I find myself getting frustrated that Christmas arrives earlier and earlier each year. As we begin this holy season of Advent, we are well aware that Christmas is only just around the corner - thank you Sainsburys, WH Smiths etc etc etc..! In fact I wouldn't be surprised that, as you read this, I am feeling even more wound up as the first Christmas card has flopped through the letter box. I guess part of my irritation is the fact that Advent has become a season of deadlines to prepare for Christmas.
We are all driven by these artificial constraints on time. As I write, my wife's sister has just phoned and chatted with her about what what she would like for her birthday - which fell in October! It's hard not to feel sad that the day has well passed with no present, but that said, isn't it better to have a present given in love, even if it is not at 'the right date?'
God's gifts are not delivered at a date, to a deadline but come unexpectedly, and yet somehow at the right time. Advent is a time for us to step away from being driven by deadlines, but instead to allow the unexpected arriving of God and His gifts to surprise and delight us.
In Advent we are taught by the church to expectantly wait for God's timing. To take time out. To put time aside. To make time. As Christians we long for God's timing, we look for it, we even try to create it, and yet as we wait we also commodify that most precious of gifts - space, a pause, some quiet. It is into this space, uncreated by us, but gifted to us, that God comes.
We do not have to buy into the pre-Christmas busyness and spending, but we can buy into Advent's promise of liberation, freedom, space and hope.
Practicalities:
* Prune the card list - less to send - more time!
* Don't write 'Must see you this year' unless you actually mean it. If you don't mean it why send the card?
* Give to charity as much as you spend - should help get the balance right
* Walk instead of driving if you can
Use the time saved to wait and see if that time is God's time to give to you, to come to you, to speak to you, to listen to you.
A Blog for Advent 2012
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Advent Sunday
Part of the clue to a re-invigorated vision of Advent lies in waiting — a waiting that rests not in frustration, but in stillness; not in frenzied expectation, but in an embracing of the present.
If we want to appreciate Advent fully, we need to re-learn how to wait; to rediscover the art of savouring the future, of staying in the present, and of finding meaning in the act of waiting.
It was only when I was pregnant with my first child that I realised that I had completely misunderstood what waiting was about. I am very bad at waiting. It makes me anxious, restless, and uneasy. No one who is expecting a child wants the waiting to end and the baby to come early — that can spell only heartache. The only thing to do in pregnancy is to wait.
It was during this period of enforced waiting that I began to discover that waiting is not just about passing the time between the moment when expectation is raised and when it comes to completion, in this instance between conception and birth, but that it has deep and lasting value in and of itself.
I discovered that waiting can be a nurturing time, valuable in its own right. Until then, I had assumed that waiting could only ever be passive. How wrong I was. Pregnant waiting is a profoundly creative act, involving a slow growth to new life. This kind of waiting may appear passive externally, but internally consists of never-ending action, and is a helpful analogy for the kind of waiting that Advent requires.
For many of us, Advent is such a busy time with all our preparations for Christmas that the thought of stopping and sitting passively — while attractive in many ways — is simply impossible. Advent, however, does not demand passivity, but the utmost activity: active internal waiting that knits together new life.
One of the other things I learnt during pregnancy was that learning to savour the time of waiting allows us also to appreciate the event when it comes. The loss of an ability to wait often brings with it the inability to be fully and joyfully present now. Instead, we are constantly looking backwards to better times we used to know, and forwards to better times that may be coming. The more we do this, the more we miss the present.
Not only that, but it becomes hard to appreciate the future moment even when it does come. Many people speak of the feeling of deep anti-climax on Christmas Day when that long-expected day does not live up to expectations. Often the reason for this is that we live for ever in the future, so that, when the future becomes the present, we are ill-equipped to deal with it, and have lost the ability to be fully present, right now.
One of the many reasons why we wait in Advent is so that we hone our skills of being joyfully and fully present now. After a month of doing this, Christmas Day can gain a depth and meaning that would otherwise fly past in a whirl of presents and mince pies.
Such deep attention to the present cannot help but transform us as we learn — or relearn as the case may be — how to live deeply and truly in the present moment, so that we are content to linger in our lives as they are now, and not be for ever striving onwards to the next goal...
