Shining Bright in Babylon (Q-Tip)

"Time for Renaissance to reawaken what is withered.

Believe, kid. Confirm. 

Make 'it is' what it isn't."

Welcome to Babylon.

If you heard: welcome to a God-forsaken land of vice, greed, poverty, excess, hypocrisy, suffering, and remorseless injustice... to quote that famous line from Princess Bride, "I do not think [that] means what you think it means."

Babylon is mostly a metaphor of exile.Yes, along with exile went suffering, disorientation, and loss. But despite the "whore of Babylon" one-liners in Revelation, Babylon is primarily a Biblical symbol for being strangers in a strange land.

So, again: Welcome to Babylon. Here. Now. This Advent. Wherever you live and where I live. Because Babylon is a powerful way to describe the strangeness and deep discomfort (even pain) inherent in living in-between what should be and what is. It is to feel irrevocably out-of-place. It's to survive against the odds, to thrive where there should be no life.

"Never disbelieve when you see human miracle 

Like ghetto children shining bright in Babylon --

Believe in that, don't believe in stats to the contrary

Gotta' be wary of them theories. Carry on..."

I Believe - Q-Tip ft. D'Angelo on The Renaissance album

**[there is 1 "swear;" please listen before sharing]**

While the main subject in 'I Believe' is the hip hop industry itself, implied within is the larger African-American cultural context, where Babylon has long been a potent metaphor for feeling politically, socially and spiritually 'exiled,' especially in "ghetto" spaces of urban political neglect. 

For children to "shine bright" in this context, then, is a sign of Advent wonder, a star, a portent of God's power and human spirit even in difficult places. It can certainly recall the Christ-child, born into strange political times, into threats against his brand-new life, even into exile as his parents fled for his safety -- while, in the meantime, God's star shone bright in the fearless sky.

Yet, despite the risk and the pain, when we say we are abiding in Babylon, we also name the hope that can live in sojourning, in waiting -- in truly, fully abiding in our times.

The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare. 

- Jeremiah 29:4-7 (CEB)

The word from God to those in Babylon is to abide and to thrive. So as I abide in this time -- this complex, confusing, dynamic moment -- I depend on the voices of others testifying, from their point of view, who is "shining bright in Babylon." I, in my turn, hope to shine bright in my corner as well,  to "reawaken what is whithered," to make what "is" into something brand-new...

"There's a whole lot of work, we should roll up our sleeves..."

May you shine bright in Babylon, looking for others to light the way with you. May you abide with courage and hope, working with rolled-up sleeves. And may you thrive, may you thrive, may you thrive.

                                                                                              -- Anna

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

Thurs Dec 1 - Pearls (Antje Duvekot)

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

…I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in God’s word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

                                     -Psalm 130:1-2, 5-6

                                                       

Pearls by Antje Duvekot **ADVISORY: Some profanity present.

          This is not my song. Its raw, aching emotion pulls at my heart and my spirit rises in lament with the words: “I've been expecting you forever, waiting here for you…” But the essence of this song, the story that it tells does not belong to me, a child of the church, who cannot claim:

              
                   “I tried to find a church that I could walk in

                   they tried to nail me on original sin.

                  So when you gonna' come for me, Lord?”

                                                               

            Don’t get me wrong, I have many times in my life felt that God is too slow in coming. I have known the pain of seemingly endless waiting; I have even, more than once, wondered not when but if God was coming for me at all. But that fear has never been confirmed by someone claiming that God, in fact, is not coming for me.

           Yet, so many brothers and sisters - young old GAY lesbian transgendered questioning  DOUBTING differently-abled  faithful seeking - have been ‘nailed’ on something when they tried to find a church that they could walk into.  More to the point, they have been told that the church is not for them to walk into. I hear in this song the heartbreak of those who feel disconnected, of the disenfranchised, of the outcast. And my heart's response is a lament more along the lines of “Church, what we have done?!”

  [  *Brief aside: Today, on World AIDS Day, let us not be negligent in acknowledging the ways that many in the church have broken our relationships with brothers and sisters victimized by this hateful disease; causing a lament to rise from many who have been made to feel they are beyond the embrace of God’s family.  ]

            No, this is not my song, but it is so precious to me. It reminds me of the psalmist, laid bare with raw longing and the gritty struggle of life. There is more honest emotion in this song, than many of the poetically worded, ‘F-bomb’-free prayers I have spoken in church services.  But, most importantly, this song reminds me of the worthiness of that for which we wait in this season, the greatness of this longed-for Redemption that will make our world new; for the LoveLight is coming, and it is coming for us ALL.

Give us ears to hear the lament of those around us, that we may better know the One who answers all of our longings.

                                                          -Lindsey