An Invitation to Share this Advent Season

     Tomorrow the season of Advent begins. This longtime tradition in the Christian community invites followers to slow down, to prepare for something new, to wait.
                 Slowing Down and
                        Preparing for something new and
                               Waiting.
Each one feels important. Each one feels needed. Each one of these feels both impossible and just in time for me for these days.
 
     For the past several years, I’ve been writing a daily blog for the days of Advent. Beginning tomorrow, you are invited to companion me on this year’s Advent journey to Bethlehem. With these daily reflections, I hope to offer a space and place for you to slow down, to prepare and to help create space for waiting. As November comes to a close and we enter into 2020’s final month, I invite you to reflect on what was and is and to pray for what is yet to be. Advent each year calls us to jump off life’s merry-go-round and journey on a path of renewal and promise.
 
     Over lunch one Saturday a couple weeks ago, son Sam helped me choose 7 themes to companion us from November in and through December. On Sundays exploring one theme, on Monday another and moving on through the week, through the season. If this Advent blog had a table of contents, it would look like this:
             Sundays:          Time
             Mondays:        Relying on the Moon
             Tuesdays:        Cornerstone Words of Faith
             Wednesdays:  Grief
             Thursday:       Prayers
              Fridays:            Messengers
             Saturdays:       (De) Light
 
     It felt good to talk with Sam about writing these blogs. I was grateful for his kind listening and for his help in musing them into beginning. 2020 has been a year like no other, and it’s helpful for me to stop and let my heart catch up. As Sam and I talked I was reminded, yet again that words help me, help us begin to make sense of troubling times. Words can help us build bridges toward one another, open doors and let another in.
 
     For the next twenty-seven days many believers and dreamers and questioners will be turning their hearts to Bethlehem. Especially this year, I am seeking a bright star to lead me. Especially this year, I am trying to see in the dark. Especially this year, I am listening for the carols that somehow can bring me home. O Come, O Come Emmanuel. 
 
(thank you, Claudia for this candle)
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