Advent invites us into the holy practice of waiting and attending the birth that is coming. Christmas calls us to celebrate that birth with wonder and awe. Our culture tells us the season should be filled with shopping and rushing. The wisdom of ancient monastic practices tells us that this is a time for pausing, savoring, and soaking in awe and wonder.
Instead of becoming overwhelmed this year during the holidays, let this be an opportunity to move into a new set of rhythms which cultivate slowness through seasonal awareness. Imagine arriving at the New Year, not exhausted, but deeply refreshed by having tuned into your own soul’s cycles and longings and honoring those.
We may fantasize that if we only had more hours in the day we could catch up with ourselves, but the truth is what we most profoundly need is a new relationship to time and practices which call us to remember that now is all there is.
Instead of “spending” time or “wasting” time, or counting “time as money,” what if you made a commitment to a new way of experiencing the moments of your days so that you created an opening to the new birth happening right now? When we bring ourselves present we touch eternity.
