Most years, the day before Thanksgiving is one of the most stressful of the year. Many people travel on that day, with delays on planes, trains and highways. Those staying home and hosting face crowded grocery stores and homes in need of cleaning. We may not be dealing with as much of that this year, but our lives have been upended and families disrupted. Any of these stresses can be a good metaphor for the Advent season.
Whether we’re waiting to get there, or for someone to arrive, or for a viable vaccine to come along to end this Covid nightmare, we face a lot of waiting. Waiting for God to show up – cataclysmically, at the end of the ages, or here and now, in the midst of a crisis – can also feel like that. Though we often look back on events and say that God’s timing was just right, in the moment it can feel like we’re waiting forever.
When we’re little, Advent is about waiting for Christmas, with its huge build-up. As we get older, we learn that Advent is really about waiting to celebrate the birth of Christ, the inbreaking Word of God, come to take up residence in us. And we know that, as wonderful as that story is, as fully as we have embraced it, it’s still incomplete, because we’re still waiting for the fullness of that revelation of God to be completed. There's too much pain and evil around to think we’ve seen the end of the story.
Is there anything we can do to be more with our waiting and longing? Yes – and it happens to be the one thing most sages and philosophers suggest we do to live more fulfilled lives: be present. Now. Focus on where you are in this moment, not the next, not the one that just passed. Now.
If we were to do that in a terminal, or at home preparing, we might find ourselves focusing on the people around us. Focusing on our feelings of waiting and not knowing when we will see our loved ones. Focusing on our breath and our life, on our gifts and our thoughts, on what we love, on who we love, and who loves us. This is a way to transcend the waiting and receive an opportunity to tune our awareness to the breath of those around us, to the pulse of the community, to the yearnings of the universe. That’s not wasted time… that’s a form of prayer, of connecting to the Holy. It is Advent life.
Eternity is an forever of Now. Learning to wait with anticipation while fully content will serve us well in this life and in the life to come. It creates in us a capaciousness and a serenity in which others can seek shelter. It creates space in which the Holy Spirit can dwell and bless others.
I hope today is a wonderful day for you, wherever you are and wherever you are going, whoever you’re with and whoever you miss being with. I pray you will be amazed at the peacefulness, even joy, you can experience whatever the stresses. They are temporary – you are eternal. Already.
You... Are.
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