I had the day off today and went to the
grocery to gather the ingredients for the Thanksgiving recipes that my family would prepare in the next couple of days. Even though I found everything on the list, I felt an unexplainable tenseness enveloping me. I thought about the Christmas displays and the "Holiday" music that blared over the store's sound system. "That's It!" (as Lucy was
soooo found of saying in Charlie Brown's Christmas!). I was irritated because the secular police were already out and about trying to make me 'feel good' about what they considered to be Christmas. What about Thanksgiving? What about giving thanks with our families at a common meal before we went out to buy the presents? I resented what I perceived as the commercial pushiness of our secular society.
After I arrived home, put away the groceries and laid out the recipes with the non-
perishable ingredients on the counter, I sat at my extremely cluttered desk and started to sort through the piles. I glanced to my left and noticed the Christmas CD that our choir had made some years ago. I had it out to make a copy for my car, and had not put the original away. Yep, listened to it three times in a row while I sorted through my life piles, and the relaxing peace I had sought earlier in the day enveloped my being. Now, I was again ready to enjoy
Thanksgiving as a precursor to the journey of Advent and the wonder of the Incarnate.
Hours later, I came across a book I had received for Christmas in 1997 from friends of mine. I have not read "With Open Hands" by Henry
Nouwen for quite some time. I flipped through its pages for a few moments and found a passage on page 103 that seemed to shed light on my irritation in the store earlier today:
"As a Christian, it is hard to bear with people who stand still along the way, lose heart and seek their happiness in little pleasures which they cling to. It irritates you to see things established and settled, and you feel sad about all that self-indulgence and self-satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that something greater is coming, and you've already seen the first rays of light. As a Christian, you not only maintain that this world will pass, but that it must pass to allow a new world to be born, and that there will never be a moment in this life when you can rest assured that there is nothing more to do."
I realize that my irritation might actually have less to do with those 'awful' people pushing Christmas past Thanksgiving, than it had to do with the realization that I might be falling in line with secular society more than I thought.
With a slight grimmace, I deftly laid the book on my parlor chair and promised that I would be back on Sunday to open its pages. Maybe Henry can open my hands a little more this Advent, and show me what more there is to do.
