Advent Starts

Advent begins today—a time of waiting with joyful anticipation. Which is not how we usually think of waiting. More often we regard waiting as tedious or annoying or an interruption to our carefully planned life. But it doesn’t work to hurry the growth of a plant or the birth of a child—some things only come when the time is right, and one might as well celebrate the time that leads to fulfillment.

What do you wait for with joy in your heart?

4 thoughts on “Advent Starts”

  1. My retirement from full time work, which will happen in a few short years. I am now approaching a time, after a lifetime of struggle and sacrifice, where work will become an option instead of a necessity. Having the burden of competition in workplace lifted from me has helped me to better appreciate my job and my coworkers. I enjoy coming to work each day now more than I ever in the past. I am respected for what the knowlegde I have accumulated over the years and I enjoy helping others solve problems and advance in their chosen field. This is the season of harvest for me in a career that will span almost 40 years by the time I am done. These final years leading up to retirement have been good ones so far. I’m not in any hurry to see it end but when it does, I will go out on a high note.

  2. PS: please overlook the typos. I am posting on an iPhone. It’s a lot like trying to write a letter while peeking at the paper through a keyhole. 🙂

  3. I am looking forward to the holidays in December: all of the Advent Sundays, St. Nicholas Day, two winter solstice celebrations, my sister’s birthday, Christmas Eve, all of the following days of Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. These are all secular holidays for me, but they’re nevertheless meaningful.

    As for the rest of my life… that’s harder. I do look forward to my weekly chats with a friend.

    I guess I also look forward to becoming a more skilled recorder player. I generally enjoy practicing, partially for how I sound now but also in large part because I can hear myself improving. There is no final goal: I will always be able to play better, no matter how well I play. However, there are lots of little goals. I can’t JUST wait for myself to achieve them; there’s a lot of work (or should I say “play”?) that goes into them. That said, there’s a lot of patience involved as well. These things take time, and there’s no way around it.

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