Be alert!
Be ready!
Be bold!
Be strong!
Being sometimes seems such a very active process and the Christmas countdown that has all but obliterated Advent is full of relentless activism as the world tries to persuade us to cram a life-time of shopping and consuming into the days that remain before The Birthday arrives.
The Church doesn't help, as we do everything in our power to encourage neighbours and strangers, unexpected pilgrims and exhausted passers-by to come through our doors and help us to celebrate. Candles flicker and pine needles drop. Clergy polish their brightest sermons and choristers celebrate the events that happened ONCE in Royal David's City dozens, nay hundreds of times.
It's all rather wonderful - but very very frenetic.
We are so SO busy showing our love for God by all that we do for Him, that it seems almost impossible to stop and just BE with Him.
But sometimes it is given to us to step out of all that...
Exhausted from Holy Week and Easter 2008, with all the emotional highs and lows of the season compounded by the end of a wonderful curacy, I boarded a plane to spend a week with some amazing women most of whom I'd met only on line...the RevGalBlogPals, who were staging their first Big Event.
Together we floated away on a cruise ship, hearing wise words from our retreat leader, sharing hopes, dreams, tears, laughter and, delightfully, bags of SWAG.
Each one of us found in our bags a bracelet, whose beads included 2 engraved with the letters BE - for the Big Event was, for each one of us, a time to stop, to reflect, to play and to BE.
Sitting with special friends watching the wake of our ship carve wonderful patterns through the waves, it was wonderfully possible to obey that injunction.
Navigating my way through a cathedral Christmas and the departure of my first-born to Canada, it's a bit more challenging - so, having retrieved the bracelet for photographic purposes, I think I will keep on wearing it for a while.
You never know, I might manage to learn something.
#AdventWord
Be ready!
Be bold!
Be strong!
Being sometimes seems such a very active process and the Christmas countdown that has all but obliterated Advent is full of relentless activism as the world tries to persuade us to cram a life-time of shopping and consuming into the days that remain before The Birthday arrives.
The Church doesn't help, as we do everything in our power to encourage neighbours and strangers, unexpected pilgrims and exhausted passers-by to come through our doors and help us to celebrate. Candles flicker and pine needles drop. Clergy polish their brightest sermons and choristers celebrate the events that happened ONCE in Royal David's City dozens, nay hundreds of times.
It's all rather wonderful - but very very frenetic.
We are so SO busy showing our love for God by all that we do for Him, that it seems almost impossible to stop and just BE with Him.
But sometimes it is given to us to step out of all that...
Exhausted from Holy Week and Easter 2008, with all the emotional highs and lows of the season compounded by the end of a wonderful curacy, I boarded a plane to spend a week with some amazing women most of whom I'd met only on line...the RevGalBlogPals, who were staging their first Big Event.
Together we floated away on a cruise ship, hearing wise words from our retreat leader, sharing hopes, dreams, tears, laughter and, delightfully, bags of SWAG.
Each one of us found in our bags a bracelet, whose beads included 2 engraved with the letters BE - for the Big Event was, for each one of us, a time to stop, to reflect, to play and to BE.
Sitting with special friends watching the wake of our ship carve wonderful patterns through the waves, it was wonderfully possible to obey that injunction.
Navigating my way through a cathedral Christmas and the departure of my first-born to Canada, it's a bit more challenging - so, having retrieved the bracelet for photographic purposes, I think I will keep on wearing it for a while.
You never know, I might manage to learn something.
#AdventWord
3 comments:
Love seeing that bracelet! I still have mine.
Thank you. Xx
Kathryn, I followed your blog in the lead up to that BE and caught the excitement, never imagining that one day I, too, would get to meet some of those wonderful RevGals on a BE. Blessings x
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