November 30, 2025 | Rev. Bret Lortie
I never quite got Advent growing up. At most, it was a calendar filled with chocolate for which me and my two siblings rivaled. Not all of those pieces were sized equally.
I started to get the meaning of Advent after Cindy and I were given a small Christmas ornament our first Christmas together. It’s a little hand made wood mouse sitting in a swing. We got it somewhere in the middle of Arizona, stopping for gas off a back roads highway. Cindy was seven months pregnant and we were on our way to California so she could meet my family for the first time. Everything about our lives was liminal—neither here nor there. The middle of the desert. Waiting for the birth of a child. Living on the G.I. Bill and student loans; hoping we’d be able to pay them off. Wondering if Cindy’s 1975 Mercury Monarch was going to make it to California. The gruff woman behind the gas station counter looked us over as we came in. We must have looked very young. “No free bathroom,” she said, pointing to a sign that read “no free bathroom,” and a jar that read, “Bathroom, $1.” We paid and used the bathroom, but before we left the woman called us back and handed us a handmade ornaments displayed by the cash register. “It’s for the child,” she said, as if we might mistake it for a gift for us. It was our first family ornament received in a time of waiting—for our child to come, to meet family, for what promised surprises might arrive. It was an advent gift in the liminal space between a here and a there.
When we got to my Mom’s house, I hung that little ornament on her tree near the top. And got to relive the gruff gas station woman look. It didn’t fit the elegant tree my Mom kept with its white lights and perfect tree topper—but it’s been on our tree every year for 37 years.
As you know, there are two kinds of people at Christmas. People who put white lights on their trees, like my Mom, and the type who put colored lights on their trees. For white light people, the ornaments match, there’s the angel on top, the tinsel is balanced from side to side, top to bottom—even around the back—you know, where nobody sees. Then there are colored light people, who may not be about the presentation at all, but the little story behind each and every ornament.
I’m of mixed heritage (white lights on Mom’s side; colors on Dad’s), so I’ve actually been known to mix strands in what I think is very Unitarian Universalist.
But my Grandma’s tree, now that took the white light thing to new levels. It was always donned in an elegant, light blue motif, and had to reach the ceiling, which wasn’t a problem until, when I was about seven, she moved to a house with vaulted ceilings. I remember the debate: How could we possibly get a tree that tall?
Luckily, Dad worked at a Christmas tree lot each year. He picked out the tallest, fullest, and greenest tree on the lot. Then, continuing to follow orders, he would take that fresh, green tree into a booth constructed of plywood and chicken wire, put the tree smack dab in the middle on a special stand, turned on the blower, and gave that thing an extra dose of artificial snow.
I learned years later, after Dad died, he didn’t spend Advent, the five weeks before Christmas, at the tree lot because he enjoyed the Santa booth, the petting zoo, the costumed elves running around. No, Dad worked there because it was the only way that he could afford to buy us presents. Dad was a colored light guy, all the way, and while his lights may have been banished to the outside of the house, Xmas was all about the stories he wanted to create.
Even still, I never understood the liminality of Advent (the betweenness, neither here… nor there…) until much later. Advent is about waiting in a period of holy discontent for something to pull the world out of confusion and self-inflicted suffering. And like no other time in my life, our society now looks very much like first-century Rome, a massive empire out of control, a global killing machine separating citizen from non-citizen, crushing the ideals on which it was founded, and losing its way.
The central image of Advent is John the Baptizer, in the Wilderness — wild, clothed in the skins of animals, dining on locusts dipped in wild honey, and raging against the machine of Roman occupation. Long before John baptized Jesus, he was part of a tradition of apocalyptic prophets who would gather throngs of people on the banks of the Jordan River hoping to reenact the Exodus, overthrow Rome, purify and rededicate the Temple, and restore peace to the world.
In this way, writes contemplative monastic John Raymond, Advent has a double meaning: it is a season to prepare for Christmas, when we celebrate Jesus’s birth; and it is a remembrance to wait for the coming of final peace to the world.
Early Christians crafted Advent after a pagan ritual of waiting for their god Adventus to come and dwell in the temple each new winter season. On the feast of Adventus, the usually closed temple would be opened for the anniversary of a god’s return, convenient for Christians to adopt for the coming of their Lord.
Many Unitarian Universalists might puzzle over how to approach this idea of Advent. Waiting for the arrival of the world’s savior doesn’t resonate for most of us, and although we grew from protestant roots, UU-Christians today are only one of many branches that extend through our churches.
How about you? Have you struggled to fit the meaning of Advent into your spiritual year? Or have you simply ignored it? Is it simply a thing of loveliness from another tradition’s liturgy? Or do you relate only to the marvelous array of Advent calendars, beyond the old chocolate ones, featuring books, bourbon, Hogwarts, Star Trek ships, and the one that keeps popping up on my Facebook feed, anime characters from Studio Ghibli films. Want. It. So. Bad.
