Poetic Time

My husband is a man who spends his days teaching first graders how to read and
write, and yet maintains a capacity for deep thinking and great ponderings. The
other day he sent me this quote from one of his favorite authors, George
MacDonald.

But God sits in that
chamber of our being in which the candle of our consciousness goes out in
darkness, and sends forth from thence wonderful gifts into the light of that
understanding which is His candle. Our hope lies in no most perfect mechanism
even of the spirit, but in the wisdom wherein we live and move and have our
being.

These words, like all poetic words bear a meaning deeper than we get at first glance.
We are called to sit with them, taste them, let them roll around in our mouths
and our minds, feel them, try them on, and then live them, even if we don’t
completely understand them.  Theliturgical calendar of the Church is like that. There are seasons which give a rhythm to ordinary days and weeks. Liturgical time is essentially poetic
time—time given to us by God in which we are invited into the mystery of waiting
attentively in stillness, wherein we live and move and have our being.

Today,
in the liturgical year, the Church begins her calendar with the first Sunday in
Advent.  Simply put, Advent means
“coming”. This liturgical season is rather paradoxical. We wait with quiet
stillness, and with anticipation of
the One who is to come.  We prepare our
hearts to receive the gift of Christ, The One who was, is and always will be.
The One wherein we live and move and have our being. Kathleen Norris, in her
book, The Cloister Walk, describes the Advent season as one which “….breaks
into our lives with images of light and dark, first and last things,
watchfulness and longing, origin and destiny.”

So come, Lord Jesus. Come.

Always Mercy.

via Always Mercy http://ift.tt/2ASc8OE

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