The New Normal
Excerpt from Isaiah 40: 1-11
“ . . . the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain . . . ."
Reflection by Donna Schaper
I’ll never forget the day my seventh-grader asked me what I now call the Normal Question. He had been in junior high for two weeks. “Mom, can you be smart and popular at the same time?” My child was asking me how normal he had to be. These questions never stop. Can you be normal and out of work? Dare you tell the family how long the unemployment checks have been coming? Is it ok not to be normal, according to the world’s crooked roads? Can you be normal and not have any money? Or status? Or college degrees? Or thin thighs? Or big pecs? In our world a lot of people tell us who we are supposed to be. They also whisper who God is supposed to be. They act like queer is not beautiful and say they are straight, when really they are crooked.
Many pastors were taught not to sing Christmas carols until Advent was over. We don’t want to “rush” Christmas. We also don’t like displeasing our grumpy seminary professors who want the world to be less urgently sentimental than it is. Finding a way to be normal can be hard.
The Christmas story is a quiet subversion of the normal God. It is also a nudge to get back on the path to God. Once when we were out hiking, we stayed out too long to have much light left. We lost the white blazes and our dog, Kofe, aka Lassie, had to nudge us back on the trail. Advent is a cold dog’s nose back on the path of what it means to be a Christian, to follow the Christian story, to enjoy the Christmas carols, which are as subversive as they are pretty.
Prayer
Blessed Spirit, you who nudge us home, even if we are not normal, draw near and when the pastor says we can’t sing the Christmas songs till Advent is over, let us start humming them. Amen.
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