Windows on a Hidden World: Exploring the Advent landscape

By Jane Maycock

As a priest, married to a vicar, with four young children, Jane Maycock is all too familiar with the struggle not to be engulfed by busyness in the run-up to Christmas. As a result, the reflections she has written for this lovely book are engagingly infused with real-life happenings, even as they invite us to stop and consider what Advent itself really means. The author draws on the insights of the biblical authors, poets such as Robert Southwell, and contemporary hymn writers including Timothy Dudley-Smith, to present a series of windows through which we can explore the main ideas surrounding the season. We are taken through the themes of wilderness and of God's choice, and examine the place of conflict and confrontation in Christian faith. We look more deeply at the familiar nativity scene, and at the idea of the second coming. Underpinning Windows on a Hidden World is the conviction that we are bound up in an intimate relationship with a God of love, and these daily readings offer much encouragement to respond to the wonder of God's tender nearness with hope and joy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Oct 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9780281065103

Book preview

Preface

December is always a bit of a challenge. There is something spine-tingling about the beginning of Advent, something akin to watching stars appear on a dark, cold night. These pinpoints of light reassure us that even though we can’t always see signs of it, the rest of the universe is still there, and the earth still has its place in the celestial order of things. Yet something exciting is about to happen. It is something to do with God, and we are on the threshold. It is like being a child going to bed the night before your birthday. You know that soon there will be something great and exciting, but the time is not quite there yet – and that is where the struggle starts.

Far too soon Christmas begins to take over, and I find myself on a rollercoaster ride which sometimes seems to border on madness. The ‘ups’ include: the children’s excitement; buying presents for them and anticipating their pleasure when opening them; making Christmas cake, Christmas pudding and mince pies; getting the Christmas tree in and decorating it; singing Christmas carols. The ‘downs’ also include the children’s excitement and managing their expectations. (‘But Mummy, I said Father Christmas would bring the laptop/Xbox/PlayStation!’ Implication: ‘Silly Mummy, that means it won’t cost anything!’) The ‘downs’ continue with Christmas shopping, and the cumulative effect of all the extra Christmas things in the last week of term, which make me feel as if I’m spinning plates but haven’t time to remember why. This continues right up to and beyond Christmas Day, and takes in the complaints from those who come to church once a year for whom the Christmas carols ‘weren’t Christmassy enough’.

So at the same time as my surroundings become increasingly filled with twinkling light, I become increasingly aware of the darkness around me. At times it can become more than just a hint – there is a real fear of gaping darkness very close by. The rather too cosy images of warmth and light sharpen up my awareness of those suffering illness, homelessness, loneliness and death. I find I have moments of being acutely aware of fear and anxiety. These can find an easy focus in my love for my family – will they all come safely home that day, or will some terrible accident befall them? The inherent fragility of human life presses down. In this state there lurks the fear of discovering that somehow Christmas will prove to be hollow, that there will be nothing at its core. The happy contented feeling I often have as I make Christmas cake and puddings gives way to an awareness that in a few weeks it will all be over – gone, in the past. We will be into January, with its long weary waiting for signs of spring.

In the midst of all this, the capacity to be taken by surprise is thankfully as real as the gaping darkness at my shoulder. I remember with gratitude a recent occasion when two days before Christmas I was stopped in my tracks – whether up or down the rollercoaster I can’t remember – by the Advent calendar. This particular one has a small book for each day, telling the story of the journey to Bethlehem over the course of the month. By 23 December the angels were addressing the shepherds, and it was my turn to read. In the utterly mundane setting of teatime for six at the kitchen table, I was suddenly struck by the fact that it was the glory of the Lord that shone around – not just ‘a rather bright angel light’, but the glory of God.

