My husband is man who spends his days teaching first graders how to read and write, and yet maintains a capacity for deep thinking and great ponderings. The other day he sent me this quote from one of his favorite authors, George MacDonald.

But God sits in that chamber of our being in which the candle of our consciousness goes out in darkness, and sends forth from thence wonderful gifts into the light of that understanding which is His candle. Our hope lies in no most perfect mechanism even of the spirit, but in the wisdom wherein we live and move and have our being.

These words, like all poetic words bear a meaning deeper than we get at first glance. We are called to sit with them, taste them, let them roll around in our mouths and our minds, feel them, try them on, and then live them, even if we don’t completely understand them.  The liturgical calendar of the Church is like that. There are seasons which give a rhythm to ordinary days and weeks. Liturgical time is essentially poetic time—time given to us by God in which we are invited into the mystery of waiting attentively in stillness, wherein we live and move and have our being.

Today, in the liturgical year, the Church begins her calendar with the first Sunday in Advent.  Simply put, Advent means “coming”. This liturgical season is rather paradoxical. We wait with quiet stillness, and with anticipation of the One who is to come.  We prepare our hearts to receive the gift of Christ, The One who was, is and always will be. The One wherein we live and move and have our being. Kathleen Norris, in her book, The Cloister Walk, describes the Advent season as one which “….breaks into our lives with images of light and dark, first and last things, watchfulness and longing, origin and destiny.”

So come, Lord Jesus. Come.

Always Mercy

Pamela