Advent Reflections: Week 1

I begin this Advent season…homeless.

I shouldn’t say that.  There are so many who are homeless because they have no other option.  It is truly a privilege, a huge privilege, to say that I am currently homeless by choice.  It’s scary, being without a technical home.  But I surely don’t feel that I have the right to complain about it.  To speak truthfully, though…I am homeless at the moment. 

I became homeless by choice because I desired to move out of a disease.  I never knew that a building could itself be a disease, but I definitely discovered one on the Upper East Side (where else?). I heard through the grapevine, through the decades of tales and gossip, that everyone who moved there went a little bit mad.  The theory was that the building was built on an old Native American burial ground, and that old spirits owned the place, and haunted everyone’s minds.  After only a few weeks, I could believe it.

If you don’t know what diseased place I’m referring to, don’t worry.  I’ll tell you someday.  I haven’t blogged about it because I’m still processing it all.  Also, I’m debating which parts to share and which parts to keep secret and turn into a stellar sitcom pilot; and-no offense-I don’t want you to steal my material.

That all being said…back to my original point…I’m currently homeless by choice.  I packed in a hurry, moved nearly all my belongings into storage, then took a taxi across town to cozy up on an air mattress at my pal Hannah’s.  This coming week I’ll be at Holly’s.  Then Elise’s.  Then to Missouri for Christmas.  A beloved professor of mine, hearing of my upcoming couch odyssey, observed that I would be changing “homes” per each week of Advent.  I realized she was right.  I then wondered-because I tend to wonder about such things-if there was perhaps some bigger plan in my being homeless at the moment, but I couldn’t quite land upon what it would be. 

The first three candles of Advent, in many churches, are pink, and they represent repentance and prayer.  I’ve had plenty of repentance weighing on me this first week of Advent.  Well, “weighing on me”…means that it’s not really repentance, but rather misplaced shame.  Shame is not useful in the slightest, but I’ve been carrying it around something awful.  Feeling ashamed of getting myself into such living situations, feeling like a failure since I’m struggling so to find work.  And extreme failure about coming back to the place I’ve graduated from, a place that-of course-welcomes me with open arms, but…living on your old dorm floor because you have no place to go, sitting with the reality that, despite your talent and education (two Master’s Degrees now, one of them Ivy League), you are still just overqualified enough and just underqualified enough, talented in all the un-hirable things yet undertalented in all the hirable things, specific in all the vague vocations and vague in all the specific vocations to forever fall through the cracks of the world, and everyone around you-according to your perception-seems fulfilled and focused and happy and hired, and are all laughing at you behind your back, shaking their heads and knowing-just knowing-that you would be  the alum to come to nothing, the joke….you get the idea.  It is the worst kind of self-loathing.  And it weighs on you.  You’re only comforted by the realization that…pretty much everyone feels that way right now.  At least, I think so.  

Prayer?  The prayers of the Advent candle?  Oh yes, I’ve known prayer this week, too.  It breathes on my lips and my sweat and my trembling, every minute of every day.  And I feel my prayers answer back to me, gently, rubbing my shoulders ever so slightly as I rush through the cold wind and pound the pavement in a panic.  Then I hear Christmas music, I look at wreaths hanging on doors-and my heart breaks.  All of my decorations are in storage.  My beloved decorations, that have travelled with me for years, that have reminded me of all the people I love, of the season I love, all of them are stuffed away in an-albeit gentle-clump in a plastic bin.  Locked.  I realize that I haven’t had the privilege of decorating with glee, as I normally do, of picking out my Christmas cards, of deciding what I’m going to buy for whom, of sitting and drinking hot cocoa and listening to Christmas music.  Or of receiving cards-my mail is in limbo.  I haven’t had the time to mosey through the holiday season and to savor it.  And on top of it all, I’ve had the sniffles.  ”Where is my Christmas?”, I think indignantly.  I feel the weight of fake repentance, the terror of desperate prayer, and rage.  I think: “Really.  What is the point of an Advent journey such as this?” 

