The sacred waiting

Advent.

Here we are again, within this mystery of preparing to celebrate what has already happened in hope of what will happen again. It is a pause within movement. A time to stand in the present with one hand reaching back into the past and one hand stretched forward into the future. A time to let ourselves be the meeting point, the residence of the tension of this knowledge of what we have seen and this hope of what we have not yet. A time to let ourselves, as Augustine writes in "Confessions," become a question. When, Lord? Empty me of my answers.

"Advent" is the first part of the word "adventure" -- they derive in their own ways from the Latin advenire, "to come." To adventure, dictionary.com states, is to "engage in a hazardous and exciting activity, especially the exploration of unknown territory." Shakespeare used it, Merriam-Webster cites, in a way that meant "to take the risk." To risk becoming quiet so we might hear. To engage in a way that is full of open intention. To offer our own comforting ways of safety for one that might lead us on a donkey or through a desert to explore the unknown territory of a familiar journey, the unknown territory of places we have never been, the unknown territory of ourselves.

In the essay "Something Happens," Alfonse Borysewicz reflects upon a narrative he once wrote about himself for the literary journal "Image:" "Looking back, I now realize what was missing: the abandonment of certitude, the willingness to give up on making sense of it all and the honesty to admit it. When we let go of our certitude, as Samuel Beckett puts it, something happens."

Advent is the quiet shaping of the longing that makes space inside us for something to happen. It is a carving, a hollowing out. Who knows if it will be filled? We wait. We live. We hope.

I can't remember where I read it, or who said it, but it echoes in my mind. A paraphrase of what bounces around these walls of this body of mine: For so long, nothing, nothing, then, everything.

Let us enter into this mystery, prepare to walk the road that leads to a little stable at the place where we come from, a little space in the world no one has ever heard of. Let us let this mystery grow inside of us, in this deepest place within ourselves, grow and grow until there is no place for it to go but out into the world, through us. This Love will come. Has come.

But for now, it is time for it to be quiet, this sacred treasure we hold within ourselves we don't have to fully understand -- to let it be within us is enough. Let us turn our eyes to the Lord and offer ourselves. Trust this grace, this mercy, this time that does its work and develops all into what it needs to be.

Exist. Exist. Exist here, in me.