Advent Touches Into Nature's Rhythm

Advent is my favorite liturgical season and I know this is true for many of us. The readings we hear in our liturgies are filled with joyful expectation, of waiting in hope, and despite what happens all around us in stores and online during these weeks, it feels like there is a softness or gentleness to this season. It beautifully touches into nature’s rhythm with darkness and light and just like the season of winter, it invites a sense of quiet within. Each year I struggle to adapt to the growing darkness of this season, and yet I welcome it too. It holds a unique invitation for us to settle in, to make space, and to say yes to what has been, to what is, and to what is to come. 

This seems like a fitting point of reflection as the first half of our novitiate year at the ICCN comes to a close. An invitation to settle in and make space, and to ponder our yeses over the last four months to what has been, to what is, and to what is to come. 

One of the people who models saying yes for us is Mary. She was asked for her consent, but there was no way she could know all that that yes would entail. The same is true with us. We never know where our yes is going to lead us, and yet, like Mary, we embrace the mystery of how things will unfold, knowing there is no guarantee of an easy path.

As we continue to move through this year taking in all the experiences and lessons, and reflecting on what we are saying yes to, I am learning that my yes, in response to a call I feel within, isn’t about a one-time moment, but instead it is a lifetime of yeses to fully enter into the commitment. I am learning to trust the whole-making instinct inside of me, my True self, trusting that all I can do is continue to commit, moment by moment, to showing up for my life because to resist the call, that inner knowing, is to resist a journey toward wholeness. 

Advent reminds us that God, the Source of our wholeness, continues to come into this world through us! The incarnation is still happening through us and through all of creation. No matter our stage in life, each day we say yes, we are still bringing to birth something new as we learn, as we love, and as we allow ourselves to be who

God created us to be, in this moment.

In saying yes to what has been,

we give thanks.                                                                                                                   

In saying yes to what is,                                                                                                    

we allow.                                                                                                                          

And in saying yes to what will be,                                                                                   

we trust our inner whole-making instinct; we trust God.