Advent Begins

Advent begins on Sunday, which is tomorrow. I've loved reading reflections of fellow bloggers about Advent. So far these have stood out:

• Ruth's Anticipating Advent: Anglican prayer beads
  
• Fran's Advent. Calendar.: video of Rowan Williams talking about Advent
• Jennifer's Advent Beginnings: waiting and Gunilla Norris
• Jan Richardson's blog The Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas
  

Advent is a time of waiting. Henri Nouwen wrote a piece entitled "Waiting for God" in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. Here are a few quotes about waiting that I need to ponder from his words:

"Waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of the Gospel, is waiting with a sense of promise. 'Zechariah, . . . . your wife Elizabeth is to bear you a son.' 'Mary, . . . .Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son' (Luke 1:13, 31). People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more. Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them, that fed them, and that made them able to stay where they were. And in this way, the promise itself could grow in them and for them." (32-33)

"The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment." (33)

"Simone Weil, a Jewish writer, said, 'Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life."(37)