{"id":7309,"date":"2022-12-17T00:33:49","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T00:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=7309"},"modified":"2023-05-12T02:22:43","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T02:22:43","slug":"the-road-to-advent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/17\/the-road-to-advent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Advent"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Road to Advent<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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During Advent, apocalyptic literature can reveal to us the depths of darkness and of hope.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Maria Copeland<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Cormac McCarthy\u2019s post-apocalyptic novel The Road<\/em>, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, opens in darkness. Indeterminate disasters have ravaged America, leaving in their wake a smoking, sooty wasteland. Ash sifts over a wilderness stalked by bands of remaining survivors, who are friendly or threatening by turns.<\/p>

In this bleak landscape, a man wakes after uneasy dreams, while his son sleeps. He surveys their lifeless surroundings and waits for the light. When the dawn at last rises, gray and gloomy, the unnamed pilgrims collect their meager possessions and set out upon the road. Fleeing the approaching winter, they are bound for the Gulf Coast, and whatever life might await them there.<\/p>

The story winds on, grim and unrelenting. I won\u2019t betray the ending, but the plot points are threaded by tragedy and terror all the way. There is no sense here of Tolkien\u2019s eucatastrophe<\/em>, where a necessary destruction is wrought for a joyful outcome. Rather, the narrative reports the long, weary traveling of a father and his son who are sustained by scavenged supplies and a puzzling, abiding faith in goodness.<\/p>

When I read The Road<\/em>, I find myself frustrated with its pacing and style. In contrast to some of McCarthy\u2019s adjective- and conjunction-laden work, his prose shifts a bit here. His sentences turn choppy, blunt, utilitarian. Movement and action are often transferred to the page as though dictated by a stenographer, in stern, colorless precision. In fairness, the unharnessed beauty by which McCarthy reminds us that he is a master breaks through not infrequently; brusque prose transforms in a second to bewildering poetry, even when many of his sentences set my teeth on edge.<\/p>

On the whole, this strikes me as a deliberate choice on McCarthy\u2019s part, and fittingly so. We are meant to walk with the man and his son through a desolate land.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Stories of earthly apocalypse can help those of us who wait because they give us the means to comprehend the kinds of darkness that we walk in, and the depth of it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Advent, as Episcopal author and priest Rev. Fleming Rutledge has written, \u201cbegins in the dark.\u201d It is a time of acknowledging the shadows in which we walk. If we do not meet and reckon with the darkness we find in ourselves and in the hardships we encounter, we miss a crucial element of the season.<\/p>

Historical church practice brings Advent\u2019s sharp contrast of darkness and light vividly to life: Traditionally, during the Advent season, worshipers kindle new candles\u2014purple, pink, white\u2014in precise, ascending order. Every week, a little more light breaks through the blackness; every week, there is a new reminder of hope. We experience in liturgical time what the Lord\u2019s people lived as they awaited the Messiah: \u201cThe people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone\u201d (Isaiah 9:2). Advent draws us toward the light, gradually, gloriously. But first, whether we like to remember it or not, the season begins with dwelling in the darkness.<\/p>

And this is where apocalyptic literature, such as The Road,<\/em> comes in. On Twitter, Rutledge recently recommended this and other titles by Cormac McCarthy as appropriate reading for the Advent season. Those who are familiar with Rutledge\u2019s work will already know that one of her best-known books is Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ<\/em>, a meditative collection of Advent sermons. But McCarthy\u2019s bleak, bloody volumes should also have a place on the Advent reading shelf. Why? Because Advent, Rutledge wrote on Twitter, \u201cis not for sissies.\u201d<\/p>

Advent is, at its core, a time of waiting\u2014and waiting is not for the faint of heart. Any child who has had to wait for the unhurried arrival of Christmas Day knows that. Anyone who has had to wait for the desire of their heart, whether shortly or indefinitely delayed, knows that. Stories of earthly apocalypse can help those of us who wait because they give us the means to comprehend the kinds of darkness that we walk in, and the depth of it. It is never an easy thing to dwell in the darkness, waiting on promises given to us only in the mysterious language of prophecy. But there is truth to be found in the waiting, and even goodness\u2014and without those things, Advent would be a far more dismal season.<\/p>

