Joshua Minden (00:13):

Hey there! Welcome to Stories and Other Things Holy, a weekly podcast where we encounter stories and their ability to open our eyes, awaken our senses, and prepare us to encounter grace in every part of our lives. This week begins a special series focusing on the coming season of Advent in the Christian calendar. As this season invites us to commemorate the anticipated coming of the incarnation into the world, we are also invited to recognize and again, welcome the incarnation present in our lives today. Mindful that this season of preparation can also become a season of worry, isolation, or overwhelm for many of us, we've decided to keep these four episodes of our Advent series shorter, foregoing the conversation between Terry and myself, and allowing more time for you to reflect on the way Grace is stirring in you. We hope that these story reflections will serve as a fruitful retreat during this busy time of year. So together, let's enjoy Stories and Other Things Holy.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (01:30):

Stories and Other Things Holy. Advent! And this is THE story, isn't it? Or at least one of the stories of the Christian imagination. This period of time that presumably gets us ready to host, wrestle with dance, with the incarnation. It seems to me that the incarnation should have something to do with surprise. I mean, advent is basically a surprise party. It's like it's getting ready for a surprise party of serious proportions. And this story comes to us from Greg Boyle (SJ). Many of you are familiar with him, Jesuit, Homeboy Industries, beautiful, beautiful man, great storyteller. And he tells this story that I think has advent in it. And the story involves his mom, who was in the process of dying. I think it was a Irish Catholicy family. So there's a lot of kids. Mom is dying. The kids love her, she loves the kids. She's not dying quickly.

(02:40):

So they do that rotating thing, but now she's sort of dying, dying more actively dying. So now all the kids are in, but they can't stay forever in vigil because the dying is not that imminent. So they sort of take shifts. Many of you have done that. So it's Greg's shift, and he's there sort of in the middle of the night, and this mom is in and out of consciousness, and she emerges into consciousness and he senses that she's shifting a little bit. So he goes over to be with her, and she opens her eyes and she just breaks into this big, fragile, vulnerable smile. And she just says to him, "You're Here!"

(03:37):

Yeah. It seems to me that what the advent is, this period of preparation, so that we would wake up on Christmas morning and we would see God, and we would just say, with this element of surprise, "You are here!" And we'd be shocked by that. The song Kumbaya, when I think of it, I think of it's used primarily by politicians when there's a conversation about going across the aisle, and we should actually talk to each other and I don't know, do something on behalf of the people. And so someone's making that pitch, and then the other person says, so what do you want us to do? Just sit around here, hold hands and sing kumbaya. And my answer is like, precisely. I'm not a linguist. I think Kumbaya means come by here. And the advent prayer is that we might pray with a modicum of desperation come by here. And in some ways, that's not good theology because God's already here. But the point of Advent is that we prepare so that we can open our eyes on Christmas morning and say, with surprise and gratitude, "You're Here!" Merry Blessed Christmas. Stories and Other Things Holy.

Joshua Minden (05:31):

Thank you for joining us for this Advent series of Stories and Other Things Holy. You can access additional reflections and prayer prompts on our website: StoriesAndOtherThingsHoly.com. You can also follow us on your preferred social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn. We'll see you next week for more Stories and Other Things Holy.