I can’t believe we’re in the beginning of another Liturgical Year, but surely we are. Tomorrow, 30 November, is the First Sunday of Advent. As I prepare to enter this season of preparation for Christmas, the Italian word “attendere” continues to resound inside me. It means “to wait.” I did a little word play of the same in French (attend) and got the same meaning. It’s interesting though to consider the seemingly similar word in English. “Attend” here is more active. It means being present, not only mentally, spiritually, but also physically. To “attend” something is “to be there with one’s whole self (usually); to “attend to” something or to someone is to suspend other things for awhile and put one’s whole attention to that thing or that person.This is the call I hear as I start the Advent journey. It’s a call to “re-awaken my spiritual senses” and attend to the special signs of our Saviour’s coming. Like it or not, despite all seeming contradictions, serendipity is everywhere. There are always signs of life even amidst the daily deaths we hear and bear. There are thousand signs of growth, in nature, in persons, even if these happen silently, beyond our common perception. And that is why, it is important to “attend to” each moment and each movement.
Even as I reflect on this, a dear friend from the Philippines sent me a write-up of one of my favorite song-makers during my college years, “Humming in my Universe” by Jim Paredes. I’d like to quote some excerpts here connected to the same theme of “staying awake” to one’s moment of transitions, and accepting the ongoing cycle of life and death as the only path to real growth. Jim writes:
(…) In such moments of great change when one is in the process of leaving one state to go to another, the challenge is not to look back, although the temptation to do so is great. One must continue to walk on the path even though it is unsure, dark and often bleak. (…) This process of dying and awakening into something new requires a new mindset. The worst attitude to have is to leave one place and go to another only to expect to live the exact same old life one had, rejecting new things that will surely come along. It's a sure prescription for unhappiness, like insisting on experiencing summer in a winter setting!
I admire people who go through life's stages almost seamlessly, who are able to pick up the pieces after a tragedy, like those who are able to find a new love and marry after the death of a spouse, or the end of a long standing relationship. Or former addicts who are able to have functional happy lives after rehab. Or people who leave jobs they have been in forever and boldly move on to new careers. There is something light and nimble about their ability to drop what has stopped working and leave it behind regardless of sentimental ties in order to embrace the new wave that can make one bigger.
Have you ever realized that many times, we may be putting more effort into preventing growth than simply allowing it to happen unimpeded? Yes, it does take effort (often unconscious) to be lonely just as it takes effort to be happy. It takes effort to maintain our biases, defend our views, feed our fears, and argue in defense of our shallower convictions that keep changing.
Being unconscious can bring us to lonely, sad places in our lives that are actually prisons where our spirits die. From time to time, all of us do in fact live there, but there are those who, tragically, do not know any other home. Life, I believe, is a cycle of birth, death, acquisition and loss, a dance marathon of opposites. Wherever we find ourselves, its opposite will manifest after a while if our life is to be completely lived. To awaken is to consciously accept what has died in us, to mourn it and move on to something where we can have a greater experience of being alive. Being awake allows us to choose being happy and free. For roughly the same effort, where would we rather invest our time and resources and our lives, in consciously choosing joy or unconsciously choosing fear?
The following quote from Rumi, one of my favorite poets, never fails to soothe my fears about any transition I must go through. He wrote: "I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"
