Today I want to point you to a post by another blogger: Advent: On Seeing Light And Poverty. It’s been nearly two weeks, and I’m still turning this post over in my mind. Light is a central theme of Christianity: light of the world, Christ our light, light to the nations. When we pray for light, it’s because light symbolizes hope. Security. Warmth. Homeyness. All that is true, but until I read Rae’s post, the obvious never occurred to me: when the light is turned on we see everything more clearly, the bad as well as the good, the difficult and uncomfortable realities as well as that which uplifts us.
During Advent, light is used symbolically every night, in a progressively more expansive way each week. This year, I realize that if Jesus associated himself with the poor among us (as often as you did it for the least of these, you did it for me), then this season requires us to face the unpleasant realities, both in the world around us, as I wrote about on Monday, and in ourselves, as I wrote about yesterday.
Kathleen M. Basi 