01. Introduction
When I was a child, the word Advent meant advent calendars, a fun way to anticipate Christmas as it drew near. I had the seed of longing, but not the depth to understand that I was longing for much more than presents and the surprising story of a birth in a stable.
A few years later when I was a young mother, a deep grief plowed through our family. Thirst for relief, for a deeper experience of love, for a world where what God wants done is done, created an unnamable longing in me. For years, it showed up as a kind of dread, a knot in the pit of my stomach starting the day after Halloween. I couldn’t feel “Merry and Bright.” I tried to help my children experience Christmas joy, but there was a painful reality in our days that we could not escape.
02. The Winter Season in the Soul
I longed for stillness and quiet. I longed for space to settle into winter the way a tree does. Author Emma Timms says winter is, “a time for rest, withdrawal, and deepening. Think of trees without leaves deepening their roots and resting from sustaining fruit. Think of bears hibernating. It’s OK for you to have reduced productivity. Instead, embrace quietness, solitude, reading, fires, and stargazing.” This is one of the gifts Advent offers. Advent invites us to slow down, to recognize our need for a dormant season.
03. How Goes the World?
When the kids were teenagers, my creative son talked me into a new tradition. On the morning of Christmas Eve, we drove to the Colorado ski country west of our home and spent the day enjoying the slopes. We had a traditional greeting we used as we rode up the chairlift suspended high above the snow. Instead of “How’s it going ?” we used a greeting from Tales of the Kingdom by Karen Mains. One of us would yell, “How goes the World?” And from a chair ahead or behind the answer would come, “The world goes not well, but the Kingdom comes!” We left the mountain in time to slide into seats at the Christmas Eve Service at church still wearing sweaters or fleece and hairstyles that could only be created by a day on the slopes.
I remember one of those sermons now, two decades later. The pastor spoke in character as one of the shepherds, dressed in plaid and heavy work boots as if he was a modern rancher. He talked about the reality of barns. Since I grew up with horses, I knew that he spoke truth.
04. Real Barns
Barns are not quiet, sweet-smelling places. Barns are dusty and animals are loud and smelly. There is no sophisticated way to say this: animals poop a lot. Dung, feces, manure, sh… no matter what you call it, it smells putrid. Maintaining a barn involves shoveling a lot of manure. The shoveler may imagine creating a clean barn that smells sweet, but as long as animals are there, the manure just keeps coming.
The pastor used the reality of life in a barn as a metaphor for our lives. We stand in and produce a lot of stinky stuff. Advent frees us to acknowledge that the world “goes not well.” The human experience is not all merry and bright. The kingdom of this world, where the ruler aims to kill, steal, and destroy everything good, touches all of us and penetrates within too.
I think that is the reason God chose a barn as the setting of Jesus’ birth. I always smile when I hear the old derisive question, “Were you born in a barn?” because Jesus was. Maybe behaving as one who was born in a barn puts me in good company!
05. Why Jesus was Born in a Barn
Advent invites us to come to a deeper understanding of what difference it makes that a holy child came to be born in a stable. The traditional church calendar uses Advent as a time to acknowledge that our lives resemble a barn. We are ankle deep in “stuff” and we can’t clean it up ourselves. God himself entered the mess in the unlikeliest of ways in a very unsanitary place. When he did, hope, peace, joy, and love invaded with him. He didn’t hold his nose or refuse to draw near. He joined us. With Jesus’ incarnation, the Kingdom of God—where everything is as it should be—occupied the barn. We couldn’t create a better kingdom, so the Kingdom came to us. And that he came to us in this lowly place signifies that there is no place is so dark, no life so filled with manure that God won’t go there. In the words of Isaiah 63:8b-9 (NRSVUE), “He became their savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and pity it was he who redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them in all the days of old.”
So today, during Advent, I find comfort in slowing down to grieve the dark dusty stink in the world. I ache for the day when the invasion of the kingdom is complete. At the same time, I savor the light I have. Today God is Immanuel, God with me, even in barn-like places. In words borrowed from Hosea 11:1-4, God himself bends down to me, lifts me to his cheek, holds me close, and wraps me with bands of love. My soul loves the invitation of the winter season: the freedom to acknowledge that the world goes not well, and the hope inherent in knowing that the kingdom is coming no matter how stinky the barn is today.
06. Suggested Readings
- Faith Habits and How to Form Them: 21 seasonal practices to strengthen your spiritual life by Emma Timms
- On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius
- Finding God in All Things by William A. Barry, S.J.
- Tales of the Kingdom by Karen Mains.
07. Practices for Advent
Imaginative prayer: Read Isaiah 63:8b-9 or Hosea 11:1-4 slowly. Close your eyes and imagine what it looks like, feels like, smells like as God—your heavenly parent—bends down, lifts you up, and holds you to God’s own heart, soothing you with love. Hear God’s heart beat with love for you. Let its rhythm soothe you.
Embrace the invitations of winter: Though it is difficult (especially if you have small children!) find a way to “winter” as a verb. Embrace the invitations of the dormant season. Allow yourself to let go of something productive and instead sit for a few minutes in the dark, using only the light of a candle or your Christmas tree. Ask God to be there with you and wrap you in love. Pour out whatever is in your heart to God, then sit in silence together until peace creeps in.
Beth Ratzlaff works as a writer and spiritual director. She still lives in Colorado and escapes to the mountains whenever she can. She has been deeply blessed by her older sisters and brothers in faith, Saint Athanasius, Saint Ignatius, Madam Guyon, C.S. Lewis, and Fred Rogers. She also works with Get Hope Global, a non-profit that provides faith-based business training materials and support around the world. You can learn more about Beth at gazeministries.org