Here’s the moment, back when I was an intern minister in Geneva, Illinois, when I started to understand this holiday of Advent. Surprisingly, it arose not from my Christian affinities, but from my practice of insight meditation. Yes, I’m a UU Christian with a Buddhist meditation practice and an Emersonian reverence for Nature. When I was an Air Force chaplain surrounded by all Evangelical colleagues, this made their poor heads hurt. But you get it? Right? Christian faith? Buddhist practice? Emerson fixation? You’ve been trained… I’ve seen Rev. Matthews sermons on the Transcendentalists.
And here it is—
No matter how many years one has meditated, there are times when a nagging thought or problem won’t leave you alone. That’s what happened to me one cold winter night after my internship supervisor told me that I WAS going to preach on the spiritual meaning of Advent—and it’d better be good.
So there I was, like every Tuesday evening, sitting on a cushion with my sangha. But this time, Advent was sitting with me. Advent is about waiting, so, leveraging all my then newfound meditation skills, I told my worry to wait, I’ll get to you later.
“No can do,” said the worry. You’re going to be up in front of the congregation, speaking about Advent! They want answers. They want inspiration. About Advent.
A half hour later, the conversation still raging, my leg falling asleep, a little thought emerged behind the turmoil.
“What are you doing here?” it asked.
My first response was, “Can’t you guys leave me alone?”
“Nope,” the little thought said, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sitting.”
“You do a lot of this. So why are you sitting here night after night on this silly little cushion of yours?
“To sit.”
“For?…”
“I’m just sitting and waiting.”
“Ah,” it said before vanishing, “waiting.”
Waiting, and listening—the practice of Advent
In this way all spiritual practices are a kind of waiting:
– in yoga, waiting for our bodies to release
– in music, waiting for those scales and exercises to lock in
– in gardening, waiting for our nurturing to bring forth sprouts
– in Lectio Divina, waiting for a text to speak
– with contemplative prayer, waiting for insights to emerge
– even regular attendance at church is a waiting, together, for new hope within the cycles of our lives
Sitting on that cushion in a cold meditation hall, I also realized the first week of December celebrates not only Advent, but Bodhi Day, the observance of when the historical Buddha sat down under a tree, awoke, and gained enlightenment. This confluence of observances—Bodhi Day and Advent—has brought a richness to this time for me. The story of the Buddha’s awakening is certainly one of waiting. After leaving home and seeing suffering for the first time, the future Buddha spent five years experimenting with different religious practices, some quite rigorous and severe. Finally, in exasperation, he rejected them all and just sat down. He didn’t have a clue what would happen next. He sat there about a week through discomfort, temptation, doubt—and then realized a path to end suffering.
The teachings of the Buddha, as he was thereafter known, assume that we can suffer less as we learn to accept all of life, not just the stuff we like and let go of craving to become at peace with the waiting. Cause it’s not over until it’s over.
So we have:
A man, sitting, waiting, not knowing what he waits for.
Three kings, waiting, not knowing what they wait for.
A world, waiting, not knowing what we wait for.
What a great mash up of observances.
And it makes sense. In the cold of the season, waiting for the warmth of hope can seem impossible.
Of course, this very time of transition for the church, this interim period, is a waiting time—and a lesson is this: if we just wait and don’t ponder its meaning, we’ve missed an opportunity. The spiritual life, for free thinkers, isn’t about adherence to dogma or creeds. It’s what Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, would call discernment of spirits: Where is the universe, in all its creative forms, leading us now? This tug relies on imagination, wisdom, and periods of quiet reflection. Change and transition are always happening around us, and we don’t always notice it. In times of transition spirit says pay attention, notice, wander a bit, remember who you are, discover where you’re going. Welcome to Advent.
I invite you to look into your religious practices to find meaning in this season of Advent for you. We have our Advent candles, they are burning reminders of the potential ahead: hope, peace, joy, and love all around us. What fires burning in your heart? Hope for justice? Hope for connection and acceptance? Hope that all will find and come to peace? Hope for joy, so challenging to feel in these times? Hope for Love, in which so many of us find God, Creator, Spirit? There’s a reason hope is the first candle. The rest all emerge from hope.
As we enter the season of Advent, I invite you to do it with intention, even with reason, looking to the light above, or in the metaphorical East, to guide your way through it.
I hope you, this Advent season, find a meaning or new insight that will bring more light into the world, and so I pray–
May all beings be full of hope and find joy,
May all beings feel lovingkindness in the waiting.
May peace prevail over all.