Advent and expectant waiting

Entering Advent:  
Think pregnant, men!
Think!  Pregnant men!

On Tuesday mornings I meet with a group of guys to pray and share our reflections on the following Sunday’s Gospel.  Jesus is meeting with his homies too, warning them to be vigilant while they wait for change-a-coming.  "Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life….” 

I look around the room.  It’s 7 AM, for God’s sake.    I don't think these guys were carousing last night.  So I looked again at the language.  Carousing…drunkenness…anxieties. Some change in wording might be helpful, I thought, in looking at how we ought to spend this time waiting for Christ to be born. 

Carousing makes me think of bumping shoulders in busy, noisy, senseless places and not going home.  Carousing for us might be shopping, I think, on that morning after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  It might be buying more stuff.  Oh, it’s for others, of course, and so giving is in the middle of it, but it does get distracting, no? 

Drunkenness for us might giving in again and again not to booze, but to whatever addiction we use to avoid whatever we ought to be doing to become more completely who we are.  Surfing the web aimlessly?  Watching TV?  Working?  Eating?  Worrying?  We all know our addictions.

Anxieties is a word that works just as it is, at least for me.  Recently retired, I am in varying states of anxiety about living responsibly on what we have saved.  I worry about the cars breaking down, and the price of gas, and how we can stay connected with the kids without blowing the budget.  Like our addictions, our obsessions are not hidden from us – not really.

We do stuff that’s bad for us.  We take in junk and let it rattle around in us, because the rattling saves us from silence. 

I looked around the room and said, “Imagine if we were pregnant, guys.” 

Imagine if we were pregnant guys!  We’d learn pretty quickly that carousing would be bad for the baby that grows best in stillness.  And the stuff we take in compulsively – the stuff that is not healthy for us – is doubly bad for the baby.  Anxiety that constricts our blood vessels would make it tough on the baby’s, too.

How different would we be if we were pregnant?  I found out that the word “expecting” arose in the 50’s when Lucille Ball’s pregnancy in real life created a problem with the I Love Lucy television show.  The word “pregnant” was not acceptable for TV censors.  So they used the word “expecting”. 

So this Advent, What are you expecting?  Or should I say…What?  Are you expecting!?