God’s call to us remains a call to change: to leaving and accompanying, to moving and changing, to growing and flourishing. It is part of human nature to yearn for stability, to put down roots and stay put; but it is also a rule of nature that things which do not move do not live. Water that does not move becomes stagnant and in the same way when we do not move we become sluggish and hard to change. God’s call does not necessarily ask us to move our physical surroundings (although sometimes it does); most often it asks us to move our internal surroundings, to be prepared to be changed and transformed. God calls, and waits for our response…
These are edited extracts from The Meaning is in the Waiting: The spirit of Advent by Paula Gooder.
If we want to appreciate Advent fully, we need to re-learn how to wait; to rediscover the art of savouring the future, of staying in the present, and of finding meaning in the act of waiting.
It was only when I was pregnant with my first child that I realised that I had completely misunderstood what waiting was about. I am very bad at waiting. It makes me anxious, restless, and uneasy. No one who is expecting a child wants the waiting to end and the baby to come early — that can spell only heartache. The only thing to do in pregnancy is to wait.
It was during this period of enforced waiting that I began to discover that waiting is not just about passing the time between the moment when expectation is raised and when it comes to completion, in this instance between conception and birth, but that it has deep and lasting value in and of itself.
I discovered that waiting can be a nurturing time, valuable in its own right. Until then, I had assumed that waiting could only ever be passive. How wrong I was. Pregnant waiting is a profoundly creative act, involving a slow growth to new life. This kind of waiting may appear passive externally, but internally consists of never-ending action, and is a helpful analogy for the kind of waiting that Advent requires.
For many of us, Advent is such a busy time with all our preparations for Christmas that the thought of stopping and sitting passively — while attractive in many ways — is simply impossible. Advent, however, does not demand passivity, but the utmost activity: active internal waiting that knits together new life.
One of the other things I learnt during pregnancy was that learning to savour the time of waiting allows us also to appreciate the event when it comes. The loss of an ability to wait often brings with it the inability to be fully and joyfully present now. Instead, we are constantly looking backwards to better times we used to know, and forwards to better times that may be coming. The more we do this, the more we miss the present.
Not only that, but it becomes hard to appreciate the future moment even when it does come. Many people speak of the feeling of deep anti-climax on Christmas Day when that long-expected day does not live up to expectations. Often the reason for this is that we live for ever in the future, so that, when the future becomes the present, we are ill-equipped to deal with it, and have lost the ability to be fully present, right now.
One of the many reasons why we wait in Advent is so that we hone our skills of being joyfully and fully present now. After a month of doing this, Christmas Day can gain a depth and meaning that would otherwise fly past in a whirl of presents and mince pies.
Such deep attention to the present cannot help but transform us as we learn — or relearn as the case may be — how to live deeply and truly in the present moment, so that we are content to linger in our lives as they are now, and not be for ever striving onwards to the next goal...
God’s call to us remains a call to change: to leaving and accompanying, to moving and changing, to growing and flourishing. It is part of human nature to yearn for stability, to put down roots and stay put; but it is also a rule of nature that things which do not move do not live. Water that does not move becomes stagnant and in the same way when we do not move we become sluggish and hard to change. God’s call does not necessarily ask us to move our physical surroundings (although sometimes it does); most often it asks us to move our internal surroundings, to be prepared to be changed and transformed. God calls, and waits for our response…
These are edited extracts from The Meaning is in the Waiting: The spirit of Advent by Paula Gooder.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Advent vs Alistair Darling
From this week's Church Times...
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a video from the Church of England’s Advent website, screened to journalists at Lambeth Palace on Monday, said that the economic crisis had been driven by impatience.
“We are not a culture that’s very used to waiting,” he said, at almost the same moment as the Chancellor was announcing that he would borrow £118 billion next year, the equivalent of £1934 for every person in the UK.
Dr Williams said: “All those bits of our contemporary culture which are about rushing to get gratification, getting the results straight away, all those habits of our culture which so drive the crises of our culture, whether it’s the credit crunch or the environmental crisis — all those things we have to cast a rather cold eye on during Advent.”
The message of Advent was the opposite of what the Chancellor was saying, said the RC Abbot of Worth, Dom Christopher Jamison, author of Finding Happiness, extracts of which are included in the Advent site.
