Still being new to all of this, it's interesting learning about the different liturgical seasons and colours, and how they're meant to shift the focus of one's spiritual practice as the year progresses.
In this case, advent means arrival, and traditionally, it refers to the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, God in the flesh. It's a time of waiting and prayer, the purple expressing a penitential and/or hopeful mood, with the focus being the mystical birth of Jesus and mindfulness of what we're doing in preparation for the 'second coming,' which was reflected in the day's scriptural readings, particularly Mk 13:33-37:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come.
It is like a man traveling abroad.
He leaves home and places his servants in charge,
each with his own work,
and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
Watch, therefore;
you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,
whether in the evening, or at midnight,
or at cockcrow, or in the morning.
May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”
For me, too, I suppose, Advent represents the arrival of Jesus and everything he embodies (e.g., love, compassion, forgiveness, etc.); but it also represents more abstract ideas, like the fruits of spiritual awakening that we help cultivate through our spiritual practices.
The exhortation to be watchful and alert, for example, brought to mind similar passages in the suttas of the Pali Canon about the importance of mindfulness and heedfulness; and when the Gospel talks about staying alert and making sure you're doing your work when the master of the house comes, I see it exhorting the spiritual seeker not to neglect their contemplative duties. We must strive to be as alert and aware as possible, to remain attuned to the present moment because that is where God, enlightenment, is found.
Fr. Bill's homily reflected that idea, as well, I thought. He began by telling the same story about Sister Jose Hobday he told in his homily on Thanksgiving of her first experience of God's presence while being surrounded by nature and absorbed in the present moment:
One summer Saturday morning about forty years ago, I was waiting for my friend Juanita to come over. I was about twelve at the time. I became agitated and started complaining, and generally making a nuisance of myself. In fact, I was becoming rather obnoxious to everyone else in the house.
Finally, my father said to me, ‘Get a book, a blanket, and an apple, and get into the car.’ I wanted to know why, but he only repeated the order. So I obeyed. My father drove me about eight miles from home to a canyon area and said, ‘Now get out. We cannot stand you any longer at home! You aren’t fit to live with. Just stay out here by yourself today until you understand better how to act. I’ll come back for you this evening.’ I got out, angry, frustrated, and defiant. I thought immediately of walking home; eight miles was not distance at all to me. Then the thought of meeting my father when I got home took hold, and I quickly changed my mind. I cried and threw the book, apple and blanket over the canyon edge. I had been dumped and I was furious.
But it is hard to keep up a good, rebellious cry with no audience, so finally there was nothing to do but face up to the day alone. I sat on the rim of the canyon, kicking dirt and trying to get control of myself. After a couple of hours, as noon approached, I began to get hungry. I located the apple and climbed down to retrieve it—as well as the book and blanket. Upon reaching the top of the rim, I saw a pinon tree nearby which offered some shade. I spread the blanket in the shade, put the book under my head, and began to eat the apple.
I eventually became aware of a change of attitude. As I looked through the branches into the sky, a great sense of peace and beauty came to me. The clouds sat in still puffs, the blue was endless, and I began to take in their spaciousness. I thought about the way I had acted and why my father had treated me so harshly. Understanding began to come, and I became more objective about my behavior. I found myself getting in touch with my feelings, and with the world around me. Nature was my mother holding me for comfort and healing. I became aware of being part of it all, and I found myself thinking of God.
I wanted harmony. I wanted to hold the feeling of mystery. I wanted to be a better person. It was a prayerful time, a time of deep silence. I felt in communion with much that I could not know, but to which I was drawn. This sense lasted a long time, perhaps a few hours. I found I liked being alone and enjoyed the rich emptiness. It was as if I had met another person—me—and concluded I was not so bad after all.
By the time my father came to get me, I was restored. My father did not press me about the day. He asked no questions, and I gave him no answers. But I was different, and we both knew it. My father had dumped me into solitude and had challenged me to grow. Before I got out of the car, I thanked him. And from then on, especially during the summer, I would take a day to go off alone. I loved those times of solitude, of contemplation, and of prayer. I loved the world, and the God I had met that day. This habit of seeking solitude has stayed with me all these years.
In Sister Jose Hobday's experience of finding God in the quiet and solitude of nature, I saw similarities to the Buddha's encouragement to his monks and nuns to live and practice meditation in the wilderness, and the bliss of the Venerable Bhaddiya when recollecting the peace and happiness he discovered while practicing in the seclusion of the wilderness.
He also spoke about mindfulness and its role in helping redirect the 'monkey-mind' from negative and distracting thoughts to an awareness of the present and the presence of God in our lives, as well as how our experiences of suffering can help lead us towards that presence if we learn to wait and watch — to sit in the dark, awake, ready to see the light — referencing Mary Oliver's poem, "The Uses of Sorrow":
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
This, of course, is something I'm quite familiar with since Buddhism specializes in utilizing the unsatisfactoriness and suffering (dukkha) in life as a motivation and means of gnosis.
Afterwards, Fr. Bill gave a talk on the spirituality of Isaac Hecker, the founder of the Paulist Fathers, which sadly few stayed around to hear. The focus was his mystical experiences and how he put them to work, with a number of quotes we took turns reading and a mindfulness exercise we were encouraged to try.
Surprisingly, there was a lot I could relate to, especially the progression of Fr. Hecker's spiritual journey. Like me, he had mystical experiences and a deep, spiritual yearning starting at a young age, and he spent a lot of his early years trying to find a spiritual tradition that could validate and/or nurture his inner experience of God, being inspired by the Transcendentalist movement before finally finding a home in the Catholic Church.
It definitely gave me a lot to think about; and my experiences at St. Philip these past few weeks have convinced me that I'm in the right place. I just wish more people appreciated the contemplative side of the Church as much as I do.
