My
own personal Christmas came a little early this year...I got to go to
Haiti. Admittedly, for many of you that may not be something on your
Christmas list this year...or any year, for that matter. For me,
personally, this trip simply could not have come at a better time. It
is so easy during this time of the year to be deceived and distracted
by the crushing press mounted by retailers and our culture to
redefine what is Christmas. It feels like the push to control our
minds and wallets begins earlier and last longer every year. It’s
10 days before Christmas and it doesn't feel any different than the
week before I left for Haiti. Or the weeks before that. But...in
Haiti, it's really different. While December and winter is in full
swing back in Kentucky, I’m profusely sweating every day as if it
was the middle of summer. It
is very difficult for me to believe Christmas is right around the
corner when I am having to putting on sunscreen and bugspray to ward
off hungry mosquitoes. Certainly,
that's very different. However, that's not the difference I am
talking about. Everything
that prepares us for the Christmas season in the U.S. does not exist
anywhere in the Haitian countryside, particularly where I am at.
There
seems to be little awareness that Christmas is rapidly approaching.
No one is decorating their front door with beautiful wreaths, no
Christmas lights on houses, no
Christmas music in the air, no Christmas parties, no cookie exchange
or gingerbread house making, no winter, no eggnog, no wreath making,
no fancy present wrapping, no Nutcracker, Christmas Vacation or even
worse...no Elf. But
that’s okay. I find it refreshing
and restorative because there are none of the above. It is very much
a blessing to be away from the chaos and commercialization of this
holy holiday. Instead of immersing and drowning ourselves in all the
events of the season, we have this rare opportunity to focus solely
on why and who we are celebrating.
Being in Haiti allows that in a profound in your face way. It is the
season of Advent. It is the time of expectant waiting. Haitians know
this waiting well. While they may not call it Advent and celebrate it
formally in their churches and homes, they live it. The
season of Advent is completely about waiting and hope. It is not
just hope for a better day or hope for the lessening of their
everyday ever present pain and suffering, although that is certainly
a significant part of it. It is more about hope that their existence
has meaning and possibility beyond the present and limited
experiences, a hope that the limits of their lives are not nearly as
narrow as we experience them to be. It is not that we
have
possibility in ourselves, but that God
is a God of new things and so all things are possible. My experience
thus far, in Haiti, tells me that those who have suffered greatly and
still cling to hope understand far more about God and about life than
those who have not. This is where many Haitians that I have met leave
me in the dust, so to speak. Maybe that is what hope is about: a way
to live, not just to survive, but to live authentically amidst all
the problems of life with this amazing resilient faith that continues
to see possibility when there is no present evidence of it, just
because God is God. That is also the wonder and the mystery and joy
of Advent. So, that was my present this year and that's awfully hard
to wrap up in a box...
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