Advent: waiting that takes your breath away. Photo by Paul Jeffrey.
By Rev. Paul Jeffrey, reprinted with permission from his blog – Global Lens.
It is Advent in Tahrir Square, where people are waiting. They’re not sure for what, but such is the nature of Advent, to wait for freedom and deliverance amid uncertainty. The people gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square are both afraid and hopeful at the same time. That’s Advent in a land where Arab Spring has turned into Arab Fall.
Although western churches begin celebrating Advent on Sunday, December 2, the waiting period has already begin in the Orthodox churches, including for the Copts, as Christians here are called. They have begun fasting, though that seems to mean they just give up meat. When I sat down to lunch Wednesday in a small village in northern Egypt, the Copt family hosting me apologized for their “fasting foods”–a rich variety of salads, tahini, lentil soup, falafel, and eggplant. Fasting for them means giving up meat, though fish is OK. Frankly, I’d fast more often if that’s how we defined the word.
My Coptic friends here were concerned for my safety during the protests in and around Tahrir Square, and they’d warned me to stay in my hotel and shoot the protests from the balcony, which overlooks the square. I went anyway, and I got beat up by the Egyptian police. When one friend heard what happened, she stared at me with a mixture of concern and a very clear I-told-you-so look. I promised her I wouldn’t go out again that night and would watch from the hotel balcony. Then a few hours later, she called me from the square to invite me down. I couldn’t hear her very well, with all the chanting and noise. A quarter million people had shown up for a massive demonstration against the dictatorial measures announced by President Mohamed Morsi on November 22. She said I should come join her and her friends. I knew I’d never find them, and I was nursing my aching body, so I declined. The next day, she talked about it with a sparkle in her eyes. “There were so many people that there was no oxygen to breathe,” she said, pantomiming suffocating. “It was wonderful!”
