Your Advent-ure Just Started

The season of Advent began last Sunday, and like all church seasons, it can sneak up on our individual and distracted calendars and either make a difference in our lives... or not, depending on how receptive we are to the subtle gifts of seasonal cycles.

Some of the familiar themes of Advent are hope... waiting... darkness... and patience within the darkness as we wait for the coming of Christ, for the coming of new life and promise. Some of the "practices" surrounding Advent concern listening for our longings, trusting the unpredictable gestations in our lives and in general, wrestling with waiting.

But if Advent is about waiting for something new to come into our world, often that new life comes in unexpected ways.

And when the new crashes in, perhaps unwelcome and even unruly, well, that is also Advent. The "Advent" times in our lives can be the game-changing times, bidden or not, that re-arrange our furniture. Standing amidst the wreckage (or, at least the redecoration) of our changed landscape, Advent dares us to not obsess about how to get our old life back, but instead to ask:

"What is possible now?"

The waiting and listening of Advent lead naturally to moving the feet in the face of change. Indeed, Advent is also about the life-changing, affirming action that can only come from times of attunement, stillness and deep, unguarded listening.

Speaking of waiting, perhaps the world has been waiting for something from you... and it could just be that now is the time to co-create with God something that needs to be born in our midst. Amidst the darkness and gestation of this season, "You are the light of the world," called forth to let that light shine. "What is possible now" that only you can do?

Darkness, light. Waiting, acting. Permanent loss, infinite possibility. It's all Advent. May you open the door to it and embrace its mystery and promise.