Hello Glen Morris,

With Advent comes the end of the Semester for us Seminary students. I find myself practicing choir music by humming to myself as I stress about and work on far too many papers. With the end of the term and Advent coming, despite the high amount of stress I am managing, I am drawn to pause and reflect.

As Reverend Michiko shared with us, this Advent theme is “From Generation to Generation”, and as a newlywed, my wife and I are, naturally, having discussions this Christmas about traditions we would like to keep, adapt, leave behind or start. We are asking ourselves constantly: what sort of stories do we want to tell our child(ren) in the future? What sort of things do we want them to remember when they think of Christmas? This is our first Christmas together as spouses. It is an exciting time indeed, but also a challenging one where I am grappling with things from my past.

Christmas brings with it a lot of emotions for many of us. For those, like myself who find it especially challenging, I want to remind you that you are never alone. Even though you may associate Christmas with a sense of loneliness or longing, I want to remind you that God is always with you and embracing you with love. I find myself dwelling on this especially because Christmas is the season where we seem to hold both past and present in some sort of strange, picturesque stasis.

For some of us, Christmas reminds us of a time when all of our loved ones were living. For others it is a reminder that life at home may have always been turbulent. If you are someone who struggles with Christmas, you, like myself, might be wondering to yourself how to bring more light to the season, how to make this season one of healing rather than pain.

This is why I love the fact that for us Christians, Christmas is not the end of the year but the beginning. Beginnings are hard and confusing, but it can be the catalyst for making an important change in our lives, one that can bring us great joy. That is why I have such a deep appreciation for the theme for this advent: for those of us who have experienced intergenerational trauma, Christmas can be a time of hurt, but it can also be a time that reminds us of all the many ways we want things to be different for the next generation.

A new beginning then is a chance to make those dreams a reality, and sometimes the first step to that new beginning can be strangely simple: what stories do you want your children to remember?

 

Peace to you all,

Jayden