This season beckons me to ask, what am I preparing for?  What is the way that is being prepared within the wilderness of my life?  What does it mean for my own life to become a path, a way of welcome for the Holy One?  How do I give myself time to notice the ways that the path unfolds before me and within me?  What are the acts of preparation that bring delight to my daily life?  Whom do I ask or allow to help me prepare?-Jan Richardon, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas Today I really

Advent invites us into a sense of gratitude for the gifts God offers us.  In this time of darkness, we become more sensitive to those places of light and illumination.  In our eagerness for new birth, we become aware of the life bubbling inside of us, pulsing and readying.  In waiting, we come to recognize the hope we hold in our bodies, anticipation knit into our bones.    My life is filled with gifts.  This weekend, one of those gifts is in a twelve-pound package.  Doesn’t that sweet little face make you smile inside?  Niko belongs to one of my husband’s co-workers, they

Winter Dawn on Saltspring Island, BC I love that in the Jewish and Christian traditions, days actually begin the night before based on the lunar calendar of scripture.  As the sun lowers below the horizon, swathing the world in darkness, we move into the new day.  In earlier times, the night before a Christian feast day, vigil was kept. Vigil comes from the Latin vigilia which means wakefulness.  Keeping vigil is in part what Advent is about, staying awake, keeping watch, waiting.  We may go to vigil services for Christmas or Easter.  There are times of keeping vigil in our own lives.