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Advent Labyrinth: A Posada Walk by The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy
"We'd like life to be like a Canadian Christmassy landscape (without the cold, of course): clean, smooth, pure and simple, full of warm fellow-feeling and happiness and smiling faces, because we've been brought up to believe that that's the way it should be. We're constantly bombarded with ideals that we cannot possibly meet - gorgeous spreads of food from which slim, handsome people rise without gaining an ounce, ideally happy families beaming warmly over mounds of perfect gifts that don't burden the credit cards, ornaments in rich good taste, "tradition" fulfilled without mess or stress. And of course none of it is real. Even as we know the "happy" families are only actors, we still long for what they represent.
However reasonable we try to be, a small part of us thinks that somewhere out there are "real" families that look just like the ones in the commercials and our own households look so messed-up by comparison. Other people have it all together, we imagine; other people don't have to struggle the way we always seem to be struggling. Other families never quarrel at Christmas. Nobody but ourselves feels lonely and let down. There's the ideal, and we never seem to meet it. There's never enough stuff under the tree; there's never the perfect gift."
Christmas is, for many, a difficult time. It is a time of reliving painful memories of the hurts of Christmas past. For far too many people, it is a time of heightened stress as we try to live into the perfect holiday Molly Wolf speaks of above. As the days wind down to Christmas Day, tempers are as short as the days and depression often replaces Christmas joy. For most, it is a manic time in which we lose our Center, and Christ, whose day this is, is an afterthought, even for those who believe in him.
The season preceding this madness is called Advent (from Adventus or "coming") and marks a season of preparation as we prepare our hearts, hearths and homes to receive again the gift of the Christ child. It is a time when we are as "pregnant with hope" as the Virgin of Bethlehem. But it is also a season in which we look, with expectant hope, to the second and final coming of Christ in judgment and for this reason, Advent was seen, historically, as a penitential season similar to Lent - a time of self-examination, confession and amendment of life. These elements need not be lost but Advent is, today, also a joy-filled time because as Christ's own, we see his second coming not with fear but with longing. As the burial office reads:
"I know that my Redeemer liveth....and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself...and not as a stranger." (BCP pg. 469)
Our challenge then is a revolutionary one: in a manic cultural time, to remain personally focused and centered in the eternal truths of this season. It is to offer up the painful disappointments of Christmases past and the unreal expectations of Christmas present as gifts to the stable child and to release the power these phantoms hold over us. It is to be good and faithful stewards of our time and treasure by deliberately making the choice to honor the season and to refrain from crazed, extravagant shopping and decorating knowing that the greatest gift you can give yourself and those close to you is time together, ideally adoring the Christ child in worship.
La Posadas
In Latin America, there is the delightful tradition of La Posadas (Spanish for "shelter"). During the Posada , families go door to door in the neighborhood, singing the Posada song. Designated children play the part of Mary and Joseph, carrying a small pine decorated platform bearing statues of the Holy Family, riding a burro. They seek shelter and are turned away rudely and threatened with beatings until they reveal themselves as the Holy Family at which time doors are opened and a fiesta is held with the singing of traditional songs, prayer before the "nacimiento" or nativity, sharing traditional foods and breaking a pinata. La Posada is done nightly from Dec. 16 to Christmas Eve, culminating in the "Misa de Gallo" or Mass of the Rooster at midnight at which fireworks, bells and whistles announce the birth of the Child. Such community traditions involving the whole family provide a framework in which the Christ event is central, neighborhood relationships are strengthened and cultural traditions are maintained.
The Posada Labyrinth
During the Advent season, we invite you to come away for an hour to walk the Labyrinth as a Posada; to assume in your hearts the role of Mary or Joseph who seek a safe shelter, the ones to travel to the "first Christmas" as strangers in a foreign city, filled with the anxiety of new parents to be and then are forced to leave their safe harbor for a stranger land in exile in Egypt (the journey inward and the journey outward). As we walk the Labyrinth, in our minds we go in spirit to Bethlehem in this Advent ("coming") season, pregnant with hope but also fear, and as we walk, we ponder the mystery of the gift promised - a child to be born in us. The Labyrinth provides a fit antidote for this anxious and crazed season for both adults and children, a time for quiet amidst the storm as we seek again our center in Christ's presence. This could be a rich gift you give yourselves and it is a rich opportunity to invite others who desperately need a space of quiet in their lives during this season as well.
"The Kingdom of God, as we know it in this life, is more like untidy weather than that perfect Christmas. It's more a matter of roughness lit with sparks of glory...God came down to be among the roughness, to live with it and with us as we truly are; not to transform this world into something that might just possibly meet Martha Stewart's standards. God chose a rough cave to be born in, poor people as family, sinners as friends and companions. Whatever this world's standards are, God's are very, very different.
Christmas is still intrinsically about the birth of a baby, God's child: the magnificent strangeness of the Incarnation, with silence and the unknowable at its still center. And there is still a breath of mystery, wherever it hasn't been supplanted either by greed or by magic; it's woven through the quiet music. It's in the lights on the tree that we stare at, half bewitched and longing for something, we don't know what. God leaks into that other landscape, the one of eggnog and mistletoe and hearty traditions, and spices them with a strangeness. Maybe it's that particular pang that people so long for, and don't know how to reach. .. The God I believe in dwells in uncouth country, because that's where we need God most. That truly is where we meet the child: in poverty and bareness and poor estate. And that's where the mystery is deepest, richest and most truly satisfying." (Molly Wolf)
Advent Posada Labyrinth Walks will be offered on the Wednesdays of Advent, December 4, 11 and 18th beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the Church Hall (Pierson Hall), followed by a brief sharing over punch and cookies.
Copyright © 2002 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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