Dear Ones,
It does not happen every year, but this is truly a holy-day week. Tomorrow’s pause for thanks and gratitude will give way on Sunday to the ushering in of Advent hope. Amid the challenges of our world, I believe that cultivating a posture of gratitude can be the best way to cultivate the kind of open-heartedness that allows hope to rise even in the most challenging of times.
But in order to truly embrace these next four weeks as “holy” days, we will need to pay attention to how easily we can get caught up in the mad dash of frenetic activity and miss what the slow heart song of the Advent season invites us to. Indeed, what I most love about the Advent season is how incredibly countercultural it is. Whereas the world of marketing turns all the Christmas lights on at full throttle in October, the church season of Advent begins with just a glimmer of light and invites us to slow down so that we can allow the aperture of our hearts to expand in awareness.
Each Sunday during Advent, we light a single candle as we seek to embrace the metaphor of watching and waiting in the shadows. Each week the light grows brighter and brighter, even as natural world grows darker and darker. Advent is a season of nurturing our inner ability to see that growing glimmer of light shining in the darkness and hear words of good news in the face of the clamor of bad news. At the center of the Christmas story are the angels who are the light bearers and messengers of the good news that Christ is bringing into the world.
We picture them with halos and wings but, in essence, they are a way for us to imagine the still small voice and light-filled presence of the Holy One who visits us in unexpected ways. The angels help us to envision what it might mean for us to receive the good news, but they are also there to remind us to consider what it might mean for us to bearers of good news. As our theme description notes, the angels would have been very comfortable in our world of texts and tweets. Their messages were short and to the point, their favorite being #DoNotBeAfraid. Truly this is a time in history when fear could get the best of us. But this is also a time to prepare ourselves to hear the good news of the Christmas story in ways we never expected or imagined.
I look forward to beginning the Advent Season with you on Sunday. It is my prayer that this holiday season you take time to pause to truly embrace each day as a “holy” day.
Many Blessings,
Rev. Laura