For the Advent readers who are willing to reckon with the darkness, apocalyptic narratives will strengthen the soul in two ways: They reveal to us in a new light the brokenness of our world and ourselves, and, for those who are made fully aware of the darkness, these stories show us where we might encounter hope as we traverse the wilderness.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Like those who waited for the Messiah, we look to the arrival of the one who will deliver us; but unlike them, we already participate in the kingdom. In the interim, in the darkness, we wait for this kingdom to be fully realized.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Visions of the future in many examples of well-known literature are far from heartening. Government systems become cruelly oppressive, advanced technology creates moral quandaries or causes complete moral numbness, and society embraces hedonistic self-indulgence on a cosmic scale. I\u2019m not sure how to measure the extent to which such works have shaped our perceptions of how future events will proceed, but I think the dystopian and apocalyptic literary genres can broadly be classified as ones that always seek to show the darkness inherent in and approaching for the world.\u00a0<\/p>

That said, the aims set forth in these two genres are subtly different, in a way that shows itself significant here. In classic dystopian literature, such as Huxley\u2019s Brave New World <\/em>or Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>, the authors identify key errors emergent in modern society\u2014dangerous choices that will inevitably bring future destruction to pass. The dystopian novel sets such faults on a much larger scale in a wildly reimagined but still recognizable society, where the dramatization of the supposedly fictional setting asks readers to examine the current climate. Essentially, Orwell, Huxley, Camus, Burgess, Atwood, and others all seek to be prophets, using a surreal world characterized by stranger things\u2014eugenics programs where embryos are manufactured, brutal competitions that unabashedly exploit violence as entertainment, computers that rebel against their programmers\u2014to examine the very real horrors we now face.\u00a0<\/p>

In apocalyptic narratives, by contrast, some world-overturning catastrophe has already been wrought, or unfolds at the start, and the major events of the story detail what humanity does in the face of such a calamity. There is no moralistic instruction about what we could do now to defray a dystopian disaster; the only questions that remain deal with what humanity will do to survive.<\/p>

Despite their differences, both genres generally select their heroes from similar stock. Protagonists of dystopian and post-apocalyptic worlds are visionaries in their time\u2014sharp enough to see through the lies that surround them, and courageous enough to articulate the truth without fear of consequences. They act as saviors of themselves and others, which is not to say that they do not fail, but that they are (in a literal sense or not) superhero-like protectors of the innocent.<\/p>

So, ultimately, both genres conceive bleak visions of the future for a shared purpose: to guide us in our current lives\u2014in our \u201cpresent darkness,\u201d to borrow the title of Frank E. Peretti\u2019s apocalyptic tale of spiritual warfare. A question we might consider, then, is not whether we are awaiting an apocalypse, some significant disaster that overturns the world, but whether we are already there. It might feel like a stretch to most of us to define our current time in history as \u201capocalyptic\u201d\u2014the global fallout of international crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine notwithstanding. We cannot quite complain of disasters on a story-scale, whether natural or nuclear; we are probably not yet face-to-face with the literal end of the world.<\/p>

However, our time could certainly be characterized as one of revelation, which the Greek apokalypsis <\/em>translates to. The literal meaning of the word comes closer to \u201cunveiling\u201d or \u201claying bare.\u201d Certainly, we are waiting for the second coming of Christ. But we also acknowledge that Christ inaugurated his kingdom on earth at the incarnation. Like those who waited for the Messiah, we look to the arrival of the one who will deliver us; but unlike them, we already participate in the kingdom. In the interim, in the darkness, we wait for this kingdom to be fully realized.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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You cannot live in a destroyed world and expect to remain unstained by it. You cannot even expect to remain unstained by your own darkness. Among other things, Advent offers us a sobering reminder that we are the reason a sacrifice was required.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Apocalyptic literature gives us a coherent picture of the darkness and the waiting. At their best, such stories also give us hard truths about ourselves. The truth exposed about humanity by the fallenness of the world is not often comforting; to again quote Rutledge, \u201cIt requires courage to look into the heart of darkness, especially when we are afraid we might see ourselves there.\u201d<\/p>

In Emily St. John Mandel\u2019s Station Eleven, <\/em>one of my favorite books and another best-selling post-apocalyptic novel, a pandemic wipes out all of civilization as we know it, leaving behind scattered survivors to pick up the pieces. One of the more serious antagonists to emerge in the aftermath is a man who identifies himself as a prophet. He claims to have access to supernatural truth via signs and visions, and has secured headship of a cult-like band of followers and a small town with the lyrical name of St. Deborah by the Water.<\/p>

