Twenty years ago in Germany, at the time of his brain injury, my son Karl was only on the cusp of three, but the boy could talk.

Like, boy could that boy talk.

Karl’s language skills in both German and English were well-beyond his few years, and I am self-aware enough to recognize that I was therefore an impossible mother to be around.

For example, my son could instinctively tell whether he was speaking to a German or an English speaker, and Karl would flip that neural switch so fast that in a nanosecond his thoughts were translated into the language of the moment.

I’ll never forget a play date when he and his little friend Jan were up to some sort of game, and they wanted the adults’ attention to show off their Spiel, so Karl waved excitedly to the German parents sipping Kaffee and eating Kuchen auf dem Sofa, and said, “Warte! Warte!” and then to my late husband and to me, who were entirely savoring the sweets and the scene, “Wait! Wait!”

The TBI has taken many a thing, but thankfully, the accident did not steal Karl’s capacity to understand German.

Now, when my son proudly if slowly teaches someone “Schmetterling,” or “Schluckauf” and, of course, our family’s motto “Doch,” his German skills create not just a defiant thrill within me (perhaps crassly almost a celebratory middle finger to all that that horrible day took).

Instead, Karl’s German has been also like a precious tool salvaged after a fire: a bit scarred, but nonetheless nostalgia and function rediscovered and repurposed.

His brain injury, like that of many others, means that he has fewer “neural highways” for communication to traverse. So when he and I are, say, in a public place with lots of noise, or several conversations around him are going on quickly at once, or there is commotion at home (although we’re generally quiet folk, we do have four large and effervescent dogs, and my husband and I might simply be existentially compelled to rock an occasional 70s/80s throwback jam in the kitchen), it’s easy for Karl to feel overwhelmed by the extraneous action and noise.

However, I can read this son of mine, and I’m well-wired to be extra alert to his needs, so when I perceive that he’s feeling snowed by all that’s whirling around him, I’ll simply speak to Karl auf Deutsch, and the novel Sprache will cut right on through everything.

Karl will immediately recall the German, recall my voice, and recall himself in the midst of it all.

He’s reminded of what he knows, he feels again grounded, and all the rest is relativized by that.

Advent, I’ve decided, does precisely the same thing.

The abrasive texts for which this season is somewhat famous, why they cut through the cacophony of December like a hot shovel through blizzard drifts.

Capitalism and culture have made this month noisy, drowning out the quieter Advent summons of waiting, wondering, and preparing.

We can barely hear the tradition calling to us, “Warte! Warte! Wait. Wait.”

But when one inclines an ear—perhaps rather opens one—Advent re-verberates with its own clarion to re-call us to who we are; to re-collect our otherwise distracted, disparate selves; and be re-minded of who we are and whose we are and how these truths interplay with the present moment, whatever it may be.

The call of repentance especially, that unequivocal demand that threads itself through the texts of this season?

Well, I do believe it serves a purpose like the German which calls Karl back to himself when there’s so much surrounding him that’s superfluous to his well-being.

This year, as I’ve read and heard and pondered the assigned texts of this season, I’ve been especially struck by the harshness of John the Baptist’s words calling us to repent.

John sounds not a little irritated.

After this election, when so many people—people that Luke most especially seems to lift up as cherished precious ones of God—are exponentially more threatened, I’m feeling more than irritated too.

In fact I’m fearful. Incredulous. Indignant. Furious.

I’m so very bewildered and angry at siblings in the faith—and in the name of their faith—who voted for a candidate so brazenly antipathetic to the ways of Jesus.

Just this week, in this very season when we recall that the refugee Jesus and his family had to flee to Egypt because of political persecution, we hear that our next president, this hawker of base power and policy and piety who has the audacity to even hawk his very own Bible—you’d think he’d have read it—is promising to enter churches—churches!!—and clear from these self-declared and Spirit-led sanctuaries modern-day families of Jesus.

