Each generation is tasked with discerning the signs of their times. At best, the wisdom of the Elders lending discernment to the young; decoding the patterns of both good and evil at work and grappling to engage, with integrity, the shifting landscapes of culture.
Advent speaks directly to us in this task and asks ‘What are we waiting for? What are we hoping for?’
During the first Advent, ancient news leaks in the form of angelic visitations, revelatory dreams, cosmic planetary signs, and celestial choirs began to stir the consciousness of a people longing for deliverance from oppressive rule.
What were they waiting for? What were they hoping for?
In the last couple of years, some of the Elders of popular music have returned to speak through new songs. Are they lending discernment to the young as they grapple with our turbulent times? Here’s an offering from the 1970s band Jefferson Starship’s song, What are we waiting for?:
As the cosmic clock gears unwind
And the solar storms blast through time
Like sand carving out the desert landscape
It’s changing, rearranging, it’s shifting its shape
For creation, destruction must always begin
To tear away, wear away, become new again
And for all of the eons of stardust shine
We’re still standing at the starting line
In the turbulence of famines, disease, war, forced migrations, environmental degradation and failed leadership, ‘we’re still standing at the starting line’. This echoes Biblical wisdom which teaches us that grace and freedom are manifest through mercy, which is new every morning and the choice each day of how we will live.
Every Advent is a starting line; readying us to receive the gift of Emmanuel, God with us, afresh. To choose again to journey from the joy and comfort of the stable to the suffering and surrender of the cross, bearing, as did Mary that first Advent, the mind and body of Christ into a world yearning for Good News.
What are we waiting for?
by Carol Kingston Smith, MA Tutor