Last night I rearranged my drawers. Not rearranged really…more cleaned them out. My suitcase from Christmas vacation unloaded and open atop my bed, I put clothes rarely worn into it. Summer tops I had thought might be good for layering but had laid in my drawer unworn since 80 degrees, skirts from my closet that hug and cinch at my thighs because they’re 3 to 8 years old, bras that my breats never grew into despite what my mama had said about hers growing after she was married (now I realize this was just because she was only 18, rather than because she married), old tennis shorts which are too god awful to pull out even to wear to the gym, socks that have long since lost their other, and jeans that made me swear when I try to put them on. I decided that it was time to make a new start. I tossed out old underwear. I made room for new clothes purchased over Christmas break on the top of each pile. I even pledged to think about my underwear choice each morning instead of just grabbing whatever old pair was on top.

What brought all of this about you might ask? Well, well, well…very interesting question. Let’s start at the beginning….

A few months ago a friend at work loaned me a book called Girl Meets God. My friend raved about the book and I wasn’t reading anything at the time so I borrowed it happily. It looked like a fairly conservative Christian book likely to remind me of my youth and be nothing more than a pleasant but cutting walk down memory lane. What it turned out to be instead was something quite significant for me. The author Laura Winner writes about her journey from Judaism to Christianity. Being the quintessential English major in college, I was drawn in by the first pages as Winner describes a trip to Oxford, Mississippi in all the ways an English person might. Oxford as the birth place of Faulkner…with an old flame, she visits his grave accompanied by shy smiles and a bottle of red wine. She’s there to present a paper on the Civil Rights Movement. He’s there to transition her into the next chapter.

The book cascades into a rhythm of the rhythms of the two religions she’s known. Myself having recently grown disturbed by the looseness of my own church–preaching on whatever fits the pastor’s present fancy, from books to art to methods for happiness–I became quickly envious of the rhythms of the calendar year as celebrated in the Jewish religion. At one point, I even said, jealously, I wish my religion had such rhythm…was so grounded into each year of life. Two chapters later I saw how charismatic and nondenominational my own spiritual journey had become. Winner, led by a driving curiosity in the Christianity of her Southern heritage, began to see the wonders of the seasons that accompany Christian faith in an Episcopal Church. From Advent to Lent to Holy Week to Pentecost and back to Advent again, she finds herself settling in naturally and rhythmically to Christianity.

As I read and heard her thoughts, her retelling of each spiritual season, I began to have the same longing. I longed to be grounded in religion of Christianity with order and days to remind me of all Christ has done and does do for me. The book stayed with me and when it came to Advent Season, I made a decision.

One Sunday morning, having skipped several services at my church over the past few months, I decided I wanted to celebrate Advent in a very real and tangible way. Talking to a friend online, I decided to go to an Episcopal Church during the Advent season. It was such an immediate decision that unshowered I scooted out the door not ten minutes later to catch a service down the street at an Episcopal Church. And there it was…Advent scriptures, Liturgical prayers grounded in years and years of others, a sermon about being expectant for Christmas, for Christ. I sang the Lord’s prayer with them and felt honored to step into the tradition.

Over the next few weeks, I tried to think about Christ’s coming as I purchased and decorated my first real Christmas tree, drank eggnog with spiced rum and without, bought and made my Christmas presents, and listened to Sufjan’s Christmas albums. Christmas Eve my husband and I found a midnight service to attend at an Episcopal Church in his hometown and celebrated the coming of Christ in scripture, prayer, and song. Like Winner, I drank up the liturgy and the scripture and the tradition of it all. Like Winner, I found myself feeling grounded and uplifted and lightened when I left each service. Having come from an anti-liturgical Christian background, this was not at all what I had been taught to expect. But having spent the last year and a half in a church that neglected scripture, only using it to accompany the pastor’s own psychological theory on living life, I found that it was fresh water to my weary and dry soul.

And so we come back to my underwear drawer. I find that by clinging to, by sinking into, and engaging with the season of Advent, I am more ready for the start of a new year. I am more ready to start anew, to see New Year’s in a different way. Resolutions don’t seem so silly at the moment, but rather seem finely timed. I’ve purchased a new calendar and daily planner with thought and care having considered what I’d like to focus on in this new year, with this new start. I find myself, having engaged with Christ and his coming–his humble, sacrificial coming–ready to make necessary changes in my life. And I feel thankful for the upcoming year to better myself for Christ, for myself, and for the many others who are affected by my comings and goings.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.