Advent & Being Present

“Waiting for the Lord does not bring us out of history; it involves us with it since we are hoping for the God who has come and is in our midst. Such hope is ambitious but it is worthwhile. It will help us see what is inconsistent in our behavior, what is deceptive and underhanded in out personal lives but also what is hopeful in our efforts to defend life and justice.”
~ Gustavo Guitiérrez, Sharing the Word through the Liturgical Year  

“…Advent is a threshold season, a liminal place in the calendar, an in between time of preparation and expectation. Thresholds offer a heady mix of possibility and peril. They are wildly unpredictable, they stir up questions, they cause us to live with uncertainty, they compel us to develop the ability to attend to the present even as we discern the future. Ultimately, they are places of initiation, taking us deeper into God and into the person God has created us to be…To follow God does not mean traveling with certainty about where God will lead us. Rather, following God propels us to be present in the place where we are, for this is the very place where God shows up.”
~ Jan L. Richardson (Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas, “Door Seven: A Way in the Wilderness”)

A Summertime Advent Reflection

This Advent I contributed a reflection to Christine Sine’s annual Advent blog series on Godspace. The theme of this year’s series is “Coming Home: Uncovering Our Roots in the Advent Story.” Godspace is one of my favorite blogs, especially during Advent. The Advent series includes daily reflections, prayers, resources and a weekly podcast.

You can check out my reflection and the entire Godspace series here…
http://godspace-msa.com/2013/12/05/a-summertime-advent-by-david-bayne/

Pay Attention :: Frederick Buechner

"From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein. . .

"Literature, painting, music — the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot. In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things. . .

"And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention. If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces, but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."

~ Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations 
(Art, February 20)
(Originally published in: Beyond Words: Daily Readings in The ABC's of Faith)

My looking ripens things...

The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

"I, 1" by Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
     to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
     unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
     that it is made by passing through
     some stages of instability—
     and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
     your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
     let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
     as though you could be today what time
     (that is to say, grace and circumstances
     acting on your own good will)
     will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
     gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
     that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
     in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Taken from: dotMagis: the blog of Ignatian Spirituality.com
http://ignatianspirituality.com/8078/prayer-of-theilhard-de-chardin/