The First Week of Advent - Reflections on Waiting

We began Advent this year with reflections on the liturgical year broadly and on waiting specifically. We talked about the opportunity to be present, to wait. We talked about Advent as a time of preparation and fasting, of making space in order to receive. We talked about reflecting, about assessing, about repenting...

I am slowly reading through Robert Benson's marvelous book, The Good Life: Benedict's Guide to Everyday Joy. I met Robert this summer in Colorado where we both spoke at a wonderful little gathering. Both Robert and this small but profound book merit a post of their own, which I will do soon. But until then I want to share a quote from this book that drew me back to what we talked about cultivating in our lives on Sunday.

He writes,

"...sometimes I am a little afraid that the world is going so fast that it will pass me by. Other times I worry that I cannot get the world to go away even on the days I want it to. But if the way in which I live does not have some silence and solitude and stillness and rest, then there is only one person to blame in the end. There is only one person who can, in fact, get me to do less and not more, to stop moving and be still, to slow down instead of speed up. And I am that person.

"When we begin to talk about rest...we all begin to fidget a fair amount...the reason we begin to fidget is because all (or at least, most of) the stuff that we are doing that takes up so much of our time is good stuff...We fidget because we know that in order to say yes to our need for silence and rest, we are going to have to say no to some other stuff. And none of us much want to say no, and not many of us have folks around us who are encouraging us to say no in order to say yes to the very most important stuff. If we want to begin to make some clear steps in the direction of the silence and solitude and the rest in which we shall be saved, we ourselves need to make those first steps."