… let us be joyful, let us be happy, but let us also slow down a little, do a little more preparation inwardly, and walk rather than run towards Bethlehem.
Each year I look at the Christmas tree and see the memories of Christmas’ past. I remember the songs sung around the tree. I remember the hugs shared. I remember the gifts given.
At a certain point, the suspense of counting down the days till Christmas was eased with the introduction of little chocolate treats behind each window. That was, it turns out, the top of a very slippery slope.
Two Christmas music treats that popped up on Facebook this week. A definitive and absolute list of the best Christmas Carols and a musical Advent calendar of a capella carols and holiday songs
So, since it’s about halfway through Advent, I think it’s time for me to be less busy and a little bit more patient; to ponder a bit more and struggle a lot less, to look for God in unexpected times and places instead of either shooting up arrow prayers expecting God to take care of them and then rushing off to do something else.
I have seen the work that is required to turn a sword into a plowshare – the brute force and heat required to re-craft a spear-head into a pruning hook. But it can be done. Weapons can be re-made. The question Advent asks is this: “What tools of war in your life – in my life – need to be heated in the forge of prayer and then hammered on the anvil of determination- re-made into tools for peace?”
This Advent, think about the little seed of hope we all carry within us and how we can nurture that hope so that in due time we will bring forth a vision of hope that will encompass the world.
Advent begins this week. For what do you long? I long for a simpler, kinder life. I long to make something which tastes lovely and give it away and for that to be enough.
Being in a monastery during Advent was like being inside a cozy New England Inn during a terrible nor’easter – a terrible, loud, windy, snowy storm. Sitting by a fire with spiced, hot wine during a gale-force-winds-storm is how it felt to sing and pray by candle-light in a habit while the world around us rushed by
After all, I am pretty sure Hell is just an eternity of getting what we thought we wanted.