Animals know

And we suck.

Artist: Radisa Zivkovic

Title: Shelter

Tomorrow marks 1 full week of Advent. “So what?!’ the twinkling, titillating, tormenting, already 45-day-old holiday decorations in my neighborhood screamed. In Holiday 2025, there is no room for the Advent season.

I am not going to get stuffy and preachy on the waiting process- I just know I miss it. Everything is flickering while I fight feeling snuffed. I don’t really fret about it for me, as I can dig deep and find sanctuary. Like the chipmunk who stores his last nut, I have created deep quiet places right amid the “noise, noise, noise, noise.” My fret is for my granddaughter. Am I her only heralder of Advent?

I think so... last week, as we laid out the manger characters, she so seriously asked me, “Where is the vampire, Gigi?” Unfortunately, her question makes sense. I don’t think she is possessed, [even though my Catholic roots might] because I know that Halloween is the event of the year in her humble abode. I grimaced a bit and told her that even though I was a cool Gigi there would be no vampires at our manger. Again, 2025 madness. And in all seriousness, it saddens me to know that a sacred Advent is null for Molly without my burrowing.

Victor Berthelsdorf: A winter honeybee hive with an infrared camera

Like honeybees during hibernation, I work hard to move her toward the Light, my 1.5 wings shivering to drown out the noise and gently press her toward the perennial incarnation. Animals just intuitively know at a certain time, “Stop or die.” Twitter twinkling tells me, we do not.

Chipmunks burrow, honeybees shiver, and turtles dive. They slow down and wait- but not us “Who Whoers.” Nope. We have something to do, somewhere to go. As a therapist, this is my 20th year of trying to help folks recognize that the holidays are not mandatory chaos. I have yet to succeed.

I dropped out of Christmas cra-cra in 2014. That was the year of the Sandy Hook murders. If a nation could know that babies were slaughtered and still “Noise, noise, noise,” then to the monastery I went. Silence and chanting, I think it is holy, sacred, even cool. This year, 7 women met me at the monastery, and we created of very own Book of Hours. We were present with no presents.

St Meinrad Monastery

I have been thinking about prophets lately. As in, we need a good one right now. I think the hibernators and the part-hibernators are prophets. It is their waiting that saves them. It is our “shoulding all over ourselves” that leaves us weak and weary, prone to the devastating shrill of AI, sinking boats, rising costs, and the shallow rewards of over packaging on the floor Christmas day. How do I battle consumerism and herald Advent for Molly?

As Edith Stein noted, ”The great figures of prophecy and sanctity step forth out of the darkest night”. I truly believe we are in our darkest nights. No one likes to hear it, and I don’t like to write it. But all we have to do is look around: we see a nation rounding up folks on the way to their manager, dictators silencing the wise men and women, shepherds unable to follow bright stars because we value efficiency over the care of our earth. In my simple mind, that leaves the animals at the manger. Yep, the ones that St Francis added.

I suppose the quiet monk, a true heralder of Advent, knew that for there to be peace on earth, there must be peace in our hearts. As my friend would say, “Laurie drop down to your heart, out of your head…” and there in that space I can create the little beehive that hums despite one of the most brutal years of my life. “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me little bee.”