At first, the prophet appears to be little more than a charismatic leader, albeit one who reads carefully selected passages from the Biblical book of Revelation for dramatic effect and makes disturbing claims that the pandemic functioned as a spiritual cleansing. Then, a series of disappearances from towns and traveling groups, which point unerringly in a single direction, signals the sinister depths of his beliefs. His followers obey his ominous orders without question, repeating his mantras about participating in a greater plan.<\/p>

Kirsten, a young actress who moves from town to town with a thespian group dubbed the \u201cTraveling Symphony,\u201d encounters the prophet toward the end of the novel. In a moment of vulnerability, he tells her, \u201cI have walked all my life through this tarnished world.\u201d Kirsten herself was too young to remember what life was like immediately following the pandemic, but she realizes that in his childhood the prophet had \u201conce been a boy adrift on the road, and perhaps he\u2019d had the misfortune of remembering everything.\u201d<\/p>

The Road<\/em>, too, has its share of people whose survivalism drives them to destructive ends: unseen predators that stalk the father and the boy, hostile armed travelers, marchers branded with bright red scarves. When people dwell in the darkness, they make alarming choices, whether by choice or by force. Many of the characters in Station Eleven, <\/em>including Kirsten herself, bear miniature knife tattoos on their wrists\u2014reminders of those they have killed to survive etched on their skin.<\/p>

That kind of choice is not one most of us will have to make. But the revelation in these stories is this: You cannot live in a destroyed world and expect to remain unstained by it. You cannot even expect to remain unstained by your own darkness. Among other things, Advent offers us a sobering reminder that we are the reason a sacrifice was required.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Advent sets aside a time for us to lament, to take seriously the catastrophic brokenness of the world and see plainly our need for a Savior who will deliver us out of the darkness.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But simply acknowledging that we dwell in the darkness is not sufficient. We must also walk through it.<\/p>

Strength is scarce in a fallen world, but small sources of it are perhaps more plentiful than we might think. In Station Eleven<\/em>, hope for a future where the world is reordered springs surprisingly abundant. No human hero can undo the damage of the past, but St. John Mandel\u2019s characters are more preoccupied with making their present lives more meaningful. Kirsten and her friends with the Traveling Symphony spend their post-pandemic lives performing Shakespearean plays to outposts and villages, bringing theatrical beauty back to their audiences\u2019 lives. A group stranded in a dysfunctional airport at the end of the world gathers all their useless mementos of a pre-plague culture\u2014burned-out iPhones, stilettos, passports\u2014and so build the Museum of Civilization, a location point that becomes a lasting landmark. A newspaper starts to circulate. A library is built.<\/p>

Their desire for a world made right strikes a chord in me, particularly after the events of the last few years. Advent sets aside a time for us to lament, to take seriously the catastrophic brokenness of the world and see plainly our need for a Savior who will deliver us out of the darkness. We have the assurance of his promise that he will come. On us who dwell in darkness, light will dawn.<\/p>

The man and the boy in The Road <\/em>make no rebuilding attempts. Their world is, we can only assume, far beyond that point. That is not to say, however, that they do not believe in restoration. Their comfort, as they walk through the wilderness, is a persistent belief in goodness which the father refers to as \u201ccarrying the fire.\u201d The specifics of that faith are not given to us in detail, and philosophically speaking the book doesn\u2019t quite help us to understand why the father and his son believe in God at all, or what they hope for when they remind one another to keep the faith, to carry the fire.<\/p>

But the care the father shows toward his son stands out plainly in spare sentences, as he gives his son strength to persevere and orients him constantly toward their shared faith in the face of unspeakable calamity:<\/p>

You have to carry the fire<\/em>.<\/p>

I dont know how to.<\/em><\/p>

Yes, you do.<\/em><\/p>

Is the fire real? The fire?<\/em><\/p>

Yes it is.<\/em><\/p>

Where is it? I dont know where it is.<\/em><\/p>

Yes you do. It’s inside you. It always was there. I can see it.<\/em><\/p>

Throughout the exhausting bleakness of the story, the father\u2019s faith sustains the son, and the son\u2019s faith heartens his father. After all that they have experienced, they have no reliable reason to hope that as the father earnestly promises his son, goodness always finds the lost\u2014apart from what hope the other provides.<\/p>

And as it turns out, that is the entirety of what they require to survive: reminders of hope, alive in each other.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Maria Copeland<\/strong> teaches composition and literature at Ad Fontes Academy, a classical school in Northern Virginia, and is an Assistant\u00a0Editor for <\/em>The Marginalia Review of Books.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During Advent, apocalyptic literature can reveal to us the depths of darkness and of hope. 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