Advent in a Time of Climate Change

These thoughts may work their way into a poem or a more sustained piece of some sort.  Or maybe not.

--For many of us, our most beloved Advent/winter holiday traditions emerged during a time of planetary coldness.  What does it mean to create these snowscapes in a time of global warming?

--Earlier this month, a climate conference meeting in Key West adjusted the expectations for sea level rise upward, ever upward.  We now expect at least 17 to 31 inches of sea level rise by 2060.  Not 2100--2060, which is only 30 years away.

--My floor boards are two feet above sea level.  Have I mentioned that?  Are people tired of me mentioning that fact, obsessing over that fact?

--Maybe I should be more accurate.  In the spring of 2017, when we had the site survey done to get  the maps that we needed to do the Hurricane Irma repairs, my floorboards were 2 feet above sea level.  Now they are probably 23.9 inches above sea level.

--We could stay here into retirement.  Retirement, voluntary or otherwise, is catapulting at us faster than sea levels--maybe.  We could be like older people in the wintry climes.  I think of those people who don't have to leave their houses when there's a snowstorm--they don't have to plow and shovel, and so the northern climes are tolerable.  Maybe we'll just stay inside during times of flooding.  If we're retired and a storm might be coming, we could leave early.

--Of course, if a big storm wipes out the house . . .

--But I digress.  Back to twinkly lights and candles.  We may be far to the south here, but sunset comes early during Advent.

--As I walk through the Advent darkness and consider all the decorations, I think about their contribution to climate change:  the plastic trees made by processes that pollute the planet.  The real trees and evergreen boughs shipped to us from far away--the trees no longer living and capturing carbon, the big trucks belching fumes that warm the planet even faster.  The electricity that it takes to light the lights and blow up the yard creatures into life--electricity that is probably not delivered by way of solar or wind farms.

--A week ago, on Giving Tuesday, I gave to a group that shipped me an Advent calendar with fair trade chocolate.  That calendar arrived yesterday.  Some of the chocolates from the first 8 days of Advent that I ate to catch up, some of them were solid.  Some of them I had to dig out of the calendar because they had begun to melt.

--Should I keep my Advent calendar in the refrigerator?

--I think of the saints of Advent, the feast day of Saint Nicholas, the feast day of Santa Lucia.  Hundreds of years from now, will we have a different set of saints?  I'm thinking of saints who swim with dolphins, saints who tried to save the corals.  Maybe we will have some scientist saints who learned how to create new corals in a lab, who figured out how to slow the acidification of the oceans.

--Maybe hundreds of years from now, we will have new Advent images:  jellyfish, for example.  Maybe the words of Advent about watching and waiting will seem different when we're waiting on the arrival of fierce storms and the water that is always looking for a chance to reclaim what it has lost.  Maybe we will see nativity scenes of Mary and Joseph camping in the ruins of a culture wrecked by savage weather.

--The Advent message has never seemed more relevant:  rulers that ignore the signs and portents, the work of God breaking through in unexpected ways, the margins where the important work is done.