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Garrison Keillor tells the story about a young boy who wanted a Lionel Train Set for Christmas.
The father, of a family of seven, was in the hospital and unable to work. The mother, worried about money did her best to prepare the children, "I'm sorry, but we won't be able to have much Christmas this year."
This news was not easy to swallow for the eldest boy, aged ten, who had been dropping hints since September about the Lionel train set, deluxe with the livestock loader. He even mentioned it frequently to God, reminding God that the train was on display in Lundgren's store window. On Christmas morning, the boy opened his gifts; a pocketknife, wrapped homemade candies, and new pair of winter boots. There was no train. After Christmas dinner, the boy asked if he could go outside. He needed some place to nurse his sadness. As he tromped along in his new boots, he walked out on the iced-over lake, and let the tears flow.
After enough time passed, the boy turned to head back home. As he turned, with the sun nearly set, he saw the lights of the town shimmering before him. He squinted his eyes and could pick out his own house, on the left, not far from shore. It all looked, he realized, exactly like a town in a Lionel train layout, and if he squinted just right, the smoke rising from the chimney look like a steam engine.
Then he knew; the whole world is a Lionel Train set. And he walked home with a lighter step, in his brand new Christmas boots.
"In technology you have this horizontal progress, where you must start at one point and move to another and then another," Thomas Merton once commented. "But that is not the way to build a life of prayer. In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. All we need is to experience what we already possess."
That sure sounds good... until you don't see the train set under the tree on Christmas morning.
My favorite part of the story?
The boy walked with a lighter step.
With awareness comes gratitude.
With gratitude weights are lifted, and there is a sense of peace.
For the Christian faith, it is Advent, waiting for the birth of the Prince of Peace. With its requisite spat over whether we use Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. What a worthy debate, as we jostle one another, both hands loaded with shopping bags from Macys, Nordstrom and the Gap. I can do December sales with the best of them, so it is wise not to pretend that words like Merry Christmas can be elevated to a moral concern when our primary preoccupation (or worship?) is consumerism. Say what you want, but nothing will change until we move from being a stuff-oriented society to being a relationship-oriented society.
This much is true: Long lines are perfect for eavesdropping. Where truth is always stranger than fiction. One shopper stands at the counter of Restoration Hardware, two bags on one arm, a cell phone in the opposite hand, held up to her ear. Those of us in the long line are hostage to her one-sided conversation, for which there is (unfortunately) neither volume nor mute dial on her telephone voice.
"It's so sad," she is telling her cell phone. "I don't think people really see the meaning of Christmas. It feels so secular now. I don't know what's happening to our culture. . .I know, I know, and Gina's school, they won't even let her sing Away in a Manger."
The clerk motions to the woman talking on the phone.
The woman answers the clerk in a clipped tone, "NO, put that on the Visa card too. And I want separate bags for those."
She continues, to the phone, as if this has all been one long sentence, "Okay. Gotta go, I'm am soooo crazy right now. So much last minute stuff to do. Let's get together for a latte later."
When she walks past, I think about the "hope and fears of all the years," and I wish her a Merry Christmas.
Merton goes on to say, "If we really want prayer, we must slow down to a human tempo and we'll begin to have time to listen. And as soon as we listen to what's going on, things will begin to take shape by themselves. The reason why we don't take time is a feeling that we have to keep moving. This is a real sickness."
My friend tells me about a man who takes his son to movie matinees. That is not unusual. Except this: the boy, his son, is deaf. The man is accustomed to questioning.
"Why do you do this to your son, if he cannot hear the movie?"
Or, "If your son can't hear, what value is there?"
The Father smiles and says, "You are right. He cannot hear. But I wonder. In the movie we watched last weekend. What color were the walls in the house? How many windows where there in the main house? What color was the heroine's hair? And her eyes?"
So. I guess the value depends upon what we are paying attention to.
Here's the deal: The season of Advent means, literally, "to wait." Wait implies that we are paying attention, (one would assume), to something. Specific. It's just that modern life has rewired our expectations. Waiting is okay. However, whatever it is, we want it now. As if waiting is a test with unambiguous accurate answers.
Could it be, that (like the hearing-impaired boy), the value of waiting, depends upon what we are paying attention to?
Wait is most certainly a word we know. And loathe. And wish to eliminate. (I read that the average person will spend 5 years of his or her life waiting in line, 2 years playing telephone tag, and six months sitting at red lights. That is over 7 and half years of waiting, at best, doing nothing, or at worst experiencing great aggravation! The bottom line is that even in our fast-paced world, with postmodern conveniences, and instant gratification tools, we are all waiting for something. And it doesn't seem to help that we can text while we wait.)
Tell me again the reason for Advent season?
So I wonder.
What if the power is in the waiting itself? In other words, in the space waiting creates. What if, it's not about getting over the waiting, or having answers for the waiting. In other words, it is not about absence, but awareness. Truth is, we don't know what Mary learned as she pondered. What we do know is that she made space. To receive. To welcome. To invite.
There is an import, weight, value and substance in the very space that waiting allows.
What if the waiting of Advent is the story of a God who pitches his tent among us, even as we live in the midst of a culture grown weary from too much work, from too much speed, from to much fear and from too much war?
A waiting that provides a space for recollection.
For what we value.
For those things and people, for which we are grateful.
For the gift of simple grace.
I wish to all Sabbath Moment readers a blessed Advent and Christmas. And to my Jewish brothers and sisters, a blessed Hanukkah. Stay connected: terryhershey.com terry's schedule | 
