Light a Candle is a music & words series for Advent. I’ll be sharing some full songs of mine t
hat I think of as “advent songs” as well as some reflections on hope, peace, joy, and love. -Kyle
The wild man in animal hides came preaching a good news of repentance. Only his repentance was no road sign in the American South urging folk to turn or burn. He knew too well it was already burning.
It’s been burning a long, long time.
John the Baptizer, belly full of locusts and wild honey, came a-buzzing about a new way, a God-dreamed highway being prepared for all those willing to see.
This was the highway of peace being built (or was it already there?) right in the belly of the beast. Ripe and ready to be seen. Ready to be taken.
But to see this highway—the highway of peace—you have to turn around. The old way of seeing ain’t gonna work. Never has. Cause we all know too well where that highway has gone and where it always goes. No matter what hungry empire paves the way. That highway feeds on the weak and lowly, sends its poor off to war, and constricts the imaginations of everyone in the way. Its appetite grows. It’s always under construction. Lead, follow, or get trampled.
John the Baptizer saw that highway for what it was.
Poets and prophets always have. They always will.
His message was simple: turn around.
Turn around.1
Because the kind of seeing on the bad news highway is not the same kind of seeing on the good news highway. These roads criss-cross and weave. Sometimes you think you’re on the way of peace only to find yourself broken down on side of the road being helped out by some homesick soldier looking to make amends.
Though you can’t always tell that road from this road, you know in your bones those who make peace along the way. You savor them. You love them.
—
In his popular book Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer says that when one door closes a whole world opens up. You could spend your whole life chasing one dream job or a dream relationship or any number of things — only to come to a dead end. You lose your job. Or you get that dream job and then want to lose it. You lose that person you love. Your health is a mess. The things that once filled you and fulfilled you no longer do. Things don’t work out as planned. You followed the path. You followed the rules. You hit a dead end.
What would happen if you turned around?
What else could you see?
On this week in Advent where we light the peace candle, my heart’s heavy from wars thousands of miles away, from violence a few miles from my front door, and from the daily personal struggle to not fall for the big lie of the bad news highway. Heavy from the invisible ways we are all complicit in systems beyond our grasp.
If I light my little candle of peace, will it really change anything? If you light yours, will it change anything either?
Yet I suppose not lighting a candle of peace would be its own kind of violence. The quiet violence of giving in, giving up, or going along. The quiet violence of saying that’s just the way it is. That is the big lie.
So I’ll light a candle, this my candle of turning around from the machinations of the war machine and turning toward a helpless infant born to usher in a highway of peace.
So I’ll light a candle when abbas, adonais, and allahs reverberate off the same tired rubble.
So I’ll light a candle because a wild, camel-clad man’s call still somehow beckons from a riverbank in the desert:
Turn around.
And by the candlelight, I start to see a whole new world.
—
“Surprises”
I wrote this song on a rainy summer week, hence the first line about mushrooms in circles. Thematically though, I think it’s pretty “advent-y” as it deals with waiting and longing for hope. Enjoy!
The Greek word metanoia means quite literally to “turn” or “turn around.” It communicates a re-envisioning and re-imagining of one’s basic commitments. It’s bigger than “repenting” for one’s misdeeds. Metanoia is a summons to a new way of life, a whole new world.