Advent Music

The weather outside right now seems perfect for revisiting my Advent Playlist: the bright light of the past few days has been drastically dimmed by the clouds and wind. It feels like the lights have gone off. This time on Monday, I was sitting in the yard chatting on the phone and getting a sunburn. Now I am sitting in a room--walled with windows--that is illuminated by the glow of my computer screen. It is midday and dark.

Last night, I got an e-mail from a friend (10th Century Church, below) asking whether I have an Advent playlist. I have a couple of these musical lists for the season. We have one from 2011 that's a King's College-Cambridge type, and one from 2012 that's my most recent "official" one.

Last year, mid-Advent we had our continental transition; and instead of spending time and energy to build a new playlist, we repurposed the one from 2012. My real playlist for Advent 2013 was the rumble of the métropolitain and the tap-tapping of my crutches on cobbles, tile and concrete; the musical soundtracks of iPad apps the children favored, and the silence of cold rain that (not unlike a puritan child) could be seen but not heard.

And so many other silences.

Paradoxically, during a season that looks for and celebrates light coming out of darkness, I remember advent last year as a time that felt like the lights were going out. The curtain dropping. Not unlike today.

I have been thinking about the seasons. I have been thinking about them a lot. I have been thinking about them as something new to enjoy in a foreign-yet-familar land, and I have been thinking of them in relation to seasons of my own life. I have been thinking of fruitfulness and death and resurrection. I have a harder time with fall than with the other three seasons, but I am thinking about that too. Which is good, I suppose, because it's fully here.

It looks like today will be the last warm day we have. Indian summer is over. Doubtless we will have sunshine--and many leaves have yet to fall. But Summer is no longer "beginning to give up her fight."And we are only a month and a day away from Advent 2014--its own season, coming just this one time although echoed in the advents before and the advents to come.

I am grateful for the message from my friend. It was a reminder of goodness past and goodness to come: and of hardships, too, and light from darkness and advent banners and lessons learned and grace.   And of singing songs no matter the weight of one's own heart (there are different kinds of songs).

And so now I look forward to Advent. I even have begun to think with some eagerness about building a new playlist for Advent 2014. Which songs will push back the silence and draw us home?