It’s November 6, and I’m three weeks late on an Advent podcast review that goes to press tomorrow. Like many, if not most, I’ve been glued to election coverage, and time seems to have accordioned in on itself. We’ve already begun editing both the January and the February Outlook magazines. Working on the Lenten devotionals. Today, with the Amazon gift catalog in the mailbox, a new president-elect on television, and a fresh mosquito bite on my neck, I wonder about the scrunching of time, always more compressed as the birth of Jesus approaches.
Christmas and Advent for me, a little Black National Baptist girl in Upstate South Carolina, meant speeches recited by the children, in the pulpit, at December morning programs. It meant red or green velvet dresses, black tights and black Mary Janes. Russian tea with oranges (or Tang), and a brown gift bag of chestnuts and candy canes. A pageant, where the shepherds got to wear their bathrobes to church with a square of cloth draped over their heads.
It meant time in our living room, perched on plastic-covered chairs, listening to Mama, my great-grandmother, work through her Christmas music repertoire on the upright piano.
Music soothed Mama, particularly as her dementia advanced. And music is scientifically proven to calm as
well as invoke and evoke emotion. Music helps us process, and focus. It helped us slow down. It helped us feel lifted.
So, in that house, we sang, as we do in this house now. Unaccompanied common meter tunes, direct threads to kidnapped and enslaved ancestors, floated through the halls. Mama called the lines and also responded, the speed increasing, her foot stomping the hardwoods, alternating with our clapping, sometimes “getting happy,” doing that back-and-forth foot stomp shuffle until she and I worked up a sweat and collapsed, euphoric, full of the Spirit. “I Heard the Voice of Jesus,” “I Got to Take A Journey,” “Til I Die.” Or straight songs: “He’s a Battle Axe,” Or hymns for the season: “Go, Tell It On the Mountain,” “Angels, We Have Heard on High.” Or “Silent Night” — often accompanied by The Temptations.
Today, Siri is playing the music of my childhood. Some are Christmas tunes. But today, I specifically
looked for “Sit Down, Servant.”
Remembering Mama singing “I’m gonna sit down and rest a while” hits differently now.
This approaching season of Advent and Christmas feels more tender than usual. Maybe because I’m more tender than usual, feeling beaten, scratched and bloody. I’m more tired because the load of year-end and election season baggage is like dragging bricks. I’m being told to find humanity in the faces of others, although a glance in the mirror tells me I’ve got to address my humanity first — put my face mask on first. But I’m tired of being told to, essentially, comfort others, make them feel seen, and particularly tired of looking for a humanity that doesn’t seem to consider me, my friends, my little cousins, the neighbors I barely know and, though we don’t speak the same language, bring us chorizo, or the occasional fresh, buttery cornbread.
“I’m gonna sit down and rest a while.”
“I’m gonna sit down and rest a while.” There’s a reason The Nap Ministry is a manifesto. Mama often sat with her head resting on the back of a chair, eyes closed, her hands folded in her lap. “I’m not asleep,” she’d say as I crept past. “I’m just resting my eyes.” I can only guess at her burdens. For her to sit, quietly, without song, they must have been crushing.
And yet, she honored herself enough to sit down. Perhaps she considered her own humanity behind her closed eyelids. She never sat for long. She got up and started moving, and singing, again in short order. Today, that is my directive: sit, rest, then, in time — move and act.
Christmas and Advent don’t need to be a rush. They don’t. Honoring the time of waiting and anticipation, giving our hearts a chance to rest while also finding our emotional stride, our lungs the space to expand, reminding ourselves to lower our shoulders and decompress, all of this feels like the self-care we suggest, but rarely embrace. Finding humanity in a world that would not honor mine, or my daughter’s, that takes time, energy, armor, and a fierce will. Yes, he’s a battle axe, and I’m a battle axe, but I’m also exhausted. When I’m rested, I’ll move.
“The Baby Jesus comes every year, Mommy.”
“The Baby Jesus comes every year, Mommy.” My kid tells me this each Advent. It’s a reminder that the world will wear me down unless I demand otherwise. It’s a reminder that crunched time is still a clock that ticks. This makes me smile, her directive, because underneath her words are faint bars of music urging me to sit down. Rest.
