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 lif...