A good two months ago, I went to Binghamton, NY for a long weekend. The reason for my trip was an event called SerlingFest. It was held in honor of Rod Serling, who grew up in Binghamton. Actually, it has been an annual event for a while, but this was the first SerlingFest I attended. Now, like many who like to explore Rod Serling’s life and work, I made some time around the main event to trace the stations of his childhood and youth, including: the home he grew up in; the high school he went to, which has a marker in his honor; and Binghamton Recreation Park, a green oasis, still pretty bucolic today. It inspired some of the more nostalgic Twilight Zone episodes.

Now as for the SerlingFest itself, its motto was: “Rod Serling … in his own words.” And the event made good on that motto. There were many readings from his writings. The readers included his daughter Anne Serling—who is an accomplished writer herself—and his nephew Jeff Serling, who is the SerlingFest’s main organizer, and involved in the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation. There were also screenings of Rod Serling answering interview questions. In short, I came away with quite a close-up look at who Rod Serling was. Meeting a daughter and a nephew of his made his presence in spirit all the more palpable.

It was this experience that inspired me to talk about Rod Serling here today, and how his work relates to the season of Advent. And, by the way, Rod Serling’s own journey of faith was very interesting: He was born into the Jewish faith, but espoused Unitarian thinking by the time he entered college, and later attended the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica. Knowing that is really interesting for us, of course, and the sort of coast-to-coast connection between his UU church and ours.

Now, about the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling remarked that it was “about people, about human beings involved in extraordinary circumstances, in strange problems of their own or of fate’s making.” Come to think of it, doesn’t the biblical story of Advent seem compatible with that? Mary definitely found herself in “extraordinary circumstances” that presented her with “strange problems” of sorts. After all, she was pregnant out of wedlock. For that alone, she could have been shunned, if not stoned, in the culture of her upbringing. And it certainly didn’t help that her pregnancy happened in times of occupation by the Romans.

A parallel I noticed between the story of Advent and the Twilight Zone is that both look at a world where there is metaphorical darkness and metaphorical light. The story of Advent involves people walking in the dark who see a great light, while the Twilight Zone, by definition, encompasses both darkness and light. Rod Serling frames it as “a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.” The dimension ranges from the pit of human fears, representing darkness, to the summit of human knowledge, representing light.

Both in the story of Advent and in the Twilight Zone, people set out to meet the extraordinary circumstances they find themselves in. They are on a quest, and they cannot be sure where they will end up, and when they will know they have achieved their quest. For, in both cases, there is a force involved that exceeds human powers. In the Advent story, that force is the divine. In the Twilight Zone, that force is fate. The twists of fate can be so fantastical, we are bound to ask: Does the Twilight Zone rely on magic?

I mentioned the writer Mark Dawidziak in my earlier reflection. One of his books is Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone. Of the 50 lessons he names, the first (!) lesson is: “Always keep your heart open to the magic that comes your way.” He acknowledges that it is “not as easy as it sounds.” According to Dawidziak, openness to “the magic that comes your way” requires three things: You must believe in it; you must recognize it when it happens; and you must accept it. He goes on to say, “magic takes all kinds of forms…. It can be the faith of a child. It can be faith in yourself…or the enduring loyalty of a best friend.” These examples may not directly address the question of magic in the Twilight Zone. Still, each of these examples is something intangible that can become a transformative power if you believe it, recognize it, and accept it as a form of “magic.”

Now how does that tie back in with the story of Advent?

The biblical teaching of the Annunciation involves, literally, an act of God, meaning, intervention beyond human powers. The Annunciation by itself is a transformative experience for Mary. It makes her sing a song of praise for change that will come, change of quite revolutionary quality. She sings of the powerful being humbled, the humble being lifted up, and the hungry filled. And she is able to sustain this hope even in the face of hostile circumstances all around her, because: she believes in God’s capacity for effecting the kind of miracle that is the Annunciation; she recognizes that this is what she is given; and she accepts it. Every tangible circumstance around her says her hope is foolish, but she has faith in transformation anyway. The word “transformation” is key. The impossible becomes possible when the conditions are right.

Now here is where the UU perspective on Advent comes in: From a UU perspective, Advent doesn’t mean you passively wait for the right conditions to fall into place, but you actively work to create the right conditions, to change the “extraordinary circumstances” Rod Serling referred to. The promise of Advent that light will come is a call on us to become light bearers ourselves. Acknowledge the darkness, but choose to add light, one light at a time.

It is safe to say Rod Serling’s writing career was an example of just that UU type of hope in action. One way his active hope manifested was resistance to the “extraordinary circumstances,” the “strange problems” around him. Even early in his career, when his writing aimed for a middle-of-the-road approach to social issues, Serling was shaken by the consequences of McCarthyism, which saw hundreds of Hollywood careers ruined when people were broadly accused of associations with communism in America. He wrote a letter to the editors of the Cincinnati Enquirer, criticizing that paper for defending the consequences of Senator McCarthy’s actions.

He also used more subtle tactics to resist censorship. His writing was informed by his own traumatic experience during World War II, the threats of the Cold War nuclear-arms race, and the various kinds of social injustice he saw all around. As I said in my reflection, Serling would weave his observations of adversity such as racism, prejudice, and totalitarianism into stories set in distant times and places so the references weren’t all that obvious.

What Rod Serling’s writing achieved, though, was that it planted the seeds of moral imagination. His writing consistently suggested that, as humans, we are able to choose better, to transform, to rise above fear and prejudice. Serling’s writing did not reflect a naïve kind of optimism waiting for something good to arrive. Rather, it reflected hope in action working to prepare the way. In that sense, Serling’s writing reflected the UU approach to the preparation facet of the Advent season.

Preparation, of course, is not the same as attainment. We do need to acknowledge the work that was done by Rod Serling and others during the Civil Rights Era is not finished by any standard. The social issues at hand didn’t just creep in quickly; therefore, realistically, they will not be resolved quickly. But that doesn’t have to diminish hope in continuing to work for change.

In the case of Mary and the Annunciation, I think Mary was aware that she might not live to see her hopes fully realized. And yet, she had all the confidence that she was part of change unfolding over time.

And in the case of Rod Serling, take the fact that today there is the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation. Or the fact that there is the annual SerlingFest, held in the city he grew up in. Or the fact that I attended the latest SerlingFest, and met a lot of people connected to Rod Serling in various ways, including the ones I mentioned by name. Or the fact that I am sharing all this with you today… especially if I was able to hold your attention this long.

Let me conclude with a reference to what is considered one of Rod Serling’s finest screenplays—the one for the 1964 movie Seven Days in May. It is an adaptation of a novel about a military conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. Critics gave the movie positive reviews, such as this one in the New York Times:

“Rod Serling’s excellent screenplay is a hymn to American democracy. It mixes inspiration with excitement, confidence with fear, and concludes that we, the people, should be vigilant but not afraid.”

These words ring very timely now as they did then. And the awareness of these and other things make me a little more hopeful today.