People who voted for him knew that he intended to do such a thing.

They did.

And while clutching their pearls and their crosses they voted for him anyway, betraying the consistent message in all of Scripture to welcome the stranger; betraying Matthew 25 where we hear Jesus say that we are called to minister to the Least of These; and therefore they are betraying Jesus himself.

Repent! I want to scream with the energy of brother John. Repent, you brood of vipers!

But, sigh, that rage takes so much energy, exactly the thing of which I don’t seem to have much in store.

Instead I do have grief.

I do have grief.

In fact, two weekends ago, my family and I went to the St. Olaf Christmas Festival with my daughter, a student there.

I found myself weeping through the whole show.

I was a blubbering mess.

My family and I were in the accessible row, the last one on the main floor, which meant that the choirs assembled directly behind us at the beginning and end of the concert.

After the lights went on, and the audience stood to clap and cheer, I tried to turn around to the singers to thank them, but simply couldn’t: their Advent and Christmas tunes cut too close to the core of my heart, and were so far away from the reality of this present moment that I could hardly bear it.

Clap, wipe a tear, stifle a sob, repeat: that’s all I was good for.

Weeping in that darkened space, it dawned on me that I don’t have the energy this Advent to express the anger that I feel, but mourning and worry?

They are totally at the ready for those who cause harm in the world, and those who suffer the harm, not only because so much pain is in play, but because the very movement that is sent to alleviate it—Christianity—is rather the very source of it.

In my snarkiest of moments, when I see what is being done in the name of Jesus, I feel Holden Caulfield stirring in my soul, that glorious character in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (a book which MAGA of course has banned), who said while watching a nauseously gaudy Rockettes Christmas show, that “…old Jesus probably would have puked if he could see it.”

But in my more generous moments, I’ve come to realize that the word I’m feeling compelled to cry out in the wilderness that is our nation these days is less “Repent!” than “Recall!”

I feel compelled to beg people, especially Christians, to please, please recall who they are.

“Recall,” I believe, is “Repent;” just in a different key.

When we implore someone to recall themselves, we’re telling them that we know them.

In fact, if we are in a position to cry out “Recall who you are!” we probably know them better than they presently do.

I think that’s the urgency we hear and feel behind John the Baptist and Jesus these days: the word “Repent” and the way they each express it in the texts that tumble out from the preachers’ mouths these Advent Sundays is passionate, desperate, and angry.

It’s as if they are saying, “You’ve forgotten yourself!” “You know better!” and even “You are better than this.”

They are angry, but (and psychologists and linguists back me up here, because both albeit in different manners recognize the overlap between anger and grief) I believe that John and Jesus are also mourning the loss of the identity of those who once knew the Way.

They are saying, “We know you better than you do. Recall who you are.”

Now, who among us does not need to be invited—or cajoled—to repent, to recall.

We certainly need more than a season for it, that much is true.

But Advent understands the assignment.

The essence of Advent is to remind us of the essence of who we are.

Even if harshly, Advent jolts us into remembering that we are baptized; it reminds us that we are intended to serve the least of these and the outcasts; it reestablishes the Christian definition of power which is one of humble service rather than authoritarian might; and it restores our identity as yoked to Jesus rather than to the Herods or Caesers of our day.

And we have our share, that’s for blame sure.

Advent re-calls us, and helps us recall ourselves.

It’s been said that in German, with its relatively harsh tones, even the words, “I love you,” make a person feel like they’re in trouble. Ich liebe dich!

But they say “I love you” even so.

Please, then, despite the clanging of premature Christmas and the barking of our own Herods and Caesers, please hear the Word of the Lord:

“Repent!”

“Recall.”

And, with a tip of my hand to the season yet to come:

Rejoice.

This week inaugurates the Advent week of Gaudete, Joy.

Exactly when we get closer to bleakness, we are summed to somehow, find joy.

Words uttered in anger and dismay are nonetheless words uttered because even if we...

Recall!

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