Children lighting candles-as-prayer at the peace installation, December 2004. Photograph by My True Self.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent (from the Latin, meaning ‘to wait’). It is the time in which Jesus-y folks everywhere prepare for the arrival of Emmanuel, God-with-Us. (The very concept of that possiblity give me anticipatory chills.)

Last year Advent went by in a flash, and my carefully cultivated discipline of keeping a peaceful, presence-ful schedule evaporated in a sea of poor planning. Ironically, in the midst of packing for an international move, this year we seem to be approaching this season with a more reasonable sense of time. To help this along, the note on my fridge says, “Today will unfold with measured grace,” and I am carefully prioritizing our calendar to help my family sink into this beautiful season.

Tonight we will go to “A Tranquil Advent Evening” at the cathedral on the hill. Though I’ve offered to let them beg off, the girls have both asked to go. They will be content to walk the labyrinth and light the peace candles while Momma –who was raised singing cantatas every year in the school choir — will join in the singing the gregorian chants and the verses of the O Anitphons, inviting the peace of Christ to come and dwell amongst us. My favorite verse, as always, will be verse eight: “O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind; bid thou our sad divisions cease, and be thyself our King of Peace. ”

The first time I came to this service on the hill, a profound sensory experience surrounded me, forever altering my experience of the Advent season. Here are my memories from that Advent, three years ago.

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Last night we went to “A Tranquil Advent Evening” at St. Mark’s Cathedral. The labyrinths were all candlelit, as were the steps to the altar. There was a classical guitar, a bevy of peace candles, perfectly executed Gregorian chants, a stellar harp.

It was raining outside, as it had been all week, and I had become acustomed to the constant drip. But inside the cathedral, I wasn’t prepared for weather’s resplendent sound.

It was as if the wind had decided to roar and sweep only around the cathedral walls. As if the rest of the city had been abandoned by her touch, that she might rally around this one space, this one focal point, her tendrical arms weaving and circling only around the deep, quiet nave.

“I am in a ship,” I thought, behind closed eyes, “below deck, and out of the way in my berth while the crew works to outstand the storm. Or perhaps we are all below, grasping tin mugs of coffee, working with the sway of the sea, hoping for the best, now that we’ve battened down the hatches.

No, it is more like a submarine, submerged and silent and waiting—hoping not to be heard by the enemy, hoping to be found by rescue rather than salvage.

Or perhaps we are Jonah, sloshing amongst fish bones, listening to the sounds of digestion, praying for rapture.”

Then another thought sprang into my consciousness—more true for its unbiddeness, for it’s unlooked for appearance…

“We are in a womb, in this strong walled Mary. We hear, not the howl of a storm, but the pulsing and swish of the stuff of our own making, the life-blood of our own to-be-ing. Hoping. Waiting. Being very still, yet very present.

Are these not the actions of both the mother in pregnancy, and the infant in utero? Mary’s song, the howl and swirl of heartbeats, the rush of blood in the vein. Entombed. Enwombed. Either way, a closing-in before the reality of new life, shown in a crowning head, in the left-behind emptiness or an abandoned tomb.

Advent, to wait. Emmanuel, to come. Oh! What could it be, if we would hold both words in one space– hold them there, between the roof of your mouth and the top of your tongue; soft in between the hollow of your cheeks, holding two truths in the loose-jawed spaciousness.

To Wait. To Come. Do you feel the void between these phrases? It spills out, whispering, “hold steady, be present.”

Breathe in…the sound swirls inside this still, incubating space where words come, waiting to be birthed into a reality. They hover amongst your teeth. Exhale….your breath hanging like a plea. “O come!”

To learn more about my Advent-y world, visit my previous blog Urban Abbess and choose ‘December’ in the archives window, or browse through the ‘rites and rituals’ category. Thank you for reading.

Eden’s acorn found floating in Lake Washington.

The mystic in me and the artist in me are good withmates. Neither one of them requires a reasonable explanation for what they want to do. Both of them are willing to follow intuition over traditional logic. I’m pretty sure both of them would have posters of the Muse up in their dorm rooms.

Since I left the traditional church, my mystic tendencies have been on hiatus. I haven’t had any mysterious flashes of insight, and my dreams are of the most mundane variety. But the other night I had a comforting and lovely dream.

I dreamt that I was lying alone in a spring field, just looking up at the sky. Then my real life worries started slipping into the dream. Would the kids be lonely at Danish school? How could we get everything packed up in time? What will happen if I can’t find a neurologist who’s willing to continue my stateside treatments?

As these worries and more threatened to overwhelm me, I became aware of the gentle presence of Jesus at my side. He too was lying in the field, enjoying the sky. I felt a warmth in my hand and realized that Jesus had wordlessly taken a hold of it. When he removed his hand a few moments later, a tree nut rested in my palm.

This image – of a small nut in an open palm – has long been one of comfort for me. Julian of Norwich, anchoress and mystic, once had a vision of a tiny nut in the center of an expansive palm. From this image came her most recognized saying:

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

This phrase has often been a comfort to me, and I have often extended it as a comfort to others. Yet somehow I had forgotten it in the midst of this big life change, in the left-brained nature of to do lists and moving plans. (This is spite of the fact that Rebecca gave me a silver acorn to carry about in my pocket!)

How grateful I am, that this message came to me again, in the passing of a small nut, from one dreamer to another.

I have to use white out on my calendar. This is not my work calendar or anything, it’s just our family calendar—like the one your mom hung in the kitchen to keep track of the soccer games and such. Ours was hung on the side of the refridgerator, right next to the door from the garage. Many were the times I would come into the kitchen to find my mother speaking tersely to one of us, usually my brother, when a scheduling conflict arose. “This. Was. Not. On. The. Calendar.”

I have always had a thing for calendars. Its comforting to me to come to a clean page at the beginning of the month and fill in a few activities on those little boxes. It fels orderly, manageable. With the advance of time and technology my calendars got an upgrade. There were computer-generated weekly schedules and palm pilots that warned me when someone’s birthday was coming up. These magic electric things could change font colors, flash reminders, and–wonders of all wonders—sync.

Then, I quit my day job. I blissfully relegated my PDA to the back of the junk drawer. No more meetings! No more babysitter juggling! No more multi-tasking! I could downsize to an Ann Taintor calendar. Life would be SO MUCH simpler.

Maybe I should have actually read the caustically funny barbs on the Anne Taintor calendar, because the whole “life is simpler” stay at home mom thing doesn’t really exist. Not then. Not now. Almost as soon as I tacked up my quaint little paper calendar, reality hit. Followed by white out. There is so much stuff on my calendar, and it changes SO OFTEN that I can’t fit all the stuff into those moderate sized squares. I have to scratch things, shove stuff into the margins, and add little extras on with florescent post-it notes. And of this calendarizing doesn’t even begin to reflect all the stuff I really do in a day…”grocery shopping” isn’t up there for instance, or “bill paying,” or “dish washing.” You get the idea.

Recently a friend suggested I solve the problem by getting a bigger calendar. Maybe one of those desk-sized calendars or a big soccer-mom style dry erase board? This does not seem like a good idea. Bigger calendar = more space to schedule stuff = more white out.

Instead, I think I’ll downsize. Yes, gentle readers, “Do Less” is my new motto. Doing less will help my kids be less stressed. It will help my brain stay out of the theta state where all the intake nerves are firing at the same time. And it will help me live counter-culturally to my experience-obsessed cohorts who seem to think their kids will end up living out of a grocery cart if they don’t have some sort of after school activity everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.

“Do Less”

It sounds nice, doesn’t it?

How about it? Wanna try? What are some of the things you need to do less of?