december eleven

It is a time of preparation and waiting, because even though, as autumn grinds to a dark and murky halt, everything is dying and falling asleep and falling off,something brand new is coming. Hope is coming. And so one of the messages of Advent is, don't weep over leaves.

The belief is that enough hope and tenderness will lead to world peace,one mind at a time. All nations will come together in kindness and justice,swords will be beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks . . . But setting aside one's tiny tendency toward cynicism, in the meantime -- in Advent -- we wait; and hope appears if we truly desire to see it. Maybe it's in tiny little packets here and there, hidden in the dying grasslike winter wildflowers, but we find it where we can, and exactly as it comes to us, while the days grow dark. We remind ourselves that you can only see the stars when it is dark, and the darker it is, the brighter the light breaking through. Advent is about the coming of Emmanuel, which means "God with us," and so as the fields outside our windows go to sleep, we stay awake and watch, holding to the belief that God is with us, is close and present, and that we will be healed.
-Anne Lamott