On December 8, 2018 By Kuyperian In Art, Culture, Family and Children, Scribblings, Theology, Wisdom 1

Advent and the Art of Arrival

“The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.”

~ G.K. Chesterton, On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

I love it when the hero arrives. I get chills when a fedora appears in shadow or when a farmboy watches two suns set. I get tickled every time someone knocks on Bilbo’s door. And although the joy of my introduction to the dear Baudelaire siblings that grey and cloudy day at Briny Beach was mingled with sadness, I still cherish the miracle of their lives.

The season of Advent, the time just before Christmas, is all about arrivals. It is a preparatory season for the celebration of the incarnation, his first coming, and it is looking forward to his second coming. The Messiah’s first arrival was both inauspicious, sleeping in a feeding trough, and universally portentous, declared by astronomical signs. His second coming is also grand and mysterious: no man knows the hour or day in which he comes. It’s a good debut. As a reader, I can get excited about this story. Anticipating the end is also great fun. I love it when stories are interrupted by better stories.

As the Chesterton quote above so aptly demonstrates, our lives begin in the middle of things. Born into epics as the sparks fly upward. Our history begins in the middle of some longer history, itself embedded into history immemorial. We gather the threads of what stories surround us as we go; cobbling together biographies of those we love and cribbing bullet point summaries of when and where we live. This is very natural for us. We seem made for it.

The adventure repeats every time a novel is opened. Every adventure, a word related to advent, is always in medias res. We are thrown into the tale without recaps and genealogies and must sort it out as we go. For better or for worse, we find ourselves with a new family, the Dursleys, Karamazovs or the Pequod crew, and we must practice our love or exercise our censoring; clinging to good and rejecting evil.

It is as befuddling to be launched into a tale as to be ejected from it back into our own lives. One moment we’re fighting orcs and the next we’re fighting traffic. We’re stunned when children turn into dragons, but lulled when we change into clothes. We stumble out of books like soggy, knee-knocking Jonahs, bamboozled but ready for the next book to gulp us up. I love this.

I get that same feeling of disorientation in the new year. Named after the god of doors Janus, January is full of new beginnings, but it is a myopic newness, for even though two-faced Janus looks both forward and backward, there’s little looking back in the new year. The threshold has been crossed, the cup has been drained for auld lang syne, and new leaves have been turned over; but as the secular calendar wends its way through the nadir of December, the church calendar has already jumped the gun and popped champagne. It is a new beginning, but it breaks in at the end. The church calendar is gloriously out of sync with the world. Our northern spring is mottled with the remembrance of the crucifixion. Our winter’s barrenness is upended by the most momentous birth. It’s a twist ending that leads to a new beginning. I love this too.

I love the surprise appearance as if from a chimney. Even though the end is coming, a celebration of the beginning breaks out. We can’t go forward without remembering our past. I love this. When the new year begins we’ve already looked ahead to the climax of history. I love the mustard seed. I love the coldest, darkest night. I love the small beginning in the belly of the beast. I love the morning star. I love the lux post tenebras. I love it when stories are interrupted by better stories. And I love it when the hero arrives.

Advent, advent calendar, Chesterton, Christ, Christmas, Church Calendar, gk chesterton, Jesus, Jesus Christ, liturgical calendar

About the Author / Kuyperian

Why Abraham Kuyper? Abraham Kuyper was a 19th century theological and political figure. His interests were broad. He was not merely satisfied with the intellectualization of ideas, but also the implementation of ideas. He was known as the “theologian of the people.” His time as a pastor gave him a unique sense of the needs of the people. Kuyper defended a localist vision. He knew that significant change did not begin at the top, but at the local level. Further, he opposed the vicious totalitarian tendencies of his culture. He even began his own political party as a way of combating these dangerous threats. Thus, in more ways than one, Kuyper represents a moral libertarian vision; a vision which is also compatible with traditional conservatism.