Dear Friends,
In spite of the threat of winter storm Ezekiel, a large number of us began the Church’s year with a splendid Advent Sunday filled with glorious music and a sense of expectation. One of the themes of the Advent season is darkness and light; to that end I must apologize for those who could not read their Sunday liturgy leaflet at the beginning of the 11am procession – the lighting settings were adjusted for 4pm so there was a little amusement as we sang the words “Cast away the works of darkness, O ye children of the day!” Of course, we rely so much on technology these days that we take so much for granted. I remember when my children were in their early teens and, one day, I came back from Evensong to discover them engrossed in their digital devices; one of them was on her i-Pad; one was on her mobile phone; one was playing with a game console attached to the TV. Not one of them bothered to look up as I greeted them. I was so cross that I said, “Do you realize that when I was your age there were no mobile phones? No computers, no tablets, no fax machines for that matter. We didn’t have voicemail, and we had to share the one landline with our next-door neighbor; there was no morning TV and we had to turn it off in the afternoon to cool down!” Slowly, they looked up at me and Katie, our youngest, spoke those chilling words that every parent has to hear at some stage in their lives: “Dad! You are so old!”
Amusing anecdotes aside, Advent is a time of preparation. Differing from Lent, it is not penitential in nature but rather a time of getting ready with the sobering themes of death and judgement, which should bring us to our knees and encourage us to make our confession before almighty God. But Advent is also a season of hope and expectation – a season of waiting. It comes as the commercial world around us gets more and more frenetic and the pace of life seems to become even busier. Some years ago, I also remember a drama sketch that the Cathedral School children in Exeter performed during the annual crèche service; it was titled “Time is running out.” It was an amusing little play in which four people, including an over-worked priest, told their stories of how there was so little time to get ready for Christmas, set against the ticking of a very loud clock. The point of the sketch was, of course, that in their haste they failed to see the real reason for celebrating Christmas. The Lord came, but they were unprepared.
Preparing for an event takes time and we can become overwhelmed with everything there is to do. Some of you may have taken courses or studied some of the materials produced by Franklin Covey – a firm that specializes in time management. A very helpful tool is the ‘four quadrants of time management’ in which activities are reflected on and divided into four categories – 1: Urgent & Important; 2: Not Urgent & Important; 3: Urgent & Not Important; and 4: Not Important & Not Urgent. As you might correctly assume, many of us end up dealing with unimportant things that somehow seem urgent or, worse, drifting into the fourth quadrant and simply wasting time when we should be dealing with the important but not urgent things of our lives – giving ourselves real time to prepare and to reflect so that the crises and emergencies that appear in quadrant one can be dealt with effectively. The season of Advent does some of this, but from a spiritual perspective. How do we use our time? What is important and urgent in our lives? What is valuable and what is simply a distraction?
Time is, indeed, running out! It will be Christmas in only three weeks’ time. Let us use our beautiful sacred space and our Advent liturgy to pause, even briefly, to reflect, to sort, and to wait. Here is the poem ‘Advent Calendar’ by Rowan Williams that many of you commented on after my sermon last Sunday.
A very happy Advent to you all,
Carl,
your priest and pastor.
