Oh Beloveds, it’s Advent! I let out a little sigh of relief yesterday because boy, do I need this season. I’m ready for all of the devotionals and rituals and reflections on expectant hope and joy.

What gets me about this time of year is the opportunity to reflect on the reality that God inhabited the same world we do—that God breathed the same air and dressed Godself with the same flesh and the same bones. God became fragile and vulnerable and dwelt among the ordinary. I love how The Message puts it: God “moved into the neighborhood.”

In this way, God didn’t just tell us to love our neighbors. God became one.

For Jesus, becoming a neighbor meant fighting for the dignity of his fellow neighbors. It meant disrupting the status quo—not just by turning over tables, but by feasting and celebrating with those deemed not worthy. Jesus both instigated confrontation and inspired celebration.

It was raw and it was real and I wouldn’t want the God I worship to be anything less than all of those things.

Whew.

In honor of this season and my excitement for it, I decided to do a short series of videos on my reflections. The first video is on hope and it was originally recorded for the Rise community.

I know I talk about hope a lot. I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of it because it’s such a...strange thing, isn’t it? It can take on so many meanings and be used in so many ways.

I wonder if I’m consumed with the notion of hope because Scripture is dripping with its fragrance and every poet or prophet or person in the Bible speaks of it so differently. They make it their own and that gives me permission to make it my own, too. Depending on what day it is.

In this video, I reflect on Maya Angelou’s poem “A Plagued Journey” (h/t to The Loft UMC for turning my attention to Angelou’s poetry this Advent) alongside some of my thoughts on a theology of hopelessness.

A Plagued Journey

BY MAYA ANGELOU

There is no warning rattle at the door
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.
Safe in the dark prison, I know that
light slides over
the fingered work of a toothless
woman in Pakistan.
Happy prints of
an invisible time are illumined.
My mouth agape
rejects the solid air and
lungs hold. The invader takes
direction and
seeps through the plaster walls.
It is at my chamber, entering
the keyhole, pushing
through the padding of the door.
I cannot scream. A bone
of fear clogs my throat.
It is upon me. It is
sunrise, with Hope
its arrogant rider.
My mind, formerly quiescent
in its snug encasement, is strained
to look upon their rapturous visages,
to let them enter even into me.
I am forced
outside myself to
mount the light and ride joined with Hope.

Through all the bright hours
I cling to expectation, until
darkness comes to reclaim me
as its own. Hope fades, day is gone
into its irredeemable place
and I am thrown back into the familiar
bonds of disconsolation.
Gloom crawls around
lapping lasciviously
between my toes, at my ankles,
and it sucks the strands of my
hair. It forgives my heady
fling with Hope. I am
joined again into its
greedy arms.