The Promise of Advent

Advent. It's a season full of rich symbolism and a message of deep, resounding hope for humanity. And it comes at just the right time - right in the middle of the darkest part of the year.  The days are short and there never seems to be quite enough light - especially if, like me, you live further north.  And in the midst of all this dark we string up lights and light candles and sing about peace and light.  Advent means 'Coming', and refers to the coming of Christ.  Both his initial coming as the baby in the manger, and his second coming, when he has promised to return and set things right. Christ, whom has been called the Light of the World.  Born into the middle of the world's dark night.

In some pagan cultures, the winter solstice (which happens right before Christmas) was celebrated as the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun. Because from that day forward, each day the days get a little longer. The light slowly returns and earth is brought back to the resurrection story of spring.

It feels to me like the world is in its winter solstice.  Things seem darker than ever, with people from all corners of the world fleeing or perpetrating horrible violence, with the child sex trade thriving on every continent, with the painfully real possibility that all our human creativity may result in the destruction of our planet.  The light is there, but it seems so dim and the dark seems to press in on all sides.  Advent reminds us that when you're surrounded by the dark, string up lights. Light candles. Sing about peace and light. And remember.  He's coming - the unconquered Son of God.  The sun will again warm our faces, and as it dawns anew, we will enter into creation's ancient story of  resurrection - as all that seemed dead and desolate begins to blossom.  This is the promise of Advent.

John, The Dreamer

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon dreamed of a world without divisions, a world full of peace and love and togetherness.  The mourners in Paris recently sang this song, a seemingly unachievable dream given the state of humanity.  John Lennon was a dreamer.  Interestingly enough, long before Lennon, there was another John who had this same dream. John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, the only one to see old age. Only his dream was more like a vision, and it was given as a promise.  A promise for the church to hold onto when all seemed dark and hopeless.  There is a key difference between these dreams however.  Lennon dreamed of world peace achieved through human effort alone. The apostle John saw a world made new by God himself.  I too am a dreamer.  I dream of peace. I dream of healing for the nations.  And because of Christ, I not only dream, I believe. I believe that one day this vision will be reality.  But the human heart is too broken to achieve this on its own, we need to be made new.

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold the dwelling place of God is with humanity. He will dwell with them and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'... And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb*.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into, and its gates will never be shut by day - and there will be no night there... Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
Revelations 21-22

*"the Lamb" is a reference to Jesus

Into the Fire

When you pass through the waters, I will be 

with you; and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you. When you walk

through the fire, you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze."

Isaiah 43:2

We are all aware that we live in a world where there is an immense amount of suffering and sadness.  Yet unless they have cut into our own life in some way, we are able to look at them from afar, philosophically rather than experientially.  Almost as though all those terrible things really just exist in stories. Just make believe posing as reality.  It happens somewhere "out there".  Focusing on this reality can be quite anxiety inducing and rather depressing.  Psychologists even recommend that people stop watching the news, because all of the sad and terrifying reports of events in the world, close and far, weigh down our psyches.

In my ideal of the life I'd live, I imagine being the kind of person who can work in those places where the reality of suffering and tragedy are so potent, doing what I can to lift burdens and ease pain.  But in my actual life... I have to confess large parts of me want to hide my head in the sand. I want to keep that veil of unreality over the pain in my world.  I don't want those things to be actual, I don't want to feel them. I want to believe that the peaceful and happy existence that I've experienced is normal. I don't want all that tragedy and loss and sorrow out there to start seeping into my bubble. And I certainly don't want to confront the fact that no one is ever really "safe". That there is no guarantee I'll take my sheltered experience of life with me across the finish line.

Of course as an emergency nurse, I'm confronted with my share of real life loss and suffering. But I think about those people who work with the sickest kids, who counsel women and children that have suffered abuse, who work in the refugee camps in those forsaken corners of the world, who face the worst this world has to offer head on, looking it straight in the eyes.  Who walk into the fire that the rest of us are trying to pretend doesn't exist. I'm in awe of those people, I want to be like them, and at the same time I want to hide from everything they confront so courageously.

And I ask myself - could I do it?  Could I step into the depths of the pain and sadness of the world and not drown? Would the fire drive me or would it consume me?   I think it would take believing more completely in the hope of redemption. That all of the horrors of this world are not the end of the story, nor will they mar it in its final glory.  If God calls me into the waters of tragedy, they will not sweep me away. And if He calls me into the fire of suffering, I will not be set ablaze.  