“We see Advent as a very seriously charged moment, in which we . . . refuse to behave as though the way to salvation is to spend more and to get into debt more, because that is what has got us into this trouble in the first place,” he said at the launch.
“The antidote to greed is waiting. It is not never shop, but shop less; not stand still, but go slower; but that is not what the politicians are going to tell us. The Chancellor is going to say ‘Spend like before.’ But that is what has got us into trouble in the first place.
“The economy is going through a readjustment, whether we like it or not. If we behave like we have in the last ten years, then we will just see another crisis. We have to work for an economy with a more solid foundation in order to skip the boom and bust. But the politicians have not done that.”
In the video, Dr Williams criticised the way society was “saturated” with carols as leaving little space to think. But Dr Paula Gooder, the Birmingham-based theologian and author of The Meaning is in the Waiting (Canterbury Press), who, with Fr Jamison, had contributed to the Church’s Advent programme, said: “I don’t think there is anything wrong with lots of carols and early Christmas trees. It is the way we celebrate Christmas now.” Advent was about realising “that this moment is like no other and once it’s gone, it’s gone”.
The Bishop of Reading, the Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell, whose Advent book Do Nothing Christmas is Coming (CHP) is also featured on the website, said: “I don’t want to be a kill-joy about carols, but if you sing them too early, you lose the sense of occasion. “A feast is better when it is preceded by a fast. When every day is Christmas Day, then no day is Christmas Day.”
Some people did not put up their Christmas tree until Christmas Eve or drink alcohol during Advent, but that was not a course he was going to follow. “It’s a lot harder not drinking in Advent than it is in Lent. Not drinking is probably unrealistic.”
Elsewhere, the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, six other Welsh bishops, and the four Chief Constables in Wales have combined in a campaign against binge drinking. People would be invited to “pledge” to cut down, Dr Morgan said at the campaign launched on Thursday last week.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a video from the Church of England’s Advent website, screened to journalists at Lambeth Palace on Monday, said that the economic crisis had been driven by impatience.
“We are not a culture that’s very used to waiting,” he said, at almost the same moment as the Chancellor was announcing that he would borrow £118 billion next year, the equivalent of £1934 for every person in the UK.
Dr Williams said: “All those bits of our contemporary culture which are about rushing to get gratification, getting the results straight away, all those habits of our culture which so drive the crises of our culture, whether it’s the credit crunch or the environmental crisis — all those things we have to cast a rather cold eye on during Advent.”
The message of Advent was the opposite of what the Chancellor was saying, said the RC Abbot of Worth, Dom Christopher Jamison, author of Finding Happiness, extracts of which are included in the Advent site.
“We see Advent as a very seriously charged moment, in which we . . . refuse to behave as though the way to salvation is to spend more and to get into debt more, because that is what has got us into this trouble in the first place,” he said at the launch.
“The antidote to greed is waiting. It is not never shop, but shop less; not stand still, but go slower; but that is not what the politicians are going to tell us. The Chancellor is going to say ‘Spend like before.’ But that is what has got us into trouble in the first place.
“The economy is going through a readjustment, whether we like it or not. If we behave like we have in the last ten years, then we will just see another crisis. We have to work for an economy with a more solid foundation in order to skip the boom and bust. But the politicians have not done that.”
In the video, Dr Williams criticised the way society was “saturated” with carols as leaving little space to think. But Dr Paula Gooder, the Birmingham-based theologian and author of The Meaning is in the Waiting (Canterbury Press), who, with Fr Jamison, had contributed to the Church’s Advent programme, said: “I don’t think there is anything wrong with lots of carols and early Christmas trees. It is the way we celebrate Christmas now.” Advent was about realising “that this moment is like no other and once it’s gone, it’s gone”.
The Bishop of Reading, the Rt Revd Stephen Cottrell, whose Advent book Do Nothing Christmas is Coming (CHP) is also featured on the website, said: “I don’t want to be a kill-joy about carols, but if you sing them too early, you lose the sense of occasion. “A feast is better when it is preceded by a fast. When every day is Christmas Day, then no day is Christmas Day.”
Some people did not put up their Christmas tree until Christmas Eve or drink alcohol during Advent, but that was not a course he was going to follow. “It’s a lot harder not drinking in Advent than it is in Lent. Not drinking is probably unrealistic.”
