Planning for a generous future
An Advent meditation on logistics and selfishness
What’s good everyone,
Christmas is around the corner. What has this time of waiting been teaching you? In the Christian faith we are currently in Advent, the season of waiting for the birth of Jesus’ birth in antiquity (that we customarily celebrate on Dec 25) and the season of waiting for His eventual coming again and making all things new at the end of all time. That can be a heady concept, but ironically a lesson I’ve had to learn this Advent is a concrete one: logistics are important for planning for a generous future.
Last week, I underestimated the complications of getting to the airport in a snowstorm and missed my flight. I was coming back from New Jersey from a retreat with artist-theologian Mako Fujimura and had a gig later that afternoon. I missed my initial flight at 8a because Lyft and Uber drivers did not want to drive in the snow and because I had only given myself enough time to get to the airport in a regular amount of traffic. Their no-shows set me back and by the time I did get there, it was quarter to 9.
I got on standby for the 11.30a and miraculously made it on the last seat. On one hand I was happy I’d make my gig (which I did, 3 minutes before we started), but on the other hand I was disturbed by how I felt during those last few minutes when the ticket attendant Sydney was determining who’d get that last seat out of Newark. I remember when all of us on standby were huddled around the ticket desk, awaiting mercy. I felt a strange primal urgency wash over me, where I was hoping that the other couples who were ahead of me would stay together instead of wanting to be split up so that I could get that seat and where I hoped I was further up the queue than the woman who was bound for Detroit to see her sick father and had a connection through Chicago. I felt for all of them, I really did, but I wanted that seat.
When Sydney called my name, I felt a thousand eyes looking at my back. As I scanned my ticket and went onto the jet bridge, part of me wanted to look back and say goodbye and good luck to the people whose stories I had gotten to know over the last 30 minutes. But I couldn’t. I was just so happy to be on the plane and felt any comments would have been disingenuous and could’ve poured salt in the wound.
It’s helpful that this story happened during Advent. In this season of waiting, I can see the importance of planning for a generous future. Had I been more prepared for the snowstorm, I wouldn’t have gone into this cutthroat mode. To be sure, I don’t think it’s wrong that I got a seat on the plane. I just shudder at my inward desires to beat others out for it.
They say you never have to outrun the bear chasing you and your friend; you just have to outrun your friend. This kind of cruel logic - what Christina Sharpe calls an “execrable arithmetic” - is at the heart of human selfishness, and we are all prone to it. I saw it in myself last Sunday.
I wonder what would happen if we humans better anticipated the future. None of us have crystal balls of course, but can we better discern the times we’re in so as to look forward to what’s to come with more generosity? The trumpeter Sean Jones (coincidentally) spoke into this yesterday during a master class of his I attended here in Chicago. For jazz musicians to play well, he argued, we always have to be anticipating the next note we want to play. We have to be in the moment yet also always present to the chord “changes” ahead. (Steve Miller would concur: time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future.)
That’s a wise way to think about Advent, and it’s one that can yield more generosity. Because I hadn’t planned well enough around the storm, I couldn’t be generous in my thoughts and feelings in the moment when I was in a bind. My lack of planning made me solely focused on my wants and perceived needs.
I am reminded of the Negro spiritual that warns: there’s a storm out on the ocean, and it’s movin’, this-a way. The more honest I am about possible pitfalls that can come my way and can take stock of them - in this case that snowstorm - the more generous I can be towards others in heart, mind and deed.
I’ll close with this song from Stevie Wonder, Someday at Christmas. It’s a song of deep longing for world peace and goodwill to descend like snow on Christmas one day. It can feel just like a heady approach to Advent. However, in light of last week’s airport ordeal, I’m hearing in this song a call to action to anticipate my future well by taking concrete steps towards that peace. Order my steps in your word, Dear Lord, so that generosity might flow.
As I make my way to the manger this year, this will be my prayer. I will pray the same for you. Merry Christmas.
abundantly,
Julian
What’s Next
Dec 31 w/ Kenneth Whalum at Dorian’s for NYE
Jan 3 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust at City Church Heights (Cleveland Heights, OH)
Jan 10 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust New York DEBUT (Nublu Classic, 62 Ave C.)
Jan 11 Notes of Rest at St. Peter’s Chelsea (New York)
Jan 14-17 Julian Davis Reid & Circle of Trust TOUR (Chicago at Constellation, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Madison)
Jan 22 Notes of Rest at Knox Presbyterian (Naperville, IL)
Jan 25 Notes of Rest at Lawndale Christian Community Church (Chicago)
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