Three Advents
This is a piece I wrote for Advent 2019, as an invitation to participate in the work and welcome of Kinbrace. Hope, peace, joy, and love be yours in this season of great anticipation.
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At Kinbrace, our lives revolve around arrivals. Next week alone, three new families will enter our doors, receiving temporary housing and wrap-around support during their first few months in Canada. It’s almost unheard of to say three welcomes at once, but, then again, it seems rather fitting given the season...
I have been shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition and, each year in the weeks leading up to Christmas, we mark the season of Advent. Filled with anticipation and preparation, stillness and contemplation, it's a season whose very name means “arrival”.
I think about the families who will be welcomed next week, first setting down suitcases in a new apartment, meeting the staff one-by-one, attending their first Tuesday dinner with a degree of trepidation, discovering a neighbour who speaks their mother tongue, sharing tea with our Hosts. I think of our long history of “strangers” becoming family as trust—imperceptibly, yet undeniably—grows between us.
A friend of mine just had her first child, and in the excitement and angst-filled days leading up to birth, she bemoaned: “A stranger is coming to live with us!”. We laughed because it was absurd...and because it was true. A stranger, yes—but a stranger who will be, and already is, family.
Mohammad is a friend and former resident who always reminds us of this reality. “When I come to Kinbrace,” he says, pulling up a chair at Tuesday dinner, “I’m with my family. It’s like being back in my parents’ home with all our relatives.” I watch a two-year-old climb up on his knee as he strikes up a conversation about the latest football match. Yes, he’s among family here.
As we anticipate three arrivals next week, Mohammad reminds me to expect family to show up at the door. Unknown, and yet kin; unfamiliar, and full of God’s glory—like a child in a manger.
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But the season of Advent is really about two arrivals. The child in the manger is the first. The second? The long-awaited arrival of goodness and justice that will spill over into all things; darkness being overwhelmed by light. We’re not there. And many days this is painfully evident.
For Mohammad, while he is safe in Canada, his family awaits protection. All is not well.
Every arrival is also a heart-wrenching departure. Our celebrations inevitably get cut short, and our nights are not-so-silent. Living in the tension between Advents, we can’t really say “welcome” without acknowledging that we haven’t arrived.
At Kinbrace, this means that hospitality happens in community; we receive each new neighbour with an offer of solidarity. So our welcome gets fleshed out at the dinner table, and on walks to the grocery store, and in a quiet grief shared.
I want to invite you into next week’s three arrivals: three opportunities to recognize family in strangers; three “welcomes” which acknowledge that finding home is unfinished business, and what’s needed along the way is friendship.
Consider how you might offer your own gift of welcome. May hope stir in you this Advent season.
