In the practice of Advent...

I think - in the practice of Advent - we all become Quakers.  For it is the particular practice of the Quakers - silence, stillness, attention, waiting - that we engage in this season. 

One of the most precious gifts of grace that I get glimpses of over the years is how the long-term pattern of my life is changing by engaging these practices...these disciplines. 


I liken my own practice to be very similar to an experience maybe we've all had.  So imagine with me that you have taken a walk in the woods in the late afternoon.  It's beautiful, it's peaceful, it's mostly silent. 

As the shadows lengthen and the colors of the setting sun deepen both the silence and the texture of it, you lose track of time.  After a while, you realize that it is getting rather dark, and you need to make your way back through the woods to your home.  As you walk along the path in the gathering dark, you suddenly hear something, like the crack of a branch on the floor of the wood.  You stop and still all inner life, and with all the discipline you have you bring your focus and attention to sensing what has made that noise. 

This stillness in silence and focused attention is like what I have sensed that has grown in me.  This is what Quaker unprogrammed worship is like, as John Punshon in his wonderful and reflection-rich book Encounter with Silence observes, "It is a state of great attentiveness, not of abandon.  It involves an awareness of one's being, not one's doing.  That is why it is still.  Silence is defined from the outside, stillness from within...when Friends practice it together, there is a great release of God's power into their worship and their lives." 

The power of Advent - as the power of the Quaker practice of worship - goes beyond the simple act of waiting.  It helps give texture and depth to a community of the called/gathered and bonds them together in a unitive experience.  There is such a deep, transforming power in this Presence together that is a crowning of what we seek to experience day-to-day in our ordinary, sacred lives, isn't it?  For it is indeed living that is most precious, most sacred...even in the waiting for something impossible-yet-true. 

In the stillness of this morning, a new name or metaphor emerged for the Spirit.  Weaver.  

You see, almost like a bird who gathers separate twigs and weaves them into a unified, integrated and strong home for herself and her hatchlings, the Weaver mysteriously, sacrificially, sacramentally, searches my depths - the best and worse in me, the complexity and simplcity...the noble and the vindictive...these separated twigs of my existence and being.  Yet bringing those into the Light, this wondrous Weaver integrates and heals me, instead of leaving those shadows to populate my heart in a subversive and destructive secrecy.  My weakness become my strength because the Weaver makes it so.  This also is true for all of us together as the Weaver threads a diverse community together...

Thus in this last week of Advent, I say: Come, O Weaver!...shine your Light and search me...and if there be any twisted way in me, weave me in the way everlasting.

Peace, Tension and Impossibly-True-Wonder be yours this season, my friends!