Exam season has already begun here at KPU as we make our way
through Advent. Walking down the now quiet halls of the university, free from
the busyness of regular classes, I glance through classroom doors at rooms full
of students hunched over the set of questions or problems their professor has
prepared for them. Exams are not enjoyable. The stress of cramming an enormous amount
of information into your head coupled with the uncertainty of what is actually
going to be on the exam does not make for a peaceful transition into the Advent
and then Christmas seasons.
I’ve been a student my whole conscious life. For the past
eight years I have been either in university or grad school, and every December
brings the same mix of excitement and dread. I love Advent, it’s my favorite
season of the Church year. The haunting Advent hymns of waiting and longing,
both for the mystery of the Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth and for the
second coming, where all things will be brought to completion in Christ,
inspire in me a curious mix of giddiness and peace. There is nothing quite like
plugging in some indoor Christmas lights on a chilly December evening and
listening to Loreena McKennitt’s “Snow” in that gentle, dull light. Utter peace
in midst of the thrilling adventure of waiting for God.
But, alas, I so rarely get to enjoy that experience without
the throb of anxiety in my chest over the sheer volume of school work that
accompanies the end of the semester. It’s simply the burden of the pattern and
timing of our education system, aligned to place on students the most burdens
when the church calendar calls for the most quiet reflection.
However, there are of course moments in every day, in every
hour, where the mystery of God among us calls us out of our frantic pace,
whether we are a student or not. It seems like a luxury to even have the
opportunity to reflect on this mystery when so many people both around the
world and locally are struggling to make sense of their own lives, or maybe
have even given up on that task all together. (Just this afternoon I was
listening to Bob Marley, that quintessential summer musician, who spells
it out plainly in a chorus: “so much trouble in the world”).
But, in fact, it is in the midst of that trouble that the mystery
of the incarnation calls us to contemplate and reflect. In a world held captive
by sin and suffering, whether for the university student or for the countless
other troubles that burden humanity, God has mysteriously, beautifully, come to
us proclaiming salvation.
So peace and rest in the Advent season might initially seem
like a misuse of time in exam season. Or it might seems like a luxury we should
forgo when so much suffering in the world calls for action (or at least guilt),
not contemplation. But contemplation is an action, a “non-act act,” by
which we connect ourselves with the source and fountain of all true love and
hospitality: the transcendent, immanent, beautiful, and mysterious triune God. There
is deep trouble in the world; but deeper still is infinite beauty.
