I smile at the photo Mom sent of Dad enjoying the little person on his lap. Mom and Dad had a call hours after Dad had hand surgery. A friend of a friend was at an Indian airport on his way to Canada with his wife and young child and they didn’t have a place to stay when they arrived in 2 days time. Did Mom and Dad have any ideas? And so the little one arrived with her parents and together they spent their first days on Canadian soil at my parents’ home. I smile again when I read Mom’s email and see how what could have been an overwhelming first day for this little girl’s mother in a new land became, instead, a day filled not just with challenge but also with laughter as the challenges were shared by someone familiar with the landscape of life here:

“. . . it is really quite busy around here!  An incredible day for Anaya’s* first full day in Canada too!  We just had to laugh with all the challenges.  Power went off just as she was preparing the Indian omelette for breakfast.  Then she wanted to come to the store with me, so she put on Caroli’s down coat from Afghanistan and helped me brush the car, laughing and shaking her head at snow and how long it takes to get wet snow off the car.  Then discovered all the traffic lights and stores were out of power but it took us a while to get through the gridlock and back home. Then [our eldest grandson] arrived for lunch (because his college was out of power) and stayed the afternoon, etc. so now (after very late supper) Dad and I are on our way to bed (leaving them up since they slept this afternoon- with the jet-lag).  Baby was awake from 2-4 last night. But it somehow all feels fun thanks to God’s peace and strength, and they are very grateful. We think they are hoping to have their place by Saturday or Sunday so we’ll see what God has in mind!

As I read Mom’s email, I felt like I was seeing in pictures a line from Malcolm Guite’s Advent and Christmas devotional, Waiting on the Word. I’d pulled the book off my shelf a few days early, unable to wait until the start of Advent to begin to savour the rich layers in Guite’s book. In the introduction Guite reminds us that while during Advent we often focus primarily on the first coming of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem and his final coming in glory as King, these two comings frame the time in which we live, a time filled with many other advents.

“’Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age,’ says Jesus. ‘Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do it unto me’; ‘This is my body, this is my blood.’ In our encounters with the poor and the stranger, in the mystery of the sacraments, in those unexpected moments of transfiguration surely there is also an advent and Christ comes to us. Perhaps that is why the other sense we have of the word ‘advent’ is to find it beginning the word ‘adventure.’” (Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word, p. ix-x, bold mine)

Adventure. Yes. That’s one descriptor for the story Mary entered when she gave her yes to mothering the Son of God. And it seems a pretty good summary of the life we enter when we, along with Mary, give God our yes. Adventure. There’s room in the word for courage and laughter, seeking and finding (and sometimes feeling a bit lost on the way), suffering and perseverance and hope. An adventure is not predictable. It involves risk. That can even be part of the fun of it—at least when we know we’re accompanied by a trustworthy Guide who knows the landscape well and will be with us every step of the way.
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*Not her real name