Rev. Emelia Attridge

All the best activities make a little mess:
Baking cookies. Painting. Working with clay.

Most creative exercises involve a lot of prep (and clean up). You get out the ingredients or the paints, and set up your workspace. When the fun is over, there's usually quite a bit to pick up and clean up later. But in the middle there is fun, there's creativity, there's wonder, maybe even a little healthy frustration in the process. 

Sometimes I hesitate to bake the cookies or start the painting because I dread the prep or the clean-up. Yet, when I put that little bit of extra energy and effort in to get started, it's always worth it. I think that may be one reason why I don't bake or paint as much now that I'm an adult (compared to when I was a kid or a teen). As a young person, I didn't dread the extra work involved, I just loved the process. 

We often hear this passage from the prophet Isaiah during Advent either straight from the Book of Isaiah or quoted from John the Baptist. Fans of Godspell will hear it in song: "pre-e-e-pare ye, the way of the Lord!" The prophet isn't saying God will be the one to lower hills and mountains for an easy straight-forward journey. The prophet is giving a command to the people: you prepare the way! And it isn't a way made in the ease of the middle of a freeway already paved for you, it's in the wilderness. Black Womanist theologians have a saying: "making a way out of no way." 

Where are the places in our lives that we dread the prep (or the clean-up)? What wilderness spaces look daunting? I hear this in the lamentation about our world: How on earth can we turn this ship around? Whether its gun violence, climate crisis, ICE abductions, war, hatred -- it often feels impossible to "make a way." Advent isn't necessarily the time of getting it done. It's the season of preparation. To prepare means to look around, assess, and take the time to notice the wilderness places. And know that "preparing" (whether its cookies, art, or change) is often a messy act.