Friday, December 6, 2013

Grassroots Dreams (Soweto Gospel Choir)


"My eyes will see the beautiful gates
and the streets of gold
of the City of Salvation"

So while we tend to tiptoe around it, with phrases like the "drawing-together of creation" and the "reconciliation of all things," Advent is primarily about apocalypse, plain and simple. Jesus returns, and everything changes. 

This gets tricky for me, because growing up in my church context, apocalyptic visions in the Bible were a weird joke. Seriously, who actually believed in that stuff?

There was just a little teeny bit of privilege in my former attitude, I know. But I was raised understanding apocalyptic literature to be childish rage-dreams, mediated through booming voices on U.S. TV and radio. 

Little did I know that the original authors of these strange, vivid stories of God's triumph were almost always outside of the power system, voiceless to the "mainstream" culture. God's downtrodden, catastrophe-worn people sought a vision to dream them forward, and the revelatory prophecies and promises of both testaments offered meaning, endurance, and hope

These seemingly triumphant, even triumphalist, visions were actually words from the depths. 

"My eyes will see the beautiful gates 
and the streets of gold..."

From this angle, Advent isn't just a nice bow on the story of God and Creation. It definitely isn't just sort of demurely hoping everyone can be as happy (or privileged) as I am "someday," or lighting a candle and feeling vaguely sad for the "less fortunate," during the holidays. All that is all surface-level stuff -- but Advent surges from the depths. It lives in broken cracks in the sidewalk, in the dust of the street, in the shame and fear in our own hearts. Advent dwells in the deep, and this is where its most soul-stirring dreams are born.



Soweto Gospel Choir - "Jerusalem" (Live) - Voices from Heaven album version

This song has been on our Advent playlist since before the A.M.P. was born, but there never seemed like the right opening for it. But with Nelson Mandela's death yesterday, and the world looking at both his role in the anti-apartheid movement and his legacy for the future, a South African choir sings, sandwiched between the apartheid that was and the uncertainty of what will be:

"Jerusalem... my wishes and hopes are for you."

This is a dream worth dreaming: that "streets of gold" could spring up between these very cracks in the pavement. This is grassroots dreaming: standing in the Now, the In-Between, and letting our songs reflect our deepest hopes while also casting our gaze forward. Shining onward.


Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God [...]
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” 
- Rev 21: 1-5a, selected



May you find your Advent dreaming going deeper in these lengthening nights, and may your songs, your words, and your hands, reflect the love of God for all creation, today and always.

                                                            -- Anna


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