As Advent deepens, we circle around the theme of ‘accepting.’ This can sound like a strangely passive word, even a troublingly overly-deferential word, as if accepting requires us simply and humbly to take all the slings and arrows that life throws at us, or accept unquestioningly what others ask of us. But understood differently, accepting becomes a word of engagement and beginnings, embracing the life with which we have been gifted, and pointing us towards hope.
Acceptance understood in this way, more radically embracing than passive, lies at the heart of Advent. It lies at the heart of Mary’s story so brightly spot-lit during this season, not as the simple, single acceptance of a cowed girl, but as the beginning of a journey from ‘yes’ to God, to the churning, pondering, ever-growing recognition of what it means to be utterly caught up in God’s life. In Mary’s journey we walk alongside her in the growing understanding, from shepherds and angels, kings and prophets, that the child she bears will shape destinies, unlock hearts and challenge the unchallengeable. Here there is no guarantee of comfort, but the gradual acceptance of a courageous soul, bearing the burden of new realisations and grasping afresh the untameable grace of God.
If this is some of the quality of acceptance we are called to foster in Advent, we might wonder what it means for us. Perhaps it is in accepting more deeply a faith with which we tussle, or accepting our need to loosen the hold which the familiar and comfortable has on us as God’s ‘new’ beckons. It can mean accepting our folly and frailties and that we allow ourselves to be bent out of shape by our illusions, or accepting wrongs done by us and to us, not as passive recipients of suffering, but tilling the ground for new life and growth. In this un-easy acceptance, in which prayer, questioning and acknowledgement all have a part, we may discover a radical surrender to the deepening realization that ours is a God who draws us into a life of unfathomable love.
Acceptance like this, in which illusions are stripped, courage is grasped, and grace is discovered in the painful and ordinary as well as in ‘obvious’ glories or sanitized moments of life, becomes an ‘Amen’ to God’s life within us, uttered with open-hearted surrender. Far from leaving us bowed by the demands, tragedies and pains of life, unable to bear the load, this kind of acceptance can release us. We can be freed to live both in the ‘now’ of recognizing God-with-us, and also in the ‘not-yet’ of waiting for God to come among us again in the incarnation, preparing us for the journey through Advent and beyond.
Carys Walsh has been involved in ministerial selection and formation for many years, including as a tutor in Christian Spirituality at St Mellitus, as a Psychotherapist, in Ministry Division, and in the Diocese of Peterborough, where she is also an assistant priest.
The original ball and cross were erected by Andrew Niblett, Citizen and Armourer of London, in 1708. They were replaced by a new ball and cross in 1821 designed by the Surveyor to the Fabric, CR Cockerell and executed by R and E Kepp. The ball and cross stand at 23 feet high and weigh approximately 7 tonnes.