This is the glory that dazzled Peter, James and John when Jesus was suddenly transfigured before them, when he took them up the mountain and appeared with Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17.1–8; Mark 9.2–8; Luke 9.28–36). It is the glory from which human beings have had to be shielded in order to protect them, as Moses’ companions discovered at Sinai (Exodus 34.29–35). This glory is the very brightness of the presence of God! If that is not exciting, then I don’t know what is. One of the problems with the whole Christmas thing as I experience it, is that there is something huge going on, and we scurry round like ants, apparently unable to see the scale and beauty of the garden they inhabit. My lurking fear that perhaps it will all turn out to be hollow is perhaps to do with the fact that much of it is hollow, because we simply do not allow enough time or give a big enough space for exposing ourselves to the presence of God.

Long before Christmas itself, though, I am reaching out for the companions I need to keep me sane for the rest of the season. These friends help me hold on to what is at the heart of Advent and Christmas:

Wellcome all wonders in one sight!

Eternitie shut in a span,

Summer in winter, day in night,

Heaven in earth, and God in man.

These words were written by Richard Crashaw (1613–49), an Englishman whose life took him on a journey from Britain to Italy, where he died as a Roman Catholic priest while still in his late thirties. His words in this poem, and those of other poets referred to in this book, help me to stay focused on what is at the heart of Christmas – God’s over-arching love for the world and all human life within it. Grasping the depth of this love takes us way beyond a simple focus on the baby Jesus in the manger. It helps us to examine our own response to God, to what he has done in Christ, and the way in which we shape our lives to follow him.

One hope for this book, then, is that it might have that effect of pausing the rollercoaster and stopping us in our tracks, if only for a short time each day. It is intended that there be a general sense of progression. We begin Advent in a desert landscape, then move through three broad themes. The first of these might be summed up as ‘clearing away the rubbish’. Both in the secular sphere and within the Christian tradition we often pick up ideas which we absorb without really thinking about them, and which do not necessarily stand up in the light of close examination. This is an opportunity to look at some of those things.

Within Christianity the ‘four last things’ have been traditional themes for Advent. These are Heaven, Hell, Death and Judgement. Considering these things is part of having a living faith: as we look back to what God has done in the past, so too we look forward to what we expect him to do in the future. This raises big questions of human life. Focusing not on the beginning but on the end means facing our own death, and highlights the question of what will happen when we die. Even here, however, we can find that we have assumed certain things which in fact are not true to Christianity, and this might be a time to look at them again. Yet there has to be a note of caution. These are big themes, each one worthy of a book in its own right. This is by no means an attempt to say all that could be said; far from it. Rather, we gaze on this Advent landscape through a window opened by others, and through which we can reflect on our own understanding.

The second broad theme is God’s choice, which includes recognizing that both conflict and confrontation are core parts of Christian faith, and so of course of Christmas. The final theme encourages us to look ahead to the second coming of Christ. The word ‘advent’ does of course mean ‘coming’. As we prepare to celebrate the first coming of Christ at Christmas, it is natural to think too about his second coming – this is an essential part of the Advent hope.

The choice of the biblical texts, and of the poems explored later on in this book, is of course personal – and is only a narrow selection of many possibilities. The exploration of the imagery used by the poets emphasizes the strength of the biblical imagery. Often, to try to take the imagery literally is to miss the point. Opening it up allows us to explore hard questions and emphasizes the fact that people have always used picture language to express things of which they are convinced, yet which are beyond our sight and only partially within the grasp of our understanding.

The three poems by Robert Southwell deserve to be more widely known, as do the words by Timothy Dudley-Smith. The adaptation of ‘Hills of the north’ has been, with these others, a great discovery of recent years. One of the things about all these words is that their authors are able to express much better than I can what Advent is all about. That is why they become something of a refuge every December, and why Richard Crashaw can have the last word here. These three verses come from his longer poem, ‘A Hymne of the Nativity, sung as by the Shepheards’. They seem to me to sum up what I hope to convey in this book.

We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,

Young dawn of our eternall day;

We saw Thine eyes break from the