A few days ago I came across a video of a mom and her two young teenage sons that brought tears to my eyes. They had recently moved to a town just outside of Kansas City, Kansas. It was their 13th move in the 15-year-old’s life as the family followed the dad from one job transfer to the next. But shortly after this particular move, the dad left the family to fend on its own. The 12-year-old found solace riding his bike through the nearby forest park.
The mom had an idea one day as she wandered through that forest looking for ways to handle her grief and the pain and anger of her sons. With their help, she would build a habitat in the forest for fairies and gnomes! The boys got into the project. They built miniature tables and chairs, cupboards, cups and saucers. They painstakingly painted and decorated tiny rustic household furnishings. In the hollows of trees, on stumps, under branches, in hidden nooks and crannies throughout the forest, tiny doors, complete with hinges and doorknobs, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Opening the doors, children and adults would find tiny, furnished homes. A steaming miniature teapot and mug on the table in one suggested the occupants may have left in a hurry! The detail was extraordinary.
One day a sign appeared letting people know they were entering the “Firefly Forest.” Another day people were invited to write notes to the inhabitants and attach them to a string tied to the branch of a tree. So much curiosity was generated that the story found its way to the local news channel where a TV anchor raised the question on everyone’s mind: how were these tiny gnome houses erupting in the forest? Who was behind it—and why?
In the meantime, mom and sons continued creating remarkable miniature habitats throughout the forest, carrying their creations to the newest location in the dead of night so no one would see them. The magic was in the mystery, in the creative wonder of delightful surprise. A videographer captured the joy on the faces of children and adults as they discovered these tiny homes secreted along the paths among the trees. As I watched one after another was smitten with delight as they entered that mysterious space set apart from hard reality. Someone had clearly created this enchanting gnome village for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and for no other reason than to heal, to delight and bring joy to those who followed. It was inspiring, heartwarming and magical, a gift of light and hope for the entire community. It was born from the grief, the love and the hope still alive and burning in a mother’s heart.
Eventually the city discovered who was creating these tiny structures along the forest floor and made her take them down. In the dead of night once again, leaving mystery and wonder intact, the mom and her sons unhinged the tiny doors and removed the household contents from trees and nooks and crannies. They removed the entry sign to the “Firefly Forest” and drove away, carrying the magic that had opened hearts and delighted so many. But the imprint remained, as did one tiny house in the hollowed out base of a magnificent tree. It was created for the mother of a three-year-old child lost to cancer, a mother who had written a note about her daughter and attached it to the message tree. The mother with her sons couldn’t bear to remove it, so they left the one tiny home in the forest as a memorial to another mother’s child.
Our Mother God knows how much we suffer in and through the darkness, a darkness that can overtake our lives and our world in so many ways. Advent is all about that darkness. In winter we suffer through our darkest and coldest days, waiting for the return of the light. And when the light does return, when the days begin growing longer, the return is almost imperceptible. So in Advent we wait, expectantly—because we trust the signs that tell us the light is coming, just as we trust the signs that signal birth is near. And in Advent we hope—also expectantly—that the light will reveal new and wondrous things, that birthing will go smoothly and without complications, that the new life will be healthy, whole and strong. We wait. We hope. We pray for deliverance from the darkness, from the despair of the world around us. We pray not to give into the darkness ourselves.
Our God is a God who yearns to delight us. She is a God who eagerly waits for her children on earth to discover the hidden fairy houses tucked away in plain sight along the streets and byways of their everyday lives. She is a God who hides within the mysteries of creation and peeks through the eyes of a stranger. She is an incarnate God, hiding in full view in the most unlikely places, and She is there to be discovered if we can only refresh our childhood eyes and begin to look through lenses of wonder expecting to see her.
The O Antiphons we recited at the start of Mass today begin by asking Wisdom to teach us how to be wise. Quickly they move to cries for help—come rescue us, come save us—and end by calling Emmanuel to come and set us free. Emmanuel means God-with-us. The O Antiphons remind us that it is God within and among us that will ultimately set us free and save the earth and all humanity. It is God in the mother with her sons who brings delight to the weary, peace to the grieving mother, hope to many walking an ordinary path through life’s forest. It is God-in-us who fills the world with wonder and leaves behind a taste for mystery. In these remaining days of Advent, let us prepare the way for God to be born in us anew this Christmas so that we may bring the light of kindness, joy and magic into the dark forests of our world.
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