Empathy's Armor

I'm not a touchy feely person, nor have I ever been one that could be accused of "feeling things deeply".  My average emotional state is "pretty good".  My highs are never that high, and my lows are never that low.  You could call it being boring, or peaceful, depending on your perspective. This used to bother me quite a bit, probably because God blessed me with very close friends who were the polar opposite of my emotional composition. Who felt things very deeply, and were comfortable with emotional expression (it makes me a little squirmy).  I would try and mimic their enthusiasm and sincerity, but it always felt flat and a little fraudulent.  Falling in love with my husband introduced me for the first time to passion (wowee!),  having kids introduced me to an emotional spectrum that I hitherto hadn't known possible (good and bad) - both stretching my composition to something a little more dimensional. Yet even with the great expansion my kids brought to my heart, I still see other moms' tears on first days of preschool and kindergarten through my bone dry eyes.  Sorry darlings.  Maybe I'll cry at college drop off. Or dance.  Time will tell.

I used to worry that my lack of deep feeling would be a problem for my chosen profession of nursing. Because nurses are supposed to be like caring and empathetic and stuff.  But I've learned something.  You don't have to feel deeply to care deeply. Some of us engage the world with our feelings first, some of us with our minds.  Neither is better and both have their downfalls.  I can deeply and sincerely want and work for what's best for my patient without anything squeezing inside me or any tears brimming in my eyes.  And I've learned something else.

Feeling deeply is often not an asset in the field of healthcare.  In the ER where I work, as well as in so many other areas of healthcare, you can go through one heartbreaking story after another from the start of your shift to the end of your shift, and if you feel all the emotions of what each person must be going through - you will not survive.  As a nurse I need to be empathetic, but I also have to clothe that empathy in a good layer of armor.  The empathy keeps me caring, the armor provides the emotional removal necessary to work in areas full of pain, sadness, and loss.  I need to be able to help lift a body into a body bag, and then step out to take care of my other patients with a smile on my face.

For me, my innate disposition has made that balance of attentive removal come naturally, for others it's a learned skill. For all of us, the challenge is to keep the armor from becoming the flesh.  We can lose the soft sense of caring underneath and over time become quite apathetic. Burn out and all that.

But even with the armor, and even with my innate emotional dullness, we all have those unguarded moments of vulnerability. When the unexpected or the particularly tragic strikes. When you're the team to try and save a co worker's life but in the end it's not yours to save. When the mom of a drowned child is wailing outside the room. For me it's usually those nights I can't fall asleep, and a progressive mental assault of faces and stories begin.  Then I'm again looking into the eyes of a dying man and I can feel his fear. I can see the deep brown eyes of that sweet baby before injuries inflicted by one who should have been his protector closed them for good. I can hear heart wrenching screams of loss. There without my armor I begin to feel. And it can be too much.

All that to say, sometimes the trait that you think will be inhibitive can actually be protective.  And maybe I actually am cut out to do this, armed with God's grace, empathy, and just enough armor.

Trinity, Unity, and Dischord

In a Bible study I was in a while back we were discussing the Trinity.  If you are unfamiliar, the Christian view of God is that there is one God in three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Sounds like a contradiction right?  Or a creative play on words to make a religion that would sound on the surface to be polytheistic still monotheistic.  Or just strange.  And I'm aware that this is one major area where Muslims believe Christians have missed the boat - big time.

But lately I've been thinking that the idea of trinity makes a lot more sense than it seems to on the surface.  Because without realizing it, we all live in a trinitarian (yes, that is a word that Christians made up) reality.  What I mean is, us humans are actually a trinity in and of ourselves.  We have three distinct selves that are interdependent and inseparable, yet distinct in nature and function.  Our intellectual being, our emotional being, and our physical being.  It's impossible to draw lines where one ends and another begins, because they are necessarily dependent on each other.  We need the brain to have a mind and chemicals to feel emotions, and yet the brain is not the mind, and chemicals are not emotions.  I think this is the best way to explain God.  He is not three separate persons just as I am not three separate persons.  But within His nature are three distinct persons, just as within my nature there are three distinct persons.  Which would make sense if the Genesis writer was correct in stating that God made people in His own likeness.

The thing with God is that He has unity within His persons.  In an ancient speech to the nation of Israel were spoken the words: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."  And the word 'one' that was used in the Hebrew was a word often used to refer to the unity of more than one person.  They then go on to say, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength." Be unified within yourself as God is unified within Himself. Within our persons, we are often at war.  We may think a certain way about something, feel another, and act in even another way.  We often feel ways we know we shouldn't and act in ways we feel we shouldn't.  We are so often in disharmony with ourselves. As the apostle Paul says, "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15)  But if ever you meet a person whose thoughts, feelings, and actions all agree - you have most likely met someone who has changed or is changing their corner of the world.

The Christian teaching is that God came down to us in order to reconcile us to Himself - and in so doing to reconcile our selves internally to each other.  To bring our mind, body, and spirit into agreement and harmony through loving Him - our Source of unity and harmony within the paradox of trinity.

Yearning To Breathe Free

"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

I know I'm not the only one who went to bed the other night with a heavy heart and tears brimming in my eyes after seeing the heart wrenching picture of a little Syrian boy, laying as though sleeping, washed up from the sea. His short life and tragic death have issued a wake up call to the world on the horrific and desperate plight of the Syrian people.

