Advent is special.  I connect with my longing and desire chiefly during Advent.  Why? Where?  Who?  Can't explain it but the only thought that is clear is that this event of deity and light wrapped in a babe must be true.  What settles my soul is that this beautiful, unassuming babe was not born on Park Ave. or took up residence in a mountain mansion with heated toilets. This babe, Jesus, was born to a bitter and confused step-dad, a mother of scandal, and enemies searching to kill him.

His first home with his parents was a cold and dirty ground, animals that smell, and a manger with splinters so as to declare that HE would be approachable to all, suffer for all, and comfort all who mourn and are broken.  A life of exile characterized by suffering, ache, and submission all was birthed in this unassuming, unpretty, and unsanitized place in the middle of nowhere.

This Advent I feel ache and sorrow more profoundly than ever.  Trapped in culture, body’s limitations, and a soul's deep longings for all to be set right, I walk a path of exile…the path of Advent.

Merry Christmas.  I leave you with a poem:

EXILE

I have little words to say how I feel.

Trapped between season's joy and lifetime's loss,

I am sad in my bones for the night is thick and my bed is lonely.

Stars prick the dark night sky with twinkling hope,

But somehow still too far away to touch and taste.

I beg for a sign or the voice of the great father to be louder than yesterday.

Silence seems to be the only measuring stick of the distance from me to you.

Loss has painted all I have blue.

A dark blue where monsters swim searching for their dinner.

Alone I swim in these blue waters,

Head bobbing underneath and then up above to catch air in my lungs,

So I can make it to those twinkling lights far in the distance.

In my exile of loss, I realize my blue is not too dark and my lament not too noisy.

For there was one, a babe, who was born into exile and hatred.

It was not a silent night,

But rather a night littered with screams of birth and blood dripping.

This tiny seed of deity's first breaths were one of exile and suffering.

A sojourner in his own kingdom he continued the path to reconcile all things,

Our pain, our loss, our blues.

As a man he would offer soft words,

“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”

All true words of his now kingdom and economy.

Words so true he would live them as well,

even as a lowly babe in a smelly manager.