Waiting...Anticipating...

Seems funny to write a post about waiting after a month and a half of silence.  All the social media and blogger experts would tell me it is in bad form to comment how long I have been off-line - but wow - a month and a half?  Where does the time go?  I have lists of blog titles of things I wanted to write about but no time.

No time is a familiar topic in December, in Advent, in the days before Christmas.  It is the rush, rush, be happy, rush, rush, look happy, rush rush, spend money, rush rush, aren't you happy and broke rushing season.  So that isn't what Advent is really about, but that is what the consumer christmas season is about.

Every year I fall further and further out of love with christmas and deeper and deeper in love with Advent.  Don't get me wrong, waiting is not my forte.  Nope, not one bit.  Patience is not my virtue.  In fact all of Advent thinking about Mary waiting those nine long months to hold the Christ child brings me back many memories of my days of being pregnant, full of life, and waiting, anticipating the new life that would spring forth, the new creation that would change my life forever in ways I could never comprehend nor expect.  Anticipated waiting is even bigger than just plain waiting.  I remember wanting the pregnancy to be over and the baby to be here so badly, like a physical craving.  We want the waiting to be over, we struggle to stay present in the waiting, focused in the moment.  We tend to rush to the event not savoring every moment of getting to the event.  Advent is a time to relish the waiting, to reintroduce our minds and bodies to the stillness and fullness of the moment that is present.  The present of Advent is the Christ mass.

It is my hope this Advent to take time and devote it to the Incarnation.  To grapple with the meaning of my God becoming Human, to show me the way, to patiently walk with me in my blindness.  This first week we light the candle of Hope on our Advent Wreaths.  Hope in our God, hope in ourselves.  You see the Incarnation is a telling sign of a loving God.  We have our flippant saying of "walking in someone else's shoes".  Well Jesus did that.  The Word became Flesh and walked in sandals the very same dirt path we continue to walk today.  Jesus is our true example of Hope.  From His Incarnation, to His example of following The Way, to His Resurrection, and now we await with anticipation his Revelation.

I read something this week that grabbed me and won't let go and I want to share it with you - I know who wrote it but not what context it was written in:

“I suspect that you knew you were different at an early age. Not that you always stood aloof or failed to find friends, but that you carried an awareness of life that was not always easy to share. It was not just your outward sign, how you appeared to others, but like a sacrament, an inward reality, a way of seeing, a sense that the air around you was scented with the fragrance of something sacred. And so you held your secret close, listening, waiting, until your time came, until your name was called by a voice familiar. You are what you were meant to be. 

You are unique.

You have a story to live that must be lived to be told.  But I suspect you know that."

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Choctaw

 

This gives me perspective in a couple of different ways.  One is the Incarnation of the Christ.  Doesn't that just speak to the Divine fully Human?  But doesn't it also speak to the Divine within each of us?  The Christ within each of us?  We are all created and called to live a life to the fullest in the glory of and for the glory of God.

"Listening, waiting, until your time came"...

Are you listening to the breath of God?

What are you waiting on?  waiting for?

Has the time come?

Is God waiting on you?

"your name was called by a voice familiar"...

Waiting...Anticipating...