Coincidentally, my first post comes on the first Sunday of Advent, the start of the new Christian liturgical year. In church this morning we lit the first of four Advent candles, each a reminder and precursor of the greater Light that breaks through on Christmas, a Light that “the darkness has not overcome” (Jn 1:5). Advent, then, is a season of joyful expectation, a liminal space between uncertainty and certainty, obscurity and clarity. In this way, Advent is a lot like much of life.

When I reflect on “joyful expectation” and liminal spaces, I’m reminded of how I felt during the first week of my chaplain residency. In that week of orientation (which, amid the onslaught of new information I was frantically struggling to find space for in my brain, felt more like a week of disorientation), a thought that repeatedly came to mind was, “This is impossible.” I knew that, within a few weeks, the unfamiliar job titles, patient protocols, and geography of the hospital would quickly become more familiar. I knew that there was a light of possibility at the end of the tunnel. During that first week, however, I had no clue how I was going to get there.

Within a few weeks the unfamiliar did, indeed, become more familiar. But I’ve learned to recognize that the experience of disorientation remains very much at the heart of chaplaincy. Each time I walk into a patient’s room, I walk into a mystery: there is a bit of darkness that needs to be stumbled around in before something clear or recognizable is able to emerge. Very often, it seems like all I can do it sit with someone in their hour of darkness—wrestling to wrap their minds around a life-altering diagnosis, or weeping at the bedside of a dying loved one—aware that clarity and certainty, if they are to appear, will have to wait for another day.

In the three months since starting my residency, I have learned a tremendous amount. But possibly the most important skill I am learning is how to work with the unknowable, to have confidence that hope and uncertainty can not only coexist, but be friends.

With something new comes a bit of uncertainty and a bit of insecurity. Christians are reminded of this each Advent season as we are challenged to try once again to open our hearts a little wider to do, in the words of Walter Brueggemann, “obedient things we have not yet done, kingdom things we did not think we had in us, neighbor things from which we cringe” (4). Advent is an invitation to go a little deeper into the dark believing that darkness is not the end.

It is only the beginning.