Introduction (John and Ruth

Advent and Christmas are all about incarnation, and the mystery of the whole season. John can date that feeling back to his early childhood, and the first watch night service he was taken to, at the age of seven. Apart from the thrill of being allowed up – and out! – so late, he still remembers the atmosphere of the service –no long sermon, quiet, reflective, and the mystery of God becoming a human being. Until then he had experienced the story of Christmas on a very horizontal level – presents, parties, food. It was then that he became aware of the vertical level of the story.

Fast-forward to the Christmas house parties he was responsible for running in the Abbey in the early 1970s, where the mystery was the main thrust of the story as the programme developed. There was the quietness, the waiting, the expectation – the sheer size of the story as well, opening up everyone to a new experience of God – so huge, and yet so personal.

‘Mystery’ is sometimes confused with ‘magic’. George Mackay Brown, the great Orcadian poet, once wrote: ‘Transfigured by ceremony, the truths we could not otherwise endure come to us.’ 1 Mystery – and ceremony – are surely the right words to use about this season, emphasising that we are never in control of God –God cannot be manipulated. In the Gospel narrative, a very powerful emphasis is placed on this by the fact that it is the angel Gabriel who brings Mary the news that she is to be the mother of Jesus. In Hebrew angelology, Gabriel is normally the messenger of doom. Small wonder, then, that Mary is terrified when he appears! It was the Jewish Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who wrote: ‘Whenever an angel says: “Be not afraid!” you’d better start worrying. A big assignment is on the way.’ 2 True – but along with the big assignment comes the big promise, that ‘nothing will be impossible with God’. It’s missing the point to ask ‘how did it

happen?’. That’s a distraction, trying to explore the viability or otherwise of angels and virgin births. The point is: there’s something immense and mysterious on the cards here, and we should be prepared.

Ruth’s early memories of Christmas at the Abbey are of humour and delight. She recalls the Christmas house parties as a chance to celebrate with other families, and being part of the Christmas plays. The Shepherds’ Story, for example, in the refectory, where the servery was the changing room, and the route through the kitchen to the cloisters, and back up the refectory stairs, meant that we could ‘surprise’ our audience. Health and safety would have something to say now about mini shepherds dashing, crooks in hand, through a working kitchen. And the play Michael Mouse, a story of the mystery being made real from the perspective of the outsiders, the little people.

Then, growing up on the mainland, she remembers the clash of cultures: being a teenager in the 1980s while at the same time being a member of a church family. Shortly after leaving Iona, she and her siblings made homemade Christmas cards to give to their new school friends, only to have them returned as not acceptable – their friends expected ‘real’ ones!

Worshipping as a Quaker, while Ruth can sometimes feel bereft of a liturgical focus, she rejoices in the celebration of each moment as sacramental, and the mystery of Christmas, somehow, unfolding each day, without it ever becoming mundane.

In her Iona Community Family Group, they share an ALTERnativity meal at the start of Advent (www.alternativity.org.uk). This simple meal, with table laid to include a symbolic empty place for John the Baptist, for Mary, for Jesus, and for the world’s poor, reminds them of the mystery, of the simplicity of the story, in the global context of the hunger and poverty in which we all live – but also of the hope that the season brings.