Elsewhere, the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, six other Welsh bishops, and the four Chief Constables in Wales have combined in a campaign against binge drinking. People would be invited to “pledge” to cut down, Dr Morgan said at the campaign launched on Thursday last week.
Friday, 28 November 2008
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Here are some Advent ideas and resources to help us make the most of this most holy season.
ADVENT 2008
“Putting the waiting back into wanting.”
Context
Christmas 2008 looks set to be a time of real stress and pressure for many families. The mounting debt crisis and reports of property repossessions means that people are going to find the traditional commercialised Christmas putting a total squeeze on their family finances.
This coming season of Advent can provide an escape from all that and an opportunity to reclaim the true spirit of Advent. As Fr Christopher Jamison (BBC “Monastery”) writes in his forthcoming book to be published later in the year:
“Advent is the traditional month of preparation before Christmas, a time of fasting and intense prayer, a time of eager expectation. It is above all a time to celebrate waiting as a normal part of human experience, when the Christian tradition invites us to wait for the birth of a child. In Advent we rejoice that we are waiting, that there is still time to prepare a way for the Lord and we celebrate the virtue of patience. By contrast, the consumer world tells us not to wait but to ‘buy now.’ Greed cannot wait, so to learn to wait is a simple antidote to greed.”
This advent, we want PROPHETS, not PROFITS!
THE TWELVE “Cs” of Christmas
1.Christ: on whom all our waiting is centred. In the simplicity and modesty of his birth, we find God’s word among us with a clear message: “Live simply.”
2.Consumption: the engine of economic growth which enslaves us and treats creation as a mere commodity there for our use.
3.Community: a true focus outside of ourselves and immediate families directing us to be mindful of those in need around us.
4.Covetousness: the envy that drives so much materialistic pursuit and which is expressly singled out in the Ten Commandment for special attention.
5.Carols: with their multiple and joyous references to the humility of the Christ-child story.
6.Carbon: the by-product of so much of our modern over-consuming lifestyle.
7.Creation: God’s marvellous work, of which we are a small, but key part. God works ex nihilo, creating out of nothing. Even before the advent of humans in the Genesis creation narrative, God looks on at each passing day’s work and declares all that he sees as “good”.
8.Climate Change: our great unchartered experiment with the biosphere. Threats to creation loom large if we don’t awaken ourselves to the call to go back to some basic principles and live more simply, more sustainably.
9.Covenant: God’s faithfulness pledged first to Noah and then through Abraham, resulting in the coming of “God-with-us”: Emmanuel, promised to Israel.
10.Chaos: the disordered world that awaits if we do not live accordingly within the limits of God’s precepts.
11.Candles: four for each of the weeks of Advent, signifying the coming light that will shine in the darkness and which “darkness cannot overpower.” (St John’s Gospel Ch1
12. Commercialism: that which sees the price of everything and the value of
nothing and sees, in Christmas, one sole opportunity: profits (and not
prophets!)
Plan for first weekend of Advent. To divide the Saturday and Sunday into two distinctly different days.
Saturday
is a day of fasting and abstinence in which we reflect soberly on how humanity has fallen short of our vocation to be good stewards of God creation. It has a pre-Easter, “tomb-like” feel to it, before we break out into Sunday: an unapologetically pro-Creation day.
The readings of the first weekend of Advent lend themselves (with great serendipity) to our theme and offer great scope for reflection.
Isaiah 64:1-9: “that the mountains would tremble before you…all of us have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…we are the clay, you are the potter, we are all the work of your hand.”
Mark 13: 24-37 “Learn this lesson form the fig tree: as soon as the twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near….Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away. …keep watch for you do not know when the owner of the house will come back.”
There is ample liturgical material that can be accessed from the Iona community for both Saturday and Sunday. In addition, there are some inspiring hymns and reflections in Geoffrey Duncan (Ed): What A World (Granary Press 2002). I cite two here:
A Prayer of Intercession
Father of all,
Creator beyond time, we think of the flow of seasons and generations that is our home,
We remember those who have lived before us:
those whose explorations have left us gifts of knowledge and expertise,
those whose hard work has been the foundation for our prosperity.
those whose sacrifices have become the stuff of our legends,
those whose faithfulness has challenged our ambivalence.
