Emmanuel Episcopal Celebrates Advent as a Birthing Time

— by Margie Doyle —

(Orcas Issues will share Christmas reflections with our faith communities in the next two weeks. Following is the first such article.)

Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Main Street in Eastsound, Nov. 2006. Margie Doyle photo

Reverend Kate Kinney, who with her husband Reverend Wray MacKay is Interim Minister at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, sat down on a sunny and cold December day recently to talk about the coming of Christmas and the observances that will be held at the Episcopal Church in the coming weeks.

Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is “a quiet inner time we have to gift ourselves with — a womb time in the midst of expectations and consumerism. It’s a time of looking at our unresolved challenges and giving new birth,” Kinney says.

“We can get down in the dumps, with the built-up expectations of the perfect family, the perfect Christmas, but at this time, God is everywhere, in joy or pain, in solitude or family — it’s a birthing time.

“A time of planting seeds and healing, in imagination or memory.”

We can observe Advent, and prepare to celebrate Christmas, Kinney says, by asking ourselves, “What is it we need to be pregnant with to come into our lives?”

But, we can’t give birth by ourselves, she adds. “Christmas is a time to seek out community, open doors, build fires and acknowledge that the Nativity is everywhere, in homes, in the marketplace, in our family and friends and in our desire for family and friends.”

With the understanding that God “is being birthed in me and in community,” Kinney says, “It’s important as a community, if we know we have neighbors in a lonely space  to reach out to them. We all need help to see God in us, God with us — Emmanuel.

“God doesn’t live in a vacuum; we can create our own joy; find our own small thing that gives us a present. It comes out of a totally unknown space, but we have to work for it. Every heart can crack open with joy — the joy of opening ourselves to each other.”

Kate Kinney’s own cherished  rituals include placing candles in the windows as a welcome to Mary and the Child; and singing in the choir at church on Christmas Eve — “Singing in community is so powerful. And going out and finding the perfect branch or tree, and bringing the pagan wilderness inside the home and sanctifying it. and reminding us that we’re connected to all creation.”

But foremost among her Christmas traditions was baking with her grandmother, whose love was “overpowering.”

“Baking cookies with her was as ritualistic an experience one could have,” Kate says, and leads her to the belief that “women are the first makers of the eucharistic, the sharing of sacred food — and not just in church.”

The Episcopal Parish Advent Calendar will celebrate many of these reflections of the Advent and Christmas seasons:

• St Nicholas Day on Sunday, Dec. 7 at the 10 a.m. service always a surprise with a visit from St. Nicholas himself.
• On Dec. 15 from 5 to 6 p.m. there will be a quiet Advent labyrinth inside the Parish Hall with candles and a series of solstice and advent poems for reflection. “It will be a quiet time, which folks may need,” says Kinney.
• Sunday, Dec. 22, the traditional “Lessons and Carols” from Christian and Hebrew texts will be read at 5 p.m., followed by a reception.
• There will be two observances on Christmas Eve, Tuesday, Dec. 24; at 5 p.m. “fun and less formal” services for family and children will be held in the Parish Hall; at 8 p.m.the traditional Christmas Eve service with the Eucharist will take place.
• On Christmas Day at 10 a.m. there will be a quieter, more peaceful Christmas morning communion service.
• The Yuletide Baroque Concert with Jeffrey Cohan will again be performed at the Emmanuel Parish on Dec. 27.