As a Christian, I'm well aware of the tensions and arguments within my faith.  We disagree with each other on evolution and gay marriage and the specifics of how you should be baptized, and plenty of other things. But if there is anything that we have no room to disagree on, it's how God demands we treat the vulnerable.  Throughout old and new testaments in the Bible there is a clear ultimatum that we are to care for the poor, the stranger, the orphan and the widow (society's most vulnerable). And Jesus tells us if we don't love these people, we never loved him. Period.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you? Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me."

Matthew 25: 41-45

I was deeply bothered by news stories a while back of our fellow country men protesting the refugees on our southern borders, fleeing the violence in Latin America.  As Americans there is plenty we disagree on - but we shouldn't disagree on this. If there is one thing America is, it is a land of refugees.  In my family my ancestors came here fleeing famine. In my husband's family they came fleeing religious persecution.  I am the offspring of refugees. And there's a good chance you are too.  America is that place people come looking for hope, looking for escape, looking for a chance to live, to breathe free.  If there is a story that should resonate with us as a people, it should be the story of the refugee.

So don't look away.  Maybe we can't change the circumstances that are perpetuating this great humanitarian crisis, but there are things we can do.  Locally, World Vision (wvi.org) is working tirelessly on behalf of Syrian children. You can sign a petition for Syrian refugees to be resettled in the U.S.   https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/authorize-and-resettle-syrian-refugees-us.  You can shop - a friend of ours is donating all the proceeds of his photography sales to the crisis (http://www.kurtrahncreative.com/blog/buy-art-help-syrian-refugee).  We can care and learn more about how to support and befriend refugees arriving in our communities, wherever they may be from.  World concern is one great organization set up to aid refugees arriving locally in the Seattle area.  Just don't look away. As Americans, to harden our hearts to these people is to deny our own heritage.  As Christians, it's to deny Jesus himself.  So let's lift our lamps.

Tunnel Vision

Tunnel vision. All you can see is what's directly in front of you - everything in the periphery, no matter how important, is merely a blur.  Tunnel vision is a common plague for new nurses. You are so new, and overwhelmed, and unexperienced, and a little bit terrified, that sometimes all you are able to focus on is the basic tasks. Everything else, no matter how important, blurs uselessly in the periphery. When I first started nursing I had a serious case of tunnel vision. I knew all the basic tasks I needed to accomplish in a shift, and I could just scrape by... as long as I wasn't thrown any curve balls.  One distinct memory took place my first year working on a medical unit, while delivering my morning medications. I brought in a gentleman's medications, only to find him in the shower, hospital gown half on, trapped by the IV wires running from his arm to his IV pole, covered extensively in feces.  The poor man had his full faculties but a bad case of a C-Diff infection, which can cause sudden and explosive diarrhea. So here he was, standing exposed and humiliated, obviously and awkwardly trying to salvage his dignity, and what did I do? I held out my little cup of medications and a cup of water so he could take them.  Right there, in the shower, feces and dignity slipping down the drain with the running water.  My overwhelmed little nursey mind just couldn't detour around needing to deliver my medications in that fragile 1/2 hour window.  His expression certainly followed me home that night.

Tunnel vision can have more dangerous implications.  It can blind you to those subtle clues that your patient's condition is deteriorating. You can fail to prioritize vital tasks over trivial ones. You can have a hard time thinking in terms of "this is important, this can wait," as you brain just does a "task task task" kind of a hopscotch.  One of the few cures for tunnel vision is experience.  As you gain comfort and then competence in your role and your sense of being overwhelmed diminishes, suddenly the light expands and you can see so much you didn't see before.

I think this condition can befall us in our every day existence as well.  I've noticed it crop up in my parenting.  There are so many day to day tasks to push through every day, that sometimes all I can see is cooking, laundry, muddy footprints, messy rooms, empty fridge, and I can easily forget the things I actually want to accomplish with my kids. The things I want to teach them, the atmosphere of joy and love I want to facilitate.   What will matter more later? That I always kept the house clean but I was often irritable? Or that I was generally joyful and kind, even when someone decided randomly to pee in the trash can instead of the adjoining toilet? (Oh you little boys...) In the first story of my patient in the shower, it was more important for me to quickly and graciously help my patient through his embarrassing circumstances than for me to get my medications checked off on time, but in the moment I couldn't see it. And too many times in those other moments of my life, I can't see the forest for the trees.

In nursing, when things get overwhelming (as they generally do) we have to teach ourselves to take a step back and ask, "what is most important here?" We have to teach ourselves to begin to be able to look for that big picture, not losing vital clues and fragile moments in the fray of our busyness. In life, in parenting, it's equally important when things get overwhelming (as they generally do), to teach ourselves the same thing. Take a step back. Ask yourself what is most important here, and what can I let slip this time? Because timely medication delivery is only important to a certain point. A clean house is only important to a certain point. But there's generally a bigger picture in play, and if we don't stop ourselves we will probably miss it.