We dream of those who will live long after we are gone:
the great, great grandchildren who will know us as ancient pictures,
the generations of every nation who will trace history back to us,
the people who will shape the world, in part, upon the lessons we demonstrated,
the believers who will know you, a little, through our tesyimony.
Past and future meet in our presence.
So we pray for ourselves and those of our generation:
that we will hand on a world worthy of humanity and of you, eternal God,
that we will measure our treatment of creation against the needs of those unborn,
that we will treasure our world and protect it from ourselves,
that we will be so inspired by your Spirit that our work will bear distant fruit.
And to you, eternal and intimate God,
be all glory, praise and honour,
as it was in the beginning
is now
and for ever shall be
world without end
Amen.
Neil Thorogood
Sunday
Come to worship on foot (wherever possible), our pilgrims return.
Prayer:
Most Holy Trinity
We thank you for the beauty of your creation
and for the joy of living in a world so full of wonder,
may all nature join us in praise and worship
adoration and longing love, in response
to the gift of life you have given us.
Lord of all creation
may the beauty of this earth
lead us to a deeper worship of you.
A reverence that causes gentleness.
Fear that leads to holiness
and a peace we long to share.
As evidence of our own creativity and the gifts that God has invested in us, we ask the members of the congregation to offer up, during the liturgy, their own work: that their crafts become a prayer to God (this is extremely useful for engaging the younger children in several weeks before.). Children can be enthused to make use of materials that would be destined for the scrap heap and put them to good use to make:
Animals, flowers, images of their own home and family, the Sun, trees etc.
The mood is upbeat: having Eucharistic faith in the pledge that God will not abandon us and that we have been given the creativity to face up to the problems that beset us.
After the service, people are asked to make their advent pledges: for some this will be to put a cap on the cost of each individual present. For others, it will be a pledge to use their own human creativity to make gifts for their loved ones which are not templates of mass-produced products. Members of the congregation retire for a stint of craft-making.
ADVENT 2008
“Putting the waiting back into wanting.”
Context
Christmas 2008 looks set to be a time of real stress and pressure for many families. The mounting debt crisis and reports of property repossessions means that people are going to find the traditional commercialised Christmas putting a total squeeze on their family finances.
This coming season of Advent can provide an escape from all that and an opportunity to reclaim the true spirit of Advent. As Fr Christopher Jamison (BBC “Monastery”) writes in his forthcoming book to be published later in the year:
“Advent is the traditional month of preparation before Christmas, a time of fasting and intense prayer, a time of eager expectation. It is above all a time to celebrate waiting as a normal part of human experience, when the Christian tradition invites us to wait for the birth of a child. In Advent we rejoice that we are waiting, that there is still time to prepare a way for the Lord and we celebrate the virtue of patience. By contrast, the consumer world tells us not to wait but to ‘buy now.’ Greed cannot wait, so to learn to wait is a simple antidote to greed.”
This advent, we want PROPHETS, not PROFITS!
THE TWELVE “Cs” of Christmas
1.Christ: on whom all our waiting is centred. In the simplicity and modesty of his birth, we find God’s word among us with a clear message: “Live simply.”
2.Consumption: the engine of economic growth which enslaves us and treats creation as a mere commodity there for our use.
3.Community: a true focus outside of ourselves and immediate families directing us to be mindful of those in need around us.
4.Covetousness: the envy that drives so much materialistic pursuit and which is expressly singled out in the Ten Commandment for special attention.
5.Carols: with their multiple and joyous references to the humility of the Christ-child story.
6.Carbon: the by-product of so much of our modern over-consuming lifestyle.
7.Creation: God’s marvellous work, of which we are a small, but key part. God works ex nihilo, creating out of nothing. Even before the advent of humans in the Genesis creation narrative, God looks on at each passing day’s work and declares all that he sees as “good”.
8.Climate Change: our great unchartered experiment with the biosphere. Threats to creation loom large if we don’t awaken ourselves to the call to go back to some basic principles and live more simply, more sustainably.
9.Covenant: God’s faithfulness pledged first to Noah and then through Abraham, resulting in the coming of “God-with-us”: Emmanuel, promised to Israel.
10.Chaos: the disordered world that awaits if we do not live accordingly within the limits of God’s precepts.
11.Candles: four for each of the weeks of Advent, signifying the coming light that will shine in the darkness and which “darkness cannot overpower.” (St John’s Gospel Ch1
12. Commercialism: that which sees the price of everything and the value of
nothing and sees, in Christmas, one sole opportunity: profits (and not
prophets!)
Plan for first weekend of Advent. To divide the Saturday and Sunday into two distinctly different days.
Saturday
is a day of fasting and abstinence in which we reflect soberly on how humanity has fallen short of our vocation to be good stewards of God creation. It has a pre-Easter, “tomb-like” feel to it, before we break out into Sunday: an unapologetically pro-Creation day.
The readings of the first weekend of Advent lend themselves (with great serendipity) to our theme and offer great scope for reflection.
Isaiah 64:1-9: “that the mountains would tremble before you…all of us have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…we are the clay, you are the potter, we are all the work of your hand.”
Mark 13: 24-37 “Learn this lesson form the fig tree: as soon as the twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near….Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away. …keep watch for you do not know when the owner of the house will come back.”
There is ample liturgical material that can be accessed from the Iona community for both Saturday and Sunday. In addition, there are some inspiring hymns and reflections in Geoffrey Duncan (Ed): What A World (Granary Press 2002). I cite two here:
A Prayer of Intercession
Father of all,
Creator beyond time, we think of the flow of seasons and generations that is our home,
We remember those who have lived before us:
those whose explorations have left us gifts of knowledge and expertise,
those whose hard work has been the foundation for our prosperity.
those whose sacrifices have become the stuff of our legends,
those whose faithfulness has challenged our ambivalence.
We dream of those who will live long after we are gone:
the great, great grandchildren who will know us as ancient pictures,
the generations of every nation who will trace history back to us,
the people who will shape the world, in part, upon the lessons we demonstrated,
the believers who will know you, a little, through our tesyimony.
Past and future meet in our presence.
So we pray for ourselves and those of our generation:
that we will hand on a world worthy of humanity and of you, eternal God,
that we will measure our treatment of creation against the needs of those unborn,
that we will treasure our world and protect it from ourselves,
that we will be so inspired by your Spirit that our work will bear distant fruit.
And to you, eternal and intimate God,
be all glory, praise and honour,
as it was in the beginning
is now
and for ever shall be
world without end
Amen.
Neil Thorogood
Sunday
Come to worship on foot (wherever possible), our pilgrims return.
Prayer:
Most Holy Trinity
We thank you for the beauty of your creation
and for the joy of living in a world so full of wonder,
may all nature join us in praise and worship
adoration and longing love, in response
to the gift of life you have given us.
Lord of all creation
may the beauty of this earth
lead us to a deeper worship of you.
A reverence that causes gentleness.
Fear that leads to holiness
and a peace we long to share.
As evidence of our own creativity and the gifts that God has invested in us, we ask the members of the congregation to offer up, during the liturgy, their own work: that their crafts become a prayer to God (this is extremely useful for engaging the younger children in several weeks before.). Children can be enthused to make use of materials that would be destined for the scrap heap and put them to good use to make:
Animals, flowers, images of their own home and family, the Sun, trees etc.
The mood is upbeat: having Eucharistic faith in the pledge that God will not abandon us and that we have been given the creativity to face up to the problems that beset us.
After the service, people are asked to make their advent pledges: for some this will be to put a cap on the cost of each individual present. For others, it will be a pledge to use their own human creativity to make gifts for their loved ones which are not templates of mass-produced products. Members of the congregation retire for a stint of craft-making.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Welcome!
Welcome to this Advent blog.
I hope that this will become a place where you might want to come for five minutes reflection and a chance to pause.
Each day during Advent I will post a short reflection here. I hope that as you spend time at your desk or at home, it might give each of us opportunity to slow down, still down and use Advent - even for just five minutes - for what it originally was designed for... to prepare for the Coming God.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!
You might also find that http://www.sacredspace.ie inspires...
I hope that this will become a place where you might want to come for five minutes reflection and a chance to pause.
Each day during Advent I will post a short reflection here. I hope that as you spend time at your desk or at home, it might give each of us opportunity to slow down, still down and use Advent - even for just five minutes - for what it originally was designed for... to prepare for the Coming God.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!
You might also find that http://www.sacredspace.ie inspires...
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