a first blog post - advent, waiting, attention




my return to religious life ~8ish years ago found me immediately drawn to the advent season. amidst the most banal and excessive month of the calendar, advent presents the concept that we must wait - and wait, and wait, impatiently this time, for the coming of Christ - and, at the end of waiting, we are presented not with Easter, the reconciling of humanity and God, but with an infant. so we wait some more.

waiting moved me to devote a year to wait: 'what if i did everything more slowly in 2025?'. so i resolved to do everything more slowly in 2025. i ran, slowly. i joined the religious society of friends, where we sit and wait slowly for Spirit's call in our life. i accepted that i read slowly. i practiced walking to nowhere in chicago so i could go walk to nowhere in particular in scotland, and i listened on these walks. (slowly). all of this willful slowful movement was joined by unwilling slow movement - an end to relationships and to the whole shape of my day-to-day life, dissolved slowly.

some scottish tracklocross guy whose blog i like describes his ethic of slowness as containing an 'embodied humility' - he says, 'the body becomes an interpreter rather than a conqueror' - which speaks to the heart of doing things more slowly. in the practice of slowness, one cannot use power (or force, speed, will) to push through the proverbial mud. simone weil describes the relationship between God and humans as one of consent - that humans do not "do" anything to find God, other than consenting to be found. no amount of exertion, effort, or will can get you closer. 'there is only waiting, attention, silence, immobility, constant through suffering and joy'.

 

a prayer:

God above,

give us the strength to submit fully to the interpretative act of waiting and the humble pursuit of immobility. Amen.

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