The First Day of Advent

The coming of Advent marks the beginning of a new year for me.  This Advent, however, I’m engaged in renovating my study—installing crown moulding and painting.  This means my morning “space” is unavailable for a week or so.  Oh, my, what a difference that is making in my normal morning routine.  It did not prevent me from accomplishing one of my annual Advent activities—selecting photos of the year and displaying them on two glass-covered tables in the living room—but it did hinder my usual morning pondering and writing time.

Advent is a very special time—a time of promise:

    a time of preparation for the new about to happen,

    a time for new beginnings.

Advent is a time of expectancy...a time of happenings: 

   annunciations are heard if ears are opened,   

   and  dreams are dreamed and guidance given.

Advent is a time of giving birth to God:

Morning company at my study window last year
 during the big blizzard.

    we carry God around with us and do not know it,

    Advent is a time for a new birth within.  

Advent is a time of waiting:

    waiting for mountains to be brought down;

    hills to be brought low,

    and for valleys to be lifted up and crooked places made   straight.

Advent is a time of moving—a time of transition:

    not a movement backward, but forward,  

   moving all inhabitants of the world

   to a place we’ve never been before.

Advent is about newness—a time for the "New Things:”

    a season of receptivity and openness,

    a time of new vulnerability.

Advent announces a Way—a time of new dreams:

    a time to sing our own song, dance our own dance,

    a time of searching and for finding.

Advent is all of the above—it is also kairos time:

     time to start anew, to begin again,

  Advent is the time to follow your star.