The Advent Firehose Experience
slowing down in the midst of the busy.
After a very short vacation, return to work last Saturday has felt very much like drinking from an on-full-blast firehose. It is good to have productive occupation. But is it just me who feels like much of what is accounted for as “work” would more accurately fit into the category of “make work”? Productive occupation is, after all, a very different thing from merely keeping busy. Institutions, emails, organizational structures, meetings to organize the organizers. It’s all a bit much. I find myself regularly asking: is this really what life is meant to be about?
A number of deliverables are running late and on Monday, we began the season of Advent, a time of waiting in recognition of Christ who comes to us. To be in our midst. In the midst of the chaos. In the midst of the pain. In the midst of the suffering. In the midst of the struggle for meaning-making. This is the time to be alert, awake, waiting for the coming one attentively. Not drowned in the distractions issuing forth from the firehose.
On Monday, everything was put on purposeful pause. I was also able to take in a gentle hike with a dear friend and Parker (the ever-faithful Beagle) on a segment of the Bruce Trail that was newly baptized in snow. We transitioned easily from the Bruce Trail to a segment of ATV/Snowmobile trail called B-loop and it was the kind of snow that squeaks under ones boots. Fresh, crunchy snow. The kind that calls for paying attention to being, rather than doing. The firehose was on pause, while nature welcomed me into her embrace. An embrace into which I fell with a deep thirst for hydration - one that was met with snowflakes gently falling rather than firehose violently blasting me away. Drink the way it is meant to be drunk.
Parker has a dear friend, Arthur who lives with his mom at Dyers Bay. The two dogs had a lovely leash-free run later in the week, when, keeping their enthusiasm on leash would have risked both doggy moms going slip-sliding-along on the icy roadway. So we let go, and let them run. We let go. And. Let. Them. Run.
Perhaps there is an example in that: to let the hose go, to let it just run, amok, if you will, trusting that the water will finds its flow to wherever it is meant to go. Trusting that it isn’t up to us to drink it all in, anymore than it is up to us to restrain excited dogs from celebrating life’s joys and the first snow fall with full-tilt running and sniffing and leaping and landing into the soft cushion of nature’s embrace. If I don’t know how to rest in nature’s embrace, trust the dogs to show me how!
Advent is supposed to be a season of pause, reflection, meditation and even self-examination. I want to have some clear pictures of what gifts I want to bring before the baby who will soon be born. I want to be able to see the star in the darkness of night. I want to be free to follow that star, forsaking all others: false glittery bits which will not lead me to the birthplace of God, but which stand a mighty fine chance of leading me to the birthplace of mental breakdown, immune compromise, and general chaos and mayhem.
Advent - to Advent appropriately, to prepare to follow a star in the dark night sky, I have to allow the darkness to enfold me - not imagine that I can hold it all at bay with my ceaseless activity and motion and doing. In the bright fake light, starlight will be invisible.
Advent - perhaps a season to practice being the field in which the coming one may encamp. Holy One - make me a place for encampment.
Advent - A season to allow the fire hose to be a fire hose. To let go of the leash and trust in the pocket full of treats which encourage recall. A season to sip from the overwhelming abundance of all that claims to need doing, sip and set down the glass and say now I will savour what is on my tongue. Allow my palate to savour the refreshment rather than to be drowned.
Advent - perhaps a season to trust that my doing is not all I make it out to be. A season to look for hope, peace, joy and love. None of which, last I heard, ever issued forth from a full-blast firehose.
If I may share a prayer with you this night:
May you put down the firehose,
entering the dark night of winter’s embrace,
entering the dark before the Word becomes flesh with curiousity and wonder.
May your lists of things to do be replaced,
with a pocket full of treats
and a leash free beagle who will show you the way
to fall into nature’s waiting arms
where Creator and Creation will allow you to sip life
at the pace of life which allows
human being instead of human doing,
at drinking-from-firehose, drowning-out-life pace.
Advent: there is room for you here.
A corner in the humble stable,
soon to be occupied by the baby God himself.
Amen.
Photo by Greg Leaman on Unsplash