Welcome to Advent: Season of Waiting and of Hope!

Advent is definitely one of my favorite liturgical seasons. Somehow this year Advent seems to have taken on even greater significance. I have two different booklets with daily reflections---one by Fr. Richard Berg, CSC, and the other by Diane Lopez Hughes. I also have a book by Caryll Houselander that extends all the way from Advent to Epiphany, so my reflection material is plentiful.

All of theses sources, of course, talk about Advent as a time of waiting. That's the part that seems especially significant to me this year. I feel like I've been in a pattern of "waiting" since April for one thing or another: waiting for bouts of illness to get better, for surgery to be schedules, for doctors' visits to be scheduled, for various tests to be over with, for medical supplies to arrive, for second opinions, and now for additional surgery to be scheduled. And with the waiting is the attendant anxiety about what will happen next.

One of the reflections I used talked about the image of a tree in winter waiting for new life. Ironically, I had just written a poem very similar to that idea--although I hadn't thought of Advent when I wrote it. I was really thinking about adapting to different periods in one's life. I also had a hard time coming up with a title for the poem. With the connection with Advent, however, the title seemed to come!

Waiting In Hope

Tree bereft of leaves

Mourns the blaze of color lost

And fears approaching death,

But deep within her buried roots

A new life waits –

Patient,

Confident

That time will birth a richer growth,

And color –

Strong,

Vibrant,

Fully alive

Will blaze anew.

Ann Marie Slavin, OSF

Then yesterday one of our sisters stopped by to visit and before she left she had me open a book of quotes and prayers. The page I opened to was a quote by Ranier Maria Rilke: 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

 

What a perfect fit to everything I had been reflecting on! I hope your Advent season will be one rich in many blessings as you prepare for the ongoing Advent of the God of Love in your lives!