An Advent Reflection from Gabriela Denton
For our final 2023 Advent reflection, Gabriela has offered a beautiful, human, and powerful reflection on her life and the impact of the Christmas story:
“I recently got a tattoo of a jasmine flower that reminds me of a liminal time in my life: the last few weeks of pregnancy and the first weeks of my son Luca’s life. In Tallahassee, Florida, where I lived at the time, there is about a month when the whole city seems to burst into bloom. Jasmine flowers grow everywhere, climbing up chain-link fences, mailboxes, the sides of trees & houses. It was jasmine season
around the time of my due date, and now my memories of that time are suffused with their scent. I was aware that one season of life was passing away, never to come again in quite the same way, and yet I was full of excitement to meet Luca and the joy of a new life coming into the world.
In Advent, we say goodbye to one year, and prepare to welcome in a new one, with all its potential for both good and bad. In Advent, we live in a liminal space between darkness and light as the days get shorter and we wait for the turning of the sun. Into this thin space in the year, Christians celebrate another baby being born, a baby who represents both divine power and total vulnerability. After caring for a baby, I now understand that everyone alive today has been loved and cared for by someone, somewhere- we come into this world so vulnerable that there is simply no way to grow up without being cared for by other people. We need each other.
Perhaps because of my questions & doubts or perhaps because there seems to be even more suffering and darkness in the world, Advent feels different this year. I’m sorting through old habits and beliefs that don’t feel right any more, but in the midst of that, I come back to the image of a vulnerable, baby Jesus, who arrives in the midst of old and new, loss and life, suffering and hope. He arrives and offers only himself and his presence — no solutions (no matter how often I wish he had them!) but his tears and
compassion and willingness to feel pain. I am taking this Advent season as an invitation to be incarnational, by which I mean, fully present to my life, to the people I meet and live with and work with, and to myself.”
Gabriela Denton