- Luncheon Tea w/ NQCA December 13th at noon, RSVP this week
- First Thursday Lunch is this Thursday at Herricks at noon
- Tree Lighting & Carols December 7th at 6pm
- Christmas Eve Services at 7pm
- Christmas Day Quiet Prayer 9-10am
- Christmas Adopt-a-Family Tree has arrived
- Death Cafe December 13th at 4pm
- Discussion Circle Last Sunday after Church.
- Bible Study with Seth 1st & 3rd Sundays after Church (no 12/21)
Visit our Calendar of Events to learn more.
Our Sunday Reflection is recorded and can be found HERE (posts each Sunday late morning or early afternoon.
We do not like to wait. We don’t like to wait in line for our coffee. We don’t like to wait at stoplights. We don’t like to wait for airplanes. We get agitated when we have to wait. It’s uncomfortable. We try to fill the space. Sometimes with stuff. Sometimes with sound. Sometimes with movement.
Advent represents the dark and the quiet before something new begins. It is a time to slow down and focus. Maybe you’re immediately agitated by that idea. There’s no time to slow down and rest. There’s no time to wait. And yet, ’tis the season of waiting. We don’t get to open all twenty five windows of the Advent calendar on November 30th. We must have patience.
I love that Thanksgiving heralds Advent. We begin with thank you. In many ways, thank you is a letting go. Thank you alleviates regret. It is a thank you for all that has passed and all that is. The good and the wonderful and the terribly messy and ugly. A thank you for where we have come, even if it’s not perfect.
Then, Advent. Waiting. Sacred Waiting is both a rest and a Yes to what is to come. A yes to letting the coming unfold in its own time. There is no rushing the messy and ugly times. There is no rushing the best things in life. This is a Yes to life itself and a Yes that orients us toward what matters most. Notice all the Yeses that begin Advent. Mary: Yes. Joseph: Yes. Elizabeth: Yes. These yeses are then all followed by…waiting. Waiting and preparing.
Waiting is a time of nurturing, reassessing, and reevaluating. Today is the first day of the new year in the Christian calendar. It is a time for us to pause, reassess, reevaluate, and nurture before we begin anew. A time to nurture our relationship with Grace, our role in community, and who we are as individuals. A time to reorient ourselves; perhaps that is exactly that today’s passage is reminding us. Don’t stop paying attention. Don’t get distracted. Remember to keep your focus on what matters most.
In the waiting, we discover our deepest passions and also our worst habits. Beneath our desires, we often find (sometimes: hidden) our unique gifts and skills. Our worst (often: avoidance) habits often hide the passions that we fear most to share for fear that we might fail. Fear is often the sneaksy thing behind those not-so great habits. Embracing Yes to to the fullness of life and our role in it can help alleviate our fears and reorient us toward our unique purpose.
Sacred Waiting deeply roots us. It roots us in the now. This moment. Thank you for what has passed. Yes to what is to come. Rooted deeply in the now. This moment. This now is also wonderfully illuminated by light. Light always shines more clearly in the dark and when it becomes most unbearably dark, the light is close.
Embrace the Sacred Waiting that illuminates in the dark and offers us deepest clarity.
Maybe this waiting is a human tune up. We definitely hate waiting for our cars to be tuned up. It’s such a disruption to our normal lives. Why would it be any different for our personal tune ups?
But we need these Sacred Pauses. A weekly rest day. Seasonal quiet times. We too need an occasional tune up and our sacred calendar offers us just that time. In a world that screams: do, do, do, busy, busy, busy, our faith says: Shhh, Quiet, Wait. Sit, stay, breathe. Breathe it all in…all those wonderful abounding blessings we are often too rushed to stop and smell and taste and see. Often, after a little tune up, just like our little cars, we do what we do with more vigor, joy, and clarity.
We often stir our own pots and agitate our own lives. Let’s look at the car tune up or when it’s in the shop for longer repairs. What do we do when our essential tools for our normal life are out of commission? We might choose to slow down and work with what is happening with gentleness. We might imagine what it is like for those who don’t have the luxury of a reliable vehicle or any vehicle at all. We might have a moment of thank you, perhaps followed by a Yes from something we discovered in our quiet thinking…
Or…we might agitate the space. Tap our toes. Drum our fingers. Sigh. Moan. Complain. We, too often, sink into irritation instead of illumination. We’re not used to our cars being out of commission. It’s uncomfortable, different, and vulnerable. It’s often even more uncomfortable and vulnerable when we are in need of our own personal tune ups.
Sometimes that tune up is simply ten minutes to walk, breathe, and clear our heads instead of continuing to agitate and spin our wheels (while we grab another cup of caffeine). Maybe, what we need is a time of darkness and quiet to nourish and bring clarity.
Sacred Waiting is a gift to clear our heads and hone in on what is most precious. What are the traditions you truly love that get lost in the chaos of the all the other expectations? When was the last time you asked yourself that?
Sacred Waiting allows us to see more clearly so that each season, each day, each moment, is lived as well as is possible. This passage reminds us to live well. Don’t be distracted by all those wonderful temptations around us…turn your attention toward Love and Grace.
Advent also reminds us that we are not alone. Our weeks of waiting echoes the waiting of decades and centuries past…and to come. Already and not yet. It is the season of quiet, listening, and preparation that has come before and comes again.
Remember the shepherds in the fields. It is so dark, it is light (the stars, the Milky Way, and the Star). It is so quiet, it is loud (the multitudes of angels). It is so still, it is trembling (fear not).
The dark and the quiet is scary. The dark and the quiet echo the empty times. The times of grief and scarcity. It is winter after all. Winter and dark echo scarcity, struggle, and death.
And in one thing, there is always the other. In joy, there is also grief, but we must not let grief consume us. In hope there is despair, but we must must let the despair deaden us. In love there is hatred; we must not let hate win.
In peace, there is agitation…
Too often, we fill the quiet with so much noise. Too often, we fill the dark with blinding light. We rush to the next thing to avoid that uncomfortable quiet waiting that asks us to see in new ways and sometimes to change our comfortable ways. Too often, we come out the other side of the quiet and sense that maybe we missed something precious that had been offered.
It is in the quiet that we discover our sacred Thank You and our sacred Yes. Often we find that little changes in our beautiful lives by opening ourselves to this season of dark and waiting. We find it wasn’t so scary after all. But we uncover a new perspective to remember (thank you) that our lives are beautiful and a Yes to the future unfolding of our lives.
In darkness, we prepare for the light. In quiet, we prepare for the song. In stillness, we prepare for the love. In the dark, we become our bravest, wisest selves. We learn to prepare for what matters most.
If we are brave enough–and yes, of course, it takes bravery to sit in the quiet and the cold and the darkness and the unknown–something unfolds. We sense the ways in which we avoid the fullness of our lives. We discover our gifts and the beauty that was, and is, always there.
This season of Peace and Quiet is embedded into the very foundation of our faith. Let yourself be embraced and enfolded in this Sacred Stillness and be filled with Infinite Love. This is where we find deepest joy, infinite peace, unshakable hope, and love beyond understanding.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 