Many families that celebrate Christmas welcome in the season with an Advent calendar that has a little window that opens on a special picture for each night of the Advent season, or which harbors a small treat to be discovered each day.
How might it change your experience of this season if you looked at each day with the expectation that it was holding some little hidden treat for you?
“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
–T.S. Eliot, from “East Coker”
How do you still your soul when you are impatient for change?
When was the last time you were on a swing? Can you feel in your body the sensation of flying, of leaning back and pumping your legs until you hit the very highest arc of the swing? The rush forward and backward is a joy, but the best part is that brief suspended moment at the top of the arc, the flash of weightlessness before you inevitably come down again.
What allows you moments in which you pause, however briefly, outside the regular parameters of your life?
The ancient circle at Stonehenge has stood for thousands of years, a silent observer as the world has changed in ways that no one could have imagined. And yet, in this world of medical miracles and smart phones the stones retain a sense of power, a depth of meaning that is palpable to its modern visitors.
What ancient object or tradition carries depth and power for you?
Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the light that refused to go out, the oil the kept burning as long as it was needed. In the dark of the year, Hanukkah honors all the ways that we manage to keep the light of faith, of hope, of joy, of compassion, of freedom burning , even when it would seem logical for that light to burn out.
What helps you keep the light in your soul alive?