I’ve always thought one of my strengths is living simply, living in the moment.  I don’t have a ton of stuff, and often, once a year, I go through my room and give away stuff I haven’t used.  I don’t tend to like to settle anywhere; I very carefully patter around the outskirts of something, turning its features over and over in my mind and heart, and then-only then-do I commit, at a slow organic pace; I hate making fast decisions.  But this week, I’ve realized that…I’m alot more attached to stuff and settling than I’d thought.

I’ve been living out of five bags and a suitcase.  It’s disorienting to live this way; it slows you down, makes you feel disjointed, split apart.  Pretty soon, you resent the bags and suitcase and just want to get rid of them all together.  But then you remember, you don’t want to do that: they carry so much precious “stuff”.  Then, after a few days, it occurs to you that you’ve only used about a fourth of that precious “stuff”.  At that moment, you cringe, and realize that you are truly-though you’d hate to admit it, coming from a staunch and honest middle class Midwestern family-a privileged American.  The fact that I can complain about not having all of my stuff? And that it’s confined to five bags and a suitcase?  Good god.  Pathetically American.  But it’s true: I’ve felt panic being away from my “stuff” this week.  Even though it’s in the same city, under lock and key, perfectly safe and accessible-24 hours a day!  My very identity has felt disjointed, having my stuff scattered in so many places.     

And settling?  I’m an introvert; it may surprise some to know.  Having a private space is crucial to my well-being.  Especially having a private space to write.  Not having a private, consistent space-full of my stuff-has made me feel like a confused sky.  When does the sun go up and the moon hide?  When does the moon glow and the sun go to sleep?  Public face and private face have merged, and neither have gotten their rest, or bearings.  I care about being authentic so much-probably too much-so this realization grieves me the most.  I still have a public and private face, a persona out in the world, and then a persona that I relax into at night, as I shut my door, put on my pajamas, and sink into a settled space full of my stuff.  And when I don’t get to let that full private persona out…I feel grumpy, and disoriented.  And I long to settle.

Could this be a good thing, this letting go of my stuff, this merging of public and private face, this lack of a place to settle? 

Mmm.  Perhaps, yes?    

Without my stuff and without a place to settle, I will both find and remember the stuff of life in my heart, and feel it even more acutely from the hearts of others.  I’ll find my home in the Spirit of Christmas itself.  I’ll settle on that, inside.  And my faces merging and communicating can surely be a good thing; I’ll become even more whole.  I’ll grow. 

I’ve been remembering all the times I moved as a child, against my will, and how much I’d hated the abrupt sting of ending before I was ready, and starting before I was ready.  The neverending feeling of “will I have to lose all of this again?”  I think all of that, despite my believing otherwise, has made me very attached to stuff, to settling in a place.  To surviving, grabbing the quickest cheapest option, then hunching down and making that space my own, for as long as it can be.  That’s how I’ve moved about New York.  And I’ve realized: that’s not a very good way to move about.

So what have I learned this first week of Advent?  All of the above.  I’ve also learned to let myself receive.  I’m truly terrible at it.  But here I am, with amazing friends, opening  their hearths and hearts to me, free of charge.  Supporting me, encouraging me, building me up when I feel I’ve failed.  And have I mentioned that I have a steadfast, amazing girlfriend? 

What have I decided to do this first week of Advent?  Allow myself to receive.  And to, gently, un-attach myself from my stuff, from needing to settle, from being afraid of everything going away.  Such old familiar pain, resulting in such old familiar patterns these past eight years.  I have a hunch that if I let these things go…my right home-and a job-will reveal themselves to me.  And maybe that’s the meaning of this year’s Christmas, the meaning of this year’s prayer and preparation.  Receive and let go at the same time.  Just as Mary had to do.  And there will be a birth, a life-changing birth, a “God With Us” birth. 

Candle lit.  Match blown out.  The remaining three candles lay in wait for next week’s discovery.

Blessings to all and Amen.

[image courtesy of Google]

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