Advent- to Come.

i kept checking the blog to see if penelope updated it, maybe harass her over the mind-blowing fact she's responsible for children now. i totally don't get it. this mom side of her. and since i haven't seen her in 3 years it's imagined interaction. i mean, will her kids even like me?! anyway she's off doing adult things like christmas shopping. i haven't even considered the possibility of gift giving yet so obsessed have i been with my various escapes.

but anyway this sunday, after ditching the last 2 holy day meetings... (pentecost and kingdomtide) i remember just being very specifically in a really foul mood, i came to the advent celebration. where we select band of women gather "the order of the apostle of the spoon". there was some talk of our mentor cancelling the gatherings- i mean we made it a year, mostly... so quit while ahead. and we're all busy or irritable... but something made her decide to keep us going for now. so, advent is about waiting for jesus. both the fulfillment of the promise made to the hebrews and his 2nd coming for christians and this lasts all the way up until january 6th.

lately i haven't really been seeing a lot of of what god has for me. meaning i think i'm so used to drawing upon the circumstances of my life, conversations, what i've been learning and coming up with a meta-narrative or a grand conclusion of what jesus is trying to teach me... and a flat line is just buzzing annoyingly across the screen. i'm telling you, i've been stuck on that river for a long time. but my recent transition to a golden field, near a stream with mountains in the distance has a glimmer of hope. and part of what's awesome about these gatherings is this candid talk about a spirit that unifies us. that humanity is all enjoined in the threads of joy and sorrow and can relate to one another in this... and besides singing O'Emmanuel accapela which rocked, was in a round of prayer all we said were names of people we knew who were in pain, and that none of them were alone in their suffering because we gave voice to them.

and i think what i learned yesterday, as our mentor asked to read a poem i wrote, and at the time didn't know that she would or which one, and this other thing happened in the morning-continues now to remind me that god hasn't been silent at all this entire time but has so loudly put me in a place to learn what community might really mean, even when i thought i'd already learned enough over the last 3years, what love comes in the place of spite, or a bitter spirit, that everytime i returned to those thoughts of rejecting, of being rejected people rise to the occasion and prove me wrong- that they're still there, that i'm loved, and appreciated and thought after, and that relationships can be renewed and healed and continue on- and that this new life coming soon in epiphany, this new word spoken over me, shows my oldself now, so far in the distance that the new struggle might be in the naming of the new- and how i can define this new person over the past 4 years that prayed for community and got it, that prayed for peace and received it, that despite my lonliness or my odd jobs i'm no longer on a familiar shore of my past but that there's something in the future that i can't at all see...

so as i wait for jesus, impatiently wanting rain and partnership and wondering what my new name is... i am glad of being able to finally speak it.