For Rev. Tori Mullin, Advent is the season to summon an urgency to love and to welcome as Jesus did
This Advent season I have been spending a lot of time standing in my driveway, looking up at the stars. This is something I used to do as a child with my dad, and now I stand with my child trying to pick out constellations in the quiet winter dark.
Stars always remind me how small I am. The universe is so vast, and I’m just a blip along its timeline; a beautiful happenstance of molecules and atoms living here and now.
It is incredible to think of how our circumstances and choices create the story of our lives. I often think of the people I have met, the things I have had the opportunity to do, and wonder...what if I hadn’t been gifted that book that inspired me? What if I hadn’t noticed that flyer for that inspiring event? What if I had been two minutes slower...or faster...?
If I hadn’t accepted the offer to attend that tiny university in small-town New Brunswick, if I hadn’t gotten up the courage to ask the Dean of Arts to be my mentor, if I hadn’t opened up and shared with him the grief I was experiencing after my mom died, I’m not sure I would be here with you today.
My dad always tells me that we never know how much people are hurting. The dean offered me the immense gift of his time and his attention. He saw a bright energetic student who was struggling because their world was breaking apart. I’m not sure if he felt urgency or not, but the compassion he offered carried me through a very painful time, and ultimately helped me find my way back to Christ.
I was introduced to Celtic Christianity, to contemplative spirituality. Where I had been used to high energy and clear answers, he showed me a quiet, thoughtful faith that welcomed doubt and thrived in poetry. He showed me the breathing room that exists in the sacred, and can hold all of our pain and heartache.
People who work with teens and young adults know the urgency that they often experience. I think those who support friends, loved ones, and clients who struggle with suicidal ideation also understand. For many hurting in our world, there is an urgency that we need to meet with compassion.
This is the urgency that I hope we can bring to our whole church, personally and communally: a pressing call to love others the way Jesus loved.
The United Church of Canada is working on a vision for our church in the next ten years. Our national and regional leaders know that we are in a critical moment. I don’t need to show you charts and graphs to tell you that the church as we have known it is in decline. But as with climate change, we need to do more than know: we must also risk.
The climate crisis calls us to think about how we live individually and in community; it calls us to think about how we can prioritize climate care above our own convenience. It asks us to think about our privilege, about how this crisis will affect the disenfranchised among us the fastest and hardest. And it’s the same with the church. If we hope there will be a United Church presence in the future to come, we must do things differently.
This is not an urgent call to abandon everything that we hold dear, but rather to clarify our priorities. To make sure that we are aligned with God’s vision for us. It asks us to wonder whether our buildings are more important than our neighbors who are experiencing profound loneliness. It asks us to wonder whether comfort and familiarity is more important than making our communities of faith accessible to those who are disenfranchised.
Some lament the absence of generations missing from our communities of faith. For many, I know that this is deeply personal. We thought we were doing what was right, and it hurts to crack open that part of our story and wonder whether we got it wrong. But this is the courage that we are called to—the vulnerable work of self-reflection.
Perhaps we were not as welcoming as we thought. Perhaps we were not as accessible as we thought. Perhaps we upheld polite white English-centric culture in ways that hurt and rejected those who didn’t look, sound, or behave the way we did.
Although many see this narrative of decline with deep lament, there is a part of me that feels relief. In today’s climate if you choose to go to church, whether on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday afternoon, you do so because it means something to you. It is no longer a cultural obligation to go to church. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My spirituality, and the community I found, saved my life. It wasn’t because people felt like they had to be there. No, they were deeply faithful and compassionate people. They came alongside me when my heart was breaking, and the faith I had been given as a child could not bear it. They loved me, they carried me, and they gave me the gift of their own stories. That is how I found the God I could believe in.
On our Advent journey once again—the seasonal exercise of waiting expectantly for Jesus’s arrival—I hope some urgency will be sparked in you. An urgency that calls you to risk, to take advantage of every opportunity this wild and beautiful life has to offer. I hope that as a community of deeply faithful and compassionate people, you risk personal and communal transformation for God’s dream.
—Rev. Tori Mullin is Growth Animator for Eastern Ontario and Quebec
The views contained within these blogs are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of The United Church of Canada.