Advent and the Power and the Glory

There are no such things as normal people. So I am in good company.

Which brings me to the celebration of my seventy-fourth Advent. During the first ten, I had guileless innocence for a companion, but the last sixty-four have been fraught with varying degrees of problematical belief in the Virgin Birth, and doubt and questioning about the other subsequent mysterious and compelling tales about the man, Jesus, whose life began as that babe born to a virgin in a Bethlehem manger.

Twenty-four hours before Thanksgiving Day, and four days before the first Sunday of Advent 2019, two events occurred: I became sick with a “yukky-woe-is-me” cold-flu combination, and had a vibrant dream in which I sat on the piano bench next to Rick Blaine and Sam, his pianist, smoked a Chesterfield and sipped whiskey in Rick’s Café in Casablanca.

The non-life-threatening illness caused weight loss, misery, exhaustion, and days of feeling fragile and vulnerable in my weakened state. In the dream Rick uttered one of the movie’s famous lines: “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine. Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’”

During Advent, restless faith and reluctant discipleship notwithstanding, I read Matthew 1:18 through Matthew 2:12, the tax collecting apostle’s account of Jesus’ birth. Other stories—The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, about personal sacrifice for those we love; The Fir Tree by H. C. Andersen, encouraging embrace of the present over focus on the future; The Night Before Christmas by C. Moore, regarding child-like hope; and A Christmas Carol by C. Dickens, about suffocating bitterness turning into freeing love—all play a role in my annual Advent reading list.

But this year the Thanksgiving eve dream and Rick’s words from the movie have haunted me, and as I sniffled and coughed, sought belly-ache relief, I wondered if there could be an interpretation of the dream that I was missing.

The morning of the first Sunday of Advent arrived. Pre-dawn chills failed to keep me between the sheets as I felt compelled to search for new Advent reading. Scanning the bookshelf in front of my desk my eyes lit upon the book I’d been promising to reread for a dozen years, Graham Greene’s masterpiece, The Power and the Glory.

Now, suddenly my dream made sense. Rick Blaine’s reference to gin joints resonated with my library of books, among which was one that had been “seeking” me and from which I’d hidden for twelve years—the story of the whiskey priest.

Why now? I questioned. The answer, I knew, lay hidden in the narrative of the hunted priest who steadfastly pursues his sacramental duties as a fully fallible human being.

The questioning turned to apathetic reading as I struggled through part one of the novel, frequently dozing-off, having to reread glazed-over paragraphs while wondering if there might not have been good reason why I hadn’t revisited Greene’s classic.

Stories about a curmudgeonly old employer, Santa preparing to descend a chimney, a misguided fir tree, and children exchanging gifts took on renewed interest. My friend and editor, Herta, encouraged me: “Oh no, don’t stop, it’s a wonderful story, an engrossing classic. Keep at it!”

I did.

At some point, and it matters not when or at what scene in the hunted priest’s travels and travails, I became his companion, an uncertain, questioning human being attempting to find and embrace a spiritual Mystery, truth beyond gratitude for nature’s granting my birth, and owing nature my immanent death.

That first Advent week involved not only parceling-out over the counter meds for congestion, a runny nose, elderberry lozenges for unexpected spates of coughing, but also one in which I didn’t want my fictitious companion’s journey to end, and so I rationed daily readings based on his days of travel and sleep.

When the whiskey priest’s story ended in his death, an inevitable outcome, his commitment to the God of his calling stayed with me. Though he had broken the vow of celibacy by having a mistress and fathering a daughter, and consistently flouted the laws of the land he remained, to his last breath, a searching follower of God’s son, the babe born of a virgin. When his prayers seemed hollow, he found grace and God’s presence in the eucharist, the bread and wine bringing his faith alive.

His story, read this early Advent period, gives me hope as I fumble my way physically and spiritually into another season of Advent. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “The coming of God [Advent] is truly not only glad tidings, but first frightening news for anyone who has a conscience… [Jesus will] confront you in every person that you meet.”

Reuniting with the whiskey priest again, but [really] for the first time, attests to me of the truth in Bonhoeffer’s words.

And now, as I shuffle among Christmas stories, the comfortable and familiar ones I’ve grown fond of revisiting each year I do so with the memory of the mule-riding, fallible yet tenaciously spiritual whiskey priest at my side. And I am more assured than ever that there are no normal people, and I am in good company as time goes by.

*image courtesy of saintedwardparish.org

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