Deeper Streams

I’m not great at waiting. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on the freeway, in line at Target, or sitting in a doctor’s office. I am programmed to get on with it, no matter what “it” is.  When people and situations get in the way, I feel impatient, inconvenienced, and maybe even put upon. 

So, when I encounter an entire season, like Advent, that is a celebration of waiting, it isn’t something that I naturally take to. How many days until Christmas? How many sermons? How many concerts, gatherings or parties will happen before I get to the beginning of a new year. How long must I hold my breath until I get to a breathing space. How much confinement is there before the opportunity for expansion?

Recently, we learned that a new grandchild is on the way, and what a perfect season to receive such news! A new life holds all the hope and promise to supersede obstacles, to create new energy, and maybe even change the course of history.

The potential of human pro-creation is nothing short of miraculous. Some would say there’s nothing supernatural about it. I get the fact that human reproduction is a series of natural processes that happen everyday. But, the energy we call Life, that which breathes us and beats our hearts, is something that defies easy explanation. 

As we celebrate Emmanuel, “God with us,” the demonstration of divinity residing within a human body, let us avoid the theological detours that could accompany our seasonal celebrations. Instead, let us wait for just the right moment, which is actually the present moment, to open ourselves to divine awareness.

Let us draw ourselves inward, at least until the turning of the solstice when the shift in light occurs, and something like a star appears in our hearts, illuminating all that the Christ Child represents within us.

Let us recognize that as we watch and wait for civility, equality, and justice to blossom in us and all around us, we are living in a gestational moment, as something new is near us, and waiting to be born. 

It will come.

Soon.