The weeks before Christmas are often busy, rushed, hectic. Advent, however, calls in a different direction, inviting us not to busy doing but to expectant waiting, not to loud activity but to silent reflection and prayer.

– John O’Donohue*

It is Advent. And we are waiting. But waiting is not what we often think. We tend to think of waiting as killing time, a dead space where nothing happens. But waiting requires both patience and attention; it is actually living intensely in a season filled with anticipation. It is allowing the future to shape our present. Henri Nouwen wrote that a waiting person is someone "very present to the moment, who believes that this moment is THE moment."**

O’Donohue calls us to linger at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. That is often so very hard. We would rather rush ahead to something known, even if that something known is really just the “same old, same old” in different guise.

Deep waiting involves what Christine Valters Paintner calls “a profound unknowing of what will come next.” She points to the example of the Jesus’ mother: “With Mary’s yes to the angel, she steps onto a threshold, welcoming … a pregnancy that brings with it many unknowns.” Valters Paintner continues, “When we are able to fully release our need to control the outcome, thresholds become rich and graced places of transformation. We can only become something new when we have released the old faces we have been wearing.”

In this season of Advent, what do you need to release? What things from the past – yes, even outdated self-images – do you need to let go of, so as to free your hands to embrace God’s unknown future?

It is Advent. And we are waiting. Let us not rush ahead to the familiar Christmas activities. Wait. Pay attention. Let go of expectations. Linger at the threshold where God’s unknown future is waiting just for you.

*Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (Harper, 2003), p.33.

**A Spirituality of Waiting.

Photo by KaLisa Veer on Unsplash

Deborah Borden, a friend of mine in a professional organization, along with her husband, Donald, were good people but unlikely to be thought of as spiritual masters. Yet, Deborah had a significant impact on my life. She often spoke of Donald this way: “He loves me, not because of who I am, but because of who he is.”

One day in the silence of prayer, surprisingly, I understood my relationship with God in a similar way. God loves me not because of who I am. How would I know this but in a sacred silent space? –a space left open by the absence of noise. –a space uninhabited by worries, resentments, or fear. –a space large enough to offer hospitality to “a sound of sheer silence”. (1 Kgs 19:12b NRSVCE)

If there is no open space to listen, how can we be surprised by a mini- epiphany waiting to be revealed to us? Would we fail to experience the wonder of God’s gifts to us? If we do feel a sense of unbidden well-being, are we likely to miss the joy, due to the chaos and clamor all around?

"As C.S. Lewis noted in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, every so often we are overcome by a feeling of enormous well-being and a desire for ‘we know not what.’ This desire is what he calls joy, and he describes it as more satisfying than the fulfillment of any other desire.”*

During this Advent season, let us take on the posture of Mary, that of prayerful silence. In that silence perhaps we will ‘hear’ a silent God loving us, yes, because that is who God is. God IS love. We may be surprised by the joy.

*(William Barry, God’s Passionate Desire. P. 7)

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