The People keep a coming but the train done gone

Advent gives us the word "adventure". I remember a sermon of my friend Karl's where, in explaining Advent, he reminded us that Christmas is not the same as Advent: Christmas is a destination, but Advent is about not arriving yet. I got the sense that Advent, like Holy Saturday that separates Good Friday from Easter, is too infrequently enjoyed, savored, experienced, mostly because people have a low tolerance for delayed gratification. We've got to get to the point; things have to be about something and we've got to get there. And so the danger is that weeks before Christmas people want to sing hymns about the baby being born in the manger. Advent says, "not yet." "Don't open the presents; don't read the last page; don't fast forward to the ending." Instead live in the present, live with not knowing, live with expectation: all of which go against our nature, our desire for closure, our desire to read the epilogue. Advent is an adventure of non-closure, an opportunity to hear God's story that winds around and suffers so many digressions that the point is buried like a seed in the earth. Can we enjoy such a journey?
This Sunday at Oakhurst we sang a hymn about the baby in the manger (why so early?) with the refrain I quoted in the title: De Peeple keep'a cummin' but de train dun Gone. I have no idea what this refers to. The underground railroad? But "the train done gone" - that's hardly hopeful - not the hope we find in the incarnation. The people keep a coming: how depressing. They're coming across the plains, through raging rivers, in danger from injuns and highwaymen (Dennis Moore on his horse Concord); they suffer from dengee fever and berry berry and bunions and migranes; they wander in the wilderness; they stand in line waiting for a stamp. And throngs of them advance toward the rails, footworn and slipshod, wearied and worn, famished, pushed beyond endurance. Wave after wave breaks upon the tracks only to discover, Ahhh the anguish, the despair, the wailing and gnashing of mashies and nibbling of niblicks, that the Train done Gone. The train is Gone, Done Gone, exerunt, locomotivus fugit, absented, vacated. And still the people keep a coming, continue their itinerary, pass over on in their passage. And what recourse do they have? A continual advancement, their Advent a misadventure peradventure inadvertent vertiginous. De Peeps 'l keep'a combing butter train'don gaw'n: that doesn't help much. They keep coming; the train is already gone.
When I labored over this problem at the Croissant Monde last Sunday after Church, my companions, all seminary trained thinkers, expressed solutions to this conundrum. Solutions that collapsed under the weight of the assertion: these people continue to arrive even in view of the fact that whatever train stops here is already passed through - nothing is said of another train. In fact the emphasis of the song tends toward the conclusion that the Train Done Gone is Gone for Good, for certain, final, fine, fin, without leaving room for the adumbration of a suspicion of a rumor that any kind of locomotion will revive along this way. Better just tear up the tracks. The third out of the last half inning of the last game of the world series has been made, the umpire has signaled, and the last uncorked bottle of champagne has fallen to the ground spewed and emptied on the last sober player of the year celebrating in the victor's clubhouse; the claret jug has been hoisted; the trophies dispensed to victors left and right. Not another inning, not another down, not another click of the clock remains for the aspirant, the hopeful, the expectant. All the potencies of potential and possibility have been drained, dregged and micturated, sopped, sucked up and filtered back to the source. This train is absolutely and irrevocably gone on and still, and yet, impossibly, implausibly, people, human beings like you and me, continue to set out, embark, commence a journey for a point of disembarkation, a certain station, stop, shelter, from where a vehicle of excursion might transport them on parallel tracks, conveying them safely and with all their goods and bodily possessions, wits and faculties, to some place of desire and finality and away from some place about which it might be said that "from there they've done gone." That even before people have commenced their procession toward commencement, the train is done gone. I feel like I've just sung an assertion that 2 plus 3 equals six. It makes no sense. The people keep a coming but the train done gone: what is that? There is no answer. It's neither a comfort, a consolation, a warning or a promise. Who are these people? What is this train? How do the people know where to go or where they're going? Is there a time table? Is there another train? Is there a station agent responsible for feeding and housing, at least diverting and repatriating, all these people: people who've been misled - one can only say that the failure of this song is that people are engaged in futile behavior? I would feel better about singing, "people quit a coming when the train done gone." We could sing, "people begin arriving well in advance of the train's departure." That would be all right, even though people might arrive too far in advance and sleep through the train's departure or starve, if they'd not brought anything to eat. People might also continue to arrive after that train's departure - but not so many as it might be said that they "keep a coming." "Some people might arrive just as the train's leaving and miss it," but they wouldn't keep a coming. If they keep a coming they're like wildebeests crossing a river and drowning. When I was a kid I saw this very thing on one of those PBS nature specials: the wildebeests kept a coming to their doom. None of the near by natives of the region engage in such futile activity - they've learned from nature - unlike the people of this hymn. One of the hallmarks of wisdom literature is that people do learn from nature: God has put nature here for us to learn from the behavior of animals. Perhaps this hymn enjoins us to read Ecclesiastes, Proverbs or the Song of Solomon during Advent. "Thy breasts are like two fawns, but the train done gone." "To every thing there is a season, but the train done gone." "I Wisdom sported with the Lord in the beginning, but the train done gone." While I was with my friends at the Waxing Gibbous, I drew this scene out on a the back of a children's menu - the biggest clean white sheet of paper I could find: people lined up along the hillsides converged enmasse to a set of empty rails, a wisp of smoke coiling from the horizon. Across the plain hot air balloons are ascending in various stages. I thought perhaps the train is done gone, but that doesn't mean the people are at a loss: we may discover ways to embark on our own. What was expected of this train anyway? Was it even certain that it could have contained all the people coming to ride it. Did it even go, punctilious in following it schedule, nearly empty. Would the people want to be on this train? Traveling from Prague to Budapest in 2005 I was with a group that endured a six hour trip where the, according to the conductor, "the dining car didn't go." No sadder words could have been spoken. These words were much sadder than "the train done gone." The people eventually got on the train, but the dining car didn't go - ahhh, what bitter respite! I'm suspicious of this train. It's capricious, perhaps promising more than it can deliver, never intending to carry people to some destination at all. And what kind of destination? Is it markedly different enough, a contrast between aridity and fecundity, to warrant such a mass evacuation of one indeterminate location for another. "The people are remaining in place in deference to the train's indifferent passage." And so drawing balloons that the people might get in seemed a grand solution. People might get some height and some perspective on the whole train done gone situation and judge for themselves. And that is Advent, a time for us to judge for ourselves, to gain some perspective, and perhaps decide that trains of indifferent passage are freighted with too much baggage to warrant our interest. Instead we might discover our own locomotion. "The people were engaged in discovering more habitable and liberated destinations and more certain conveyances than trains, confined to inflexible courses and schedules, might provide."