The First Sunday in Advent
December 3, 2006

"On that day there shall not be either cold or frost.  And there shall be continuous day, not day not night, for at evening time there shall be light."

I love light.  Especially the light of Cape Cod.  And especially at this time of year, when the shadows lengthen, and the sun refracts low in the sky through clouds to give us magnificent dusks and dawns.

There’s something about light that reaches into my soul, an unspoken resonance with the deep feelings that well up inside of me.  I love light.  And that is why, I suppose, I love this season of Advent so dearly.  The candlelight.  The warm glow of anticipation.  The clarity of the prophets.  This abundance of joy.  This abiding hope that redemption is drawing near.

Yes, I love light, as much as life itself.  Because the world can be a very dark place, and this darkness can swallow up our best dreams and purposes.  The great Spanish mystic of the 16th Century, St. John of the Cross called this the dark night of the soul.  And so it is for those of us who find ourselves on a path where light has vanished.  

In my office I have a photograph.  It is precious to me, an icon, through which the light of God continually shines.  In it, dark shadows against the backdrop of a sunlit San Diego beach, one year old Jamie and his young father are in a dance.  Time has stopped.  The symmetry between us is unbroken.  We are dancing in the light.  The sun is a God, and we, together,  are a whirling dervish.

I look at that photograph and it stirs a memory.  We are coming home one cold, December night, Jeannette and I with our little boy, to a dark house.  As I open the door, Jamie stumbles in, and I hear him running ahead of me.  “Light,” he pleads, as he goes from room to room, “Light, where are you?  Light, where are you?  Turn light on, Daddy, turn light on.”

So many times since then, in terror and frustration and sadness and despair, I too have echoed Jamie’s plea.  “Light, where are you?  Where are you, light?” 

It is a strange dance we do with our children, isn’t it?  In one moment, it is we who have the power to flick the switch, to turn the light on, to take them into our arms, to give them shelter from the dark storm. And in the next moment, which arrives nearly in a heartbeat, the power is gone, and it is we who are groping in the dark, pleading for the light.

It happened to me three years ago.  That Advent season, I nearly lost my way.  There was no light.  Joy had slipped away.  Yet it was at precisely the darkest moment that Jamie, by now a young adult, came to me to turn the light back on.

I wrote a letter then to our friends, trying to relate this dark night of my soul.  And this is what it said:

‘Christmas is different for us this year.  The decorations are still in storage.  The tree is still waiting to be picked out.  The family Christmas letter never got written.  Instead of spreading holiday cheer, we are keeping vigil.  Our son, Jamie, is in federal prison.

Last March, on the day our war on Iraq began, he linked arms with two fellow Haverford students, and blocked the entrance to the Federal Building in Philadelphia.  He had thought long and hard about his action beforehand.  He had joined the protests, he had written letters, he had organized, he had agonized.  He had taken his right of redress as far as he could.  But for Jamie, it was not enough.  The morning the war began, he wrote me a letter saying that if American soldiers were willing to put their lives on the line for what they believe in, then he was willing to put his freedom on the line.  He was arrested peacefully, and one of his classmates downloaded photos to us of the procedure from beginning to end.  He looked so small, the young women at his side even smaller, as the phalanx of police led him away.

His court date was put off until it finally came this December 4th, Jamie’s birthday.  He called us and chuckled about this irony.  Unlike most of his activist companions, he had made up his mind that he would not pay the fine.  We sent him a check, and pleaded with him simply to pay, and walk away.  He tore up the check, and called us to say his protest meant that greater sacrifices were necessary.  He told the federal judge who presided over his case that he was more than willing to do community service as a penance.  Ignoring his request, the judge sentenced him to a week in prison.

The week began at noon this past Thursday and will end on Christmas Day.  He is in solitary confinement, 24 hour lock-up.  As parents, we are heartsick.  As Americans, we are outraged.  This war, trumped up on so many false pretexts, has already exacted too many sacrifices, American lives, Iraqi lives.  But until now, as with the vast majority of the citizenry, this was a distant, escapable reality.

The war for us has come home this week.  We feel in our very bones the losses in the homes of thousands of other families, for whom Christmas will never be the same.  And added now is our sense of loss for our country, diminished by how it treats dissent, minority opinion, due process, and freedom of speech.

But there is, too, a flicker of hope.  Just before he submitted himself to the Federal Detention Center in downtown Philadelphia, Jamie sent out this email: ‘I am aware  now more than ever of the invisible circles of love and light we live in.  It is to you my friends and blood that I am responsible  My prayer for all of you this week will be that this witness somehow crystallizes your vision of a world more just, peaceful, and true.’

Dear friends, this, to me, is the meaning of Advent.  In these invisible circles of light and love, our salvation draws nigh.  In our vision of a world more just, peaceful and true, the Lord our God, in the ancient words of the prophet Zephaniah will come and all the holy ones with him.  And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.  For in the darkness of our world, a flicker of hope still burns.  St. John of the Cross put it this way: “The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness.  Only the glorious duties of love we will have.”

Therefore, let our souls be aglow this Advent Season. May God grant us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  So that we may shine with the brightness of the true Light.  So that our flickering candles may join the consuming flame that brings light and love to all.