Conserving strangeness in our lives

	Tom Rinkoski

John the Baptist was not what people expected. What would you do if your child came home from college dressed in a camel's hair rug with a leather belt around his waist? What if he also insisted on a eating locusts and wild honey? Living with a person like this, you would begin to understand St. Paul in the second reading when he says "One day is like a thousand years."

John the Baptist is not the holy man we ordered. But he is the one we got. Now what?

Advent is at its worst when it is just sitting around like dates on a calendar, like a teen who is supposed to be doing homework. Advent was never meant to be a fat and pompous noun. Nor is it a preposition, there only to point to Christmas. Advent is more than a function in the church season. John the Baptist is Advent: a taste of noun, a dollop of verb stirred up with spicy adjectives and adverbs and rolled in camel's hair.

This summer, my daughter, a physics student at Cornell University, tried to teach me a physics principle: "the conservation of strangeness." First, I learned that baryons come in strange and non-strange varieties. This did not strike me at all unusual as any trip to the supermarket attests that things come in strange and non-strange varieties.

Second, the law of the conservation of strangeness is related to the more commonly known strange matter much as I am related to my second cousin Geno in Farrell, Pa. Third, strange matter is composed of up, down, and charmed quarks. Some theorists have suggested that strange matter may have been formed in the early universe, and that remnants may still exist. It definitely exists when my daughter and I discuss these things in a restaurant with a few too many cappuccinos.

Fourth, physics boldly announces that there are strangeness violations. In religion, we call that sin. Finally, the principle of conservation of strangeness is summed up thus: In processes governed by strong or electromagnetic interactions, the total strangeness remains constant. John the Baptist came to proclaim that! Conversely, weak interactions do not conserve strangeness. Knowing this, John the Baptist was compelled to act strange, dress strange, and say strange things. Does this remind you of anyone in your family?

John the Baptist was a catalyst of strong, and therefore strange, interactions in faith and life. John carefully noted that God acted that way -- a lot. He was overcome by the total Advent strangeness of God. In much the same way we are overcome, and fall in love. I love the Portuguese saying: God writes straight with crooked lines. Doesn't it say Jesus came to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable? Isn't that strange?

Who or what has walked into of your life like John the Baptist? Maybe it was with sound and fury. Maybe they walked on quietly while you were in the bathroom hiding. I had a friend in college who dared me to shake off convention. I once met a man who trumped my challenges with the smile of a fox. He changed my life. Maybe, like me, your children woke you up to a wish, a dream and a hope you didn't even know you had.

Where have your Advents fallen and risen? My brother Tim sees potential in old houses where others see decay. There are places and people who have "filled in every valley, and made walking mountains as easy as hiking flatlands." I thank God daily for these many John the Baptists.

Here are some questions for this week. Consider them privately at first. Read the Gospel, then ask the questions. After you've sat with them awhile, ask the others in your family what they think. Try something strange and ask the person next to you in church.

1. What or whom do you consider really strange?

2. Would you consider Jesus' behavior or John the Baptist's behavior strange? How strange?

3. What strange behavior do you consider appropriate? What strange behavior do you consider inappropriate?

(Rinkoski is the Green Bay Diocese's family life director and a professional story-teller.)