Dear Reader,

In one of my graduate school classes, our lecturer one day was a nun. She began by introducing herself and said, "In my order, our charism (the particular gift a religious order brings to the world) is repentance."

She gave us all a couple seconds to squirm in our seats and calculate the distance to the door.

"But in today's world, we like to think of this charism as the gift of continual conversion."

In that one sentence, this teacher offered me a moment of conversion: shifting a word that connoted guilt, punishment, and self-hatred into a practice of hope and grace. The sisters of this order didn't constantly second-guess themselves or wallow in shame; instead they sought out God's incredible gifts of new vision, new life, and transformation throughout their lives.

The wisdom of this language has struck me anew lately as I've contemplated quite a few mistakes and failures (mostly mine, a few others') over the last few years. I have very much entered into a space of traditional repentance—face down in the dirt—more than once. But now that I have a little distance from those times, I can see how they were necessary steps in the process of my own small, slow conversions. I'm half a hair more humble and more gentle for having gone through those valleys.

I am also much less afraid of future failures and repentances. It's a bit of a trite piece of conventional wisdom that failure is part of life, but it took thirty-plus years for this perfectionistic teacher's pet to really believe that [applied to me]. I actually felt, a few of those times, that my world was really and truly ending. Months and years later, though, I see how facing those painful truths about myself and coming to the end of my ability to defend, change, or redeem myself were, in the far sight of grace, new beginnings.

This is another gift of the language of continual conversion: acknowledging that our stories of growth and change are not linear but cyclical. Moments of halting and turning around, courageous attempts gone horribly wrong, and the incredibly long and slow processes of healing are not unfortunate detours but belong in our stories.

[Incidentally, that's why I go to excessive lengths to avoid the label "progressive." The idea of unceasing improvement—and the implication that rest or return is undesirable—comes out of the colonial capitalist book of metaphors, not out of any connection with nature, history, or reality.]

The season of Advent also invites us into the cyclical nature of God's story. The Christian liturgical year begins with waiting, as the seasons in the Northern hemisphere descend into darkness—inviting or even insisting that we befriend darkness and descent. The mysterious unknown, the depths of the womb, the stark silence of winter and of the under-ground are just as much places where God dwells as any others.

Like the tohu va bohu ("formless and void") waters in Genesis 1, we return every year to the longest nights and remember that here is where creation begins.

Advent is traditionally a season of repentance in preparation for the coming of the Son (Christmas and Epiphany, stretching into January, being the seasons of celebration). Next to that rather stern, stark, mini-Lenten take on the season, the whole "hope joy love peace" thing might seem a little namby-pamby.

But if we resist the impulse to claim that hope, peace, joy, and love are somehow anti-darkness, we can begin to practice Advent as the task of seeing and naming where those gifts are already present within—even inherent to—even incomplete without the mystery, humility, and quiet we encounter in the darkness.

That includes the darkness of our own shadow sides, the depths where we resist learning and acknowledging parts of us we've hidden from ourselves. The places we fear to even imagine—until the Holy Spirit takes us by the hand down the path of repentance and into the mysteries of our own beloved souls.

This Advent, we are longing for change, and weary of longing for change, and weary of experiencing it because it actually turns out to take longer than four weeks—from the broadest systems of the wide world to the habits of our own hearts.

And if we're honest, we had hoped for the growth without the pain, the new life and creativity without the mess, the transformation without really facing the shadows for too long.

But by trying to have change or growth without repentance, we're asking for the impossible—and missing out on the fullness of life.

In the midst of all this longing for something to change, I'm reflecting on repentance for the next few weeks of Advent (yippee! Forward this to your most delightful friend!).

Because I'm coming to see those most painful, humbling moments as some of our most sacred.
Because maybe the saints of centuries long past who started the whole "Advent repentance" thing knew a little more about darkness than we do.
Because, in the words of Krista Tippett, hope is a muscular thing.​
​Because despite what we thought, continual conversion is the very opposite of a punishment.​
Because hope, joy, peace, and love are already hovering here.

peace, love, bread, and wine,
Lyndsey

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