Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of a new church calendar year, and the continuation of busyness, deadlines, an often frantic month.

As the deadlines and speed pick up around and in me, I want to pause to remember to breathe, deeply and remind myself what Advent is all about, anyway?

"Advent" is from the word "to come," and while it is a reminder of the coming of Jesus into the world, then and now, this season also asks to look into our hearts and to ask: What is coming into my life? Where is the longing?

There is ground in all of us that needs to be prepared for whatever new is coming. Advent calls us to the work of receptivity... of emptying out. In the story of the Annunciation, the angel coming to Mary with astounding news, she "makes room," literally and metaphorically, for new life, for surprise, for an upending of life as she knew it. In one of my favorite Advent quotes and invitations, author Kathleen Norris captures this radical receptivity:

"Mary proceeds—as we must do in life—making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. I treasure the story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God's love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it?.  Do I ask of it what it cannot answer? Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self and say something new, a 'yes' that will change me forever?"
 
- Amazing Grace

Making room for the yes that can change us for ever can also mean making room for some informing principle in our lives that has gotten lost along the way.

Sometimes Advent is a reclamation project (and one that can occur at any time of the year. Bill Dols, a dear friend and mentor (and author of the remarkable book, "Finding Jesus, Discovering Self: Passages to Healing and
Wholeness") once commented on this season in ways I find unforgettable and deeply stirring. So, from his pen and my heart... to your days of waiting and hope:

"The Christmas story tells of the birth of new possibilities when life is darkest and most dire. It is about the insatiable longing of God to win out over our cowardice, heal our procrastination, and to birth hope again despite us.

It is the story of God's unquenchable yearning for more—more for your life—more for your marriage, with your children and parents, more with people who matter most including yourself—more in those hurting places where you despair because it is all too bad or too dark or too broken and bruised, or because you are too old or too lost or too lonely or too unlovable. It is a story about how precisely at the most unlikely and unpropitious moment and point in your life, where you are most stuck and stale, tired, discouraged, desperate, and disheartened, God has in mind another option, a new fork in the road, a fresh hope shielded by lonely darkness."