich and the poor--Longwood Avenue in the South Bronx and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan--remains as wide as ever. We turn people away from the food pantry because we've run out of canned stew, canned beans, canned tuna, cereal and powered milk.

Yet this is the busy season at Dean and Deluca down in Soho where my husband, Gregorio, works on his feet 12 hours a day trying to meet the insatiable demand for imported foie gras, truffles and caviar. Sometimes he wraps up single sales totaling over $1,000.

Judging by the street tension after tonight's party, the lions and the lambs are not too close yet either. The distance between the world as it is and the world as it should be tears at my heart.

At least it's Advent. Probably the reason I love Advent so much is that it is a reflection of how I feel most of the time. I might not feel sorry during Lent, when the liturgical calendar begs repentance. I might not feel victorious even though it is Easter morning. I might not feel full of the Spirit even though it is Pentecost and the liturgy spins out fiery gusts of ecstasy. But during Advent I am always in sync. Advent unfailingly embraces and comprehends my reality. And what is that? I think of the Spanish word anhelo, or longing. Advent is when the church can no longer contain its unbearable, unfulfilled desire and the cry of anhelo bursts forth: Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!

Advent means coming. For Christians, God has already come in Jesus and in ourselves. God is already embedded in our being, as we confess creation in God's image. God is already reaching to our hearts through the hands of those who come into our lives. But God is also absent. Come! Come! the church cries during these four weeks. To me it is a wailing, my wailing.

And yet we have at times known God's presence, and it is this memory that makes us ache and feel holy absence. We don't long for someone who hasn't already deeply touched our lives. I understand this more clearly because I have a friend who is far away across the ocean. My friend's absence wounds my heart and teaches me about Advent. I remember being with my friend, and so I mourn being apart. So it is with God. If I didn't know God's presence in my life, I would not ache when God seems absent. I would not know to care. But I do.