Advent Day 6

Work and life still go on during this time, obviously.  I am sure it is true for you.  In my early years I thought it was really great that my job allowed me to participate so deeply in the holidays.  These days...it is still pretty cool, honestly.  Still, much of the excitement has worn off.  Church-Advent is a series of tasks layered on the usual tasks.  I have to work my way around that schedule to do the other things like presents, parties, getting the lights on the house, the ornaments out of the attic, and finding a Christmas tree.  There is so much to do.  My wife and I hope to start tomorrow so we are in some semblance of good cheer by Christmas Eve.  

As the kids get older, the secular holiday season gets smaller.  They aren't around as much.  Our youngest is a Senior and a busy with other things as we are. In a couple weeks the two older boys will trundle home for as long as they can before their lives call them elsewhere.  Now I understand my grandparents a bit more.  They weren't usually all that expressive but they put on a good show when we rolled out of the van on the holidays. Al and I are figuring out that new life-phase as well.  There is no one here to remind us of Christmastime in the way they used to. 

​In the end we will figure it all out.  It is just different.
​

Anyway, here is a poem...

WRITING AN ADVENT SERMON
at night in the Worcester Dunkies
is clean enough. No one is here
but the teenagers behind the
counter obsessively mopping. It
is away and anywhere
but where the noise is too much
for seasonal work. Their
conversation is about
who is into whom and how they
are way too savvy elves to
fall for someone who wants more
than a good time. There is
a worldliness here beyond
the old man in the corner
or the woman who runs her kids
to the bathroom
and purchases nothing. The
​teens do not break their
concentration on the matter at
hand so I put on my headphones
watch the headlights
and my reflection to write
about the bleakness of winter
the warmth of
donut shops and dreams.
                                --Adam Tierney-Eliot

Yesterday I wrote about the "work" of Christmas.  Today is more about the job.  Wherever you find yourselves right now I hope you are getting something out of it.  It is a short season and worth enjoying.