Tuesday 1 December 2015

Advent

I am hoping for more this advent season.
More time to reflect,
more space to open up
and more resolve to see the holiness in the waiting

Advent is too often wished away, a quickstep up to the main event
But there is so much more on offer.

This year impatience has taken on a whole new meaning for me.
5 months pregnant and to say I am extremely keen to meet this little girl would be a drastic understatement.

She has started to make her presence known with movements and karate chops. Every wiggle fills me with an unprecedented joy.

Perhaps more than ever I am appreciating the desire to skip to the end when I get to hold the baby in my arms, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that Mary might have felt the same. 

But pregnancy in itself is a precious time of waiting and preparation, so to wish it away means I am in danger of completely missing the point.

Because this time is limited, never again will I have this precious child so close to me that it’s hard to tell which heartbeat is mine and which is hers.

So it is with advent, often wished fast away or forgotten in all the other demands.
I was recently blown away by Frederick Buechner’s description of advent;

‘In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself.
You hold your breath to listen…for a second you catch a whiff of a fragrance that reminds you of a place you have never been and a time you have no words for...


The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens.

Advent is the name of that moment.’


Frederick Buechner ‘Goodness and Light advent reflection’
 


So lets pause together for a while and listen to the still small voice which echoes across the years, taking all of our pettiness and worries into his stride as the old way is made new once again. 






          Pictures from a snowy Scottish adventure this weekend, celebrating one of my most enduring and joyful friendships with